lesurf

how boring zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz at least they could come up with something more original. I'll give them some credit at least the spelling and grammar is pretty good not like the ones from "THE RIGHTEOUS OFEMI ACKONIGBONGO" from Sierra Leone wanting to kindly deposit $80 billion dollars in my account zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Here's the mail FYI:

From: "Investment" <investment@skallebank.com>
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: xxxxxxxxxxxx.com (sent 10/25/06)
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 18:24:57 +0400 (MSD)

Hello,

Please email me price for the name mentioned in the subject line.

If you have other domain names for sale please send us the complete
list with prices for consideration.

I'm a very busy person so it may take several hours before I respond


By the way, investing in domain names is not the main direction of our
business but a good way to generate additional income.

Looking forward to do business with you.

Regards,
Paul Sonnenberg
Vice President
Skalle Group

aggieuk

I had one too! LOL

mrojas2005

Hi

I just received the same mail, asking for a domain I recently registered.

I answered saying that this domain is for sale at Sedo, and he can offer there...

A few hours later, I received an answer. Here it is:

-----------
I don't have time for bidding wars.

I need to know the lowest price you can accept.

What is your price range: $5,000 or $10,000 or even higher?

Please send it to me via email as soon as possible.
-----------


What are these people doing ?
I need help with this kind of mails ?

Thankyou. Excuse my english

Regards

Stefan

I actually believed this guy. I told him a price, he said ok - but we must get an appraisal. He pointed me to a thread ( Domain Talk ) which looked like all postings there were written by the same single person. Anyway, after we exchanged a few eMails it came down to this: afternic.com is not acceptable regarding domain appraisals, so isn't Sedo (where my domains are listed right now), GreatDomains neither. But, securenamesale.com and DomainMart.com would be acceptable for him as they're supposedly trusted sources and do a decent manual appraisal of domains. So, I thought what the heck - and went with securenamesale.com for a one-time fee of 69 USD. The appraisal I got back listed close to 2,000 USD more (9,000 USD instead of 7,000 USD) for the domain than I originally told this guy. I gave this appraisal to the guy ("Paul") and he replied back: "Your appraisal looks reasonable" and that he will now get an independent appraisal by himself, either via NetworkSolutions or DomainMart. So that both of us will get a better feeling of what the domain is worth.

As I mentioned above he said he will either accept appraisals from securenamesale.com or DomainMart.com while DomainMart.com is more expensive ($200 USD / hour) and he said: "I consider it too expensive, but if you can afford it, it's fine with me."

So, does this mean this guy is connected to the people behind securenamesale.com and tries to get people to order domain appraisals via this service? And he probably speculates that if given two possibilities (securenamesale.com and DomainMart.com) the domain seller will always choose the less expensive service (securenamesale.com)? Or maybe he's behind both of those services?

Does anyone have an idea what those peoples goal is? Is it just about the one-time fee (69 USD) at securenamesale.com or will there be some follow-up regarding this? Credit card information collected / stolen? The last eMail I received from "Paul" was 3 days ago (25th October), haven't heard back from him yet.

I'd appreciate your thoughts and feedback.

Thanks,
Stefan

lesurf

Just search for "appraisal scam" in the search facility on the forum. They make money be getting you to pay for an appraisal. If it looks too good to be true.....it probably is.

jerryg

I had that one too ... I almost wanted to do "domain business" with him(her?), fortunately friends of mine told me about "this scam email".
Phew...Thank God!

lesurf

Slightly off topic but if you want a great laugh at the scammer's expense you have to check out this web site, Welcome to the 419 Eater - Maybe we should set up a similar site for domain scams, any baiting tips

russ

Yeah I had this one a while back. He could have made the fake forum page a bit better, that and not wanting to make ANY offer on sedo gave it straight away.

Was slightly disappointing though.. I quoted a ridiculous price and he emails back that it sounds very reasonable, lol. Then he sends the fake forum link and appraisal guff

cybernetic

Hi everybody,

As a recent victim of this scam, I decided to seek my revenge by creating a site dedicated to this scam. DomainAppraisalScam.com - The Domain Name Appraisal Scam! is the result.

Hopefully it will help expose this scam even more and prevent many others from falling for this strange scam.

Thanks,

lesurf

Great site, well done. I read with interest. Sorry you fell foul of this.