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Scamming the Scammer - Laugh of the Century!?

Posted: Mon May 24, 2004 7:36 am
by JayBird
The laugh of the century (I hope it's not been posted yet):

http://personal.stevens.edu/~achadzyn/powerbook/

A Short Summary:

An American Ebay seller realises a European bidder is trying to scam him out of a Powerbook (fake escrow site, hijacked ebay account), so he sends him something far better, a P-P-P-Powerbook! Now, for you non-techies here, a factory model p-p-p-powerbook weights half what it's competitors weigh, comes with an A4 screen, the latest in internet adventure software, zero boot time, a fullsize keyboard (often with Key RedundancyTM) and a state-of-the-art laser bluetooth mouse. This is technology. The seller posts to a forum and amongst the chatter people follow the package via the the Fedex tracking page and some even visit the delivery address (a barbershop/internet cafe) and take photos, video, and a seat for their hair cut. The duty tax on this particular p-p-p-powerbook is around £350 (paid for by the scammer) before he sees the package, and a few days later it's released by Customs as they watch in anticipation. A forum member arrives at the internet cafe, takes a seat and soon the package arrives. The scammer opens the box and there are angry raised voices heard. The barber doesn't understand what's wrong and asks... "Is it broken?"

And here's the 82 pages forum thread.

Posted: Mon May 24, 2004 7:42 am
by Grim...
I am 'Mr T' in this.

It's one of those 'I've got £25,000,000 for you" emails so I wrote back pretending to be Mr T., and eventually got him to call Buckingham Castle.

Read it, it's good :)

Posted: Mon May 24, 2004 7:53 am
by JayBird
Grim... wrote:I am 'Mr T' in this.

It's one of those 'I've got £25,000,000 for you" emails so I wrote back pretending to be Mr T., and eventually got him to call Buckingham Castle.

Read it, it's good :)
Haha, thats brilliant!!!!!!!!!!!!

ROFL

PIMP

LMAO

Posted: Mon May 24, 2004 5:51 pm
by tim
lol @ PIMP

:P

Posted: Tue May 25, 2004 3:16 am
by Grim...
The thread for that is here

That powerbook thing is sick funny!

Posted: Tue May 25, 2004 7:22 am
by mendingo
That is the best thing I've read in ages. I've just spent the last hour at work reading though the pdf file.

Unfortunately, the somethingawful forums are blocked here (presumably to stop employees spending an hour reading through scams!), so I'll have to wait `till I get home to find out how it all ended!

Posted: Tue May 25, 2004 8:05 am
by Grim...
I think that is how it ended...

I couldn't find much more on SomethingAwful.