Scam Scam ?

Slater · May 16, 2007

Received a letter today with a hand written envelope and 2nd class stamp.

Inside was a letter with someone saying they are interested in one of my domains names, the guys name looks African although the address at the top of the letter is a London residential address.

The letter starts "Dear Friend", English is bad with phrases like "I am interesting to buy your domain name "and "I am webmaster for company base in London", gives mobile contact number (complete with 0044 prefix) and a hotmail email address (with a comma instead of a full stop).

My address and the domain name appears in a different font and text size as rest of letter as if had been badly mail merged, also paper has scribble over the back of it.

Anyone else had this kind of letter ?

Mark.

deconstruction · May 16, 2007

i would email and find out,

if the mobile is 0701, 0702, 0703, 0704 (i think thats right) then the mobile is very common with scammers...

e.g

http://www.met.police.uk/fraudalert/news/potter.htm

dhscott · May 16, 2007

If they have left a postcode or a whole address even, check out the royal mail's site, it has a postcode / address lookup. It should tell you if the address / postcode match.

Do a google search for the email address too, it might be around.

fred · May 17, 2007

You can also do a search on the bt directory enquiries site. Look up the name to the address to see if there is a match - no result doesn't necisarily proove anything, but a match will confirm that at least the name fits the address (and give you a landline number!)

Slater · May 17, 2007

Have emailed the guy, given him a ball park figure and asked him to make a bid on Sedo if he's interested. If it's genuine I might lose some commision to Sedo but at least he'll have to pay upfront.

Thanks for the advice guys, doesn't feel right to me but maybe I'll be pleasantly suprised.

Mark.