United States Postal Service Electronic Money Order Scam

Today, an unscrupulous craigslist buyer attempted to scam me by sending me “a USPS electronic postal money order”. As you wouldn’t know by looking at the USPS website, there is no such thing. If you have any more questions about what this scam looks like, send me an email. Here’s a little taste:

If there is an error in the name or address, Please email our representative at
customerhelpcare@consultant.com
==========================================
***ATTENTION***
The order has been APPROVED, you CAN NOW ship the merchandise to the buyer. You are expected to make the shipment within 48 hours of recieving this Payment Confirmation Notification and get to our Costumer/Technical Dept. with the tracking number for Shipment Verification.
So get back to your buyer now for the shipment arrangement and email us with the tracking number after the shipment had been made,be sure to include the United States Postal Service Payments order number. Also, include item tracking number as the subject of your email.
The Money OrderSM will NOT be dispatched or get to your residence until the shipment has been verified. This measure is taken in order to protect both seller and buyer interests and to reduce the occurrence of fraudulent activities.

Please folks, if you get something like this, do not send the item, it is a scam!

Oh yeah, one other thing, so after I got the email I tried to contact to the Post Office to inform them that someone attempted to defraud me. Did they care? Well, I was astonished to find out that until you are actually ripped off, the Postal Inspector couldn’t care less. Apparently, the US Attorney won’t prosecute these would be bank robbers until they actually commit a crime. So, I guess I must have been victim no.1 for this guy, since they weren’t at all interested in following up on my complaint and seeing about any other people he might have stolen from before me. Not only that, but I was also surprised to learn the brazen act of sending out an email impersonating a government institution is also not considered a crime, at least in the eyes of the person I was talking to.

4 Comments

  1. ali says:

    I’m trying to sell a laptop on crigslist i offered it for $450 today i got and email saying they will pay $510 and they will shipped using their account with fedex just they need information to send me money via USPS
    United States Postal Money Order Service Payment
    so i figured out that is a kind of spam or fraud.

  2. Lisa says:

    This United States Postal Service® Payment has been deducted from the buyer’s account and has been “APPROVED ” But Payment will not get to your Residential Address until the Shipment Reference/Tracking Confirmation number has been sent to us for proper shipment verification so as to secure both the buyer and seller. Below are the necessary information requested before Payment can get to your Residential Contact Address in 1-2 Business days First Class Mail delivery.

    NOTE: This order has been APPROVED, you CAN NOW ship the merchandise to the buyer’s shipping address. You are expected to make the shipment within 24 Hours of receiving this Payment Confirmation Notification Email and get back to our Customer/Technical Dept with the shipment tracking number for Shipment Verification. With this no buyer can stop payment with a false claim that there is no longer any transaction between the two of you after you might have shipped Out Merchandise. We are your mediator,we stand between both the buyer and seller because we have our reputation to protect.

    Send shipment tracking number to us or email us through this mail : (unitedstatesfastesfund@deliveryman.com) and our customer service care will attend to you Immediately.

    **PLEASE NOTE**
    Once shipment has been verified with the shipment tracking number sent to us, You will receive a ” PAYMENT DELIVERY NOTIFICATION Email” from United States Postal Service® informing you that the Money has been sent to you residential address.

    Thank you for using United States Postal Service Money OrderSM!

    This was from a Craigslist buyer regarding a computer I was selling. THe email address was mrsrosemarypage1love@gmail.com

    Thanksfully, I am not stupid enough to ship something without the money in my hand. Poor grammar, misspelled email address for unitedstatesfastesfund@deliveryman.com (missing a T in fastest and an S in funds)
    links to “authorized and regulated by the Financial Services Authority” did not function, etc. Not to mention the IP address origination of this email and the correspondence from the idiot makes me wonder how the hell people fall for this kind of thing.

  3. Leisa says:

    I too just received this same type of email for an item I had on craigs list. I called the post office and they were of no help at all. I then copied and pasted the number to the investigator division. No reply yet but I knew it was too good to be true when the guy was offering way more than I asked.

  4. Michael says:

    Dear Michael,

    United States Postal money order ® Auction Payments hereby congratulate you and at the same time informing you once again that the ® Money OrderSM sent to you from Smith Brown has been Approved.® Money OrderSM : $500.00

    Auction Item : NEW IN BOX COMPAQ CQ50-139WM 2Ghz NOTEBOOK PC 15.4″ Widescreen

    Auction Site: Craigslist
    Please verify that the following address (as entered by the buyer) is correct once again.

    Country : United States

    The money order has been approved and it has been sent to the address provided by the buyer immediately, you should be able to recieve it in 2 to 3 business day. You are also expected to ship out the item and send the shipment tracking number to us for verification. And if you have any question, feel free to contact our customer service centre
    (contactsonline@usa.com )

    United States Postal Service Payments…………………………………

    Signature Confirmation
    USPS Homepage
    UNITED STATE POSTAL SERVICE IS SUPPORTED BY………………………………….

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