I was woken up at 5 AM this morning by my phone ringing. I directed it to voicemail and went back to sleep, but then it rang again, same number. Annoyed, I again sent it to voicemail. Third time the number called I picked it up, and the conversation went something like this:
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Growwwwl, who is it?!
"Is this Susan?"
yeah, what
"I just wanted to let you kow that I've just bought your horse on xyz.dk for 12.000 DKr."
uhmmmm, you what?
"Your horse is for sale on xyz.dk"
OK just a second, I'm the the US, it's 5 AM, I'm not quite awake yet, I think I must have misunderstood what you just said. Lets start over.
"Oh, sorry to wake you, I just called to let you know that someone has put up a sales ad for your horse on xyz.dk. She has a bunch of pictures of you riding Barokko, and says he's her horse and that he's for sale. She priced him at 25.000 DKr, but then dropped it to 12.000 when I started inquiring about him. Her information about him didn't really add up tho, so I got suspicious, and asked around about the horse in the forum, and one of the other users found your webpage where she had taken the pictures from. She figured out who you were, and then I found your phonenumber in the directory."
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That woke me up! She mailed me links to the ad and the forum discussion, as well as a copy of their private message discussions. I quickly established that the person in question is a very bad scammer, seems to live in the other end of the country and doesn't actually know where Barokko is. As soon as I felt certain that Barokko wasn't actually in any danger of being stolen I relaxed, and was able to just feel a little outraged on Barokko's behalf at her setting the price so low - if someone's going to sell my horse, they should at least get a good price for him (12.000DKr = 2500 US$) :D
I contacted the moderators at the site, and they froze her account. I'm going to call the police Monday. As nothing was actually stolen (except for 10-15 copyrighted pictures) and her scam attempt was so grossly amateurish that she was found out within one day of posting the ad, I'm guessing there won't really be any possiblity of sanctions against her, but I'd love for her to get a visit/call from a cop to give her a good scare, and alert her parents to what she's up to on the web (she says she's 16 in her profile, and all of her past threads etc all point toward her being a teenager).
What a way to start the day :/
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2 comments:
What a RUDE awakening!!! Very nice of the person to let you know about the ad just maybe not so early in the morning would have been nicer! I hope that the cops do go over and tell her parents on her and maybe even threaten her with jail or court. Maybe it would scare her straight. Better now while she is younger vs later down the road when she is coming up with big scams and ruining peoples lives.
I'm glad that you are able to laugh it off and I hope that you never have a scare like that again!
That is one scary, scary scam! It's amazing what people can get up to via the internet.
It would be a welcome thought to know this person did get identified in person and pulled up on what they've done!
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