My wife and I dealt with this same scam. Its called a 419 scam. There's actually a website of a coalition of people trying to alert people to it.
http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/Anyway, my wife ran a small business for a while (handcrafted stained glass jewelry) and she built a website for it. Two of the first orders she ever recieved were from Nigeria. We thought it was strange but were excited that there were some people that wanted to buy her stuff. They actually corresponded with my wife several times and they did give some story of wanting the item shipped to a different address or something. They actually placed a very specific order and everything, but they didn't pay. Quite some time passed and the guy said he would be sending a money order to pay for the items and that if he overpayed that we should send any overage back to a different address than his sending address.
Now I was working with a guy from Nigeria at the time at the hospital and he told me to be careful as soon as I told him that we got an order from Nigeria. He pointed out that the amount of items he ordered, (somewhere around $600 or so I think) was equal to like 40,000 dollars to a Nigerian. It was more than a years wages or something, but I figured hey we'll see how it plays out. So finally after what must have been 5 months or something we finally got the money orders. In fact by the time we actually got the money orders my wife had closed the business and we had moved from St. Louis back to Florida.Â
Of course I was pretty su**CENSORED**ious by that time but the money orders looked legit. So I took them to the bank. The girl at the counter ran the MO through her little machine and it didn't register. She seemed to try it a few times and then she seemed like she was going to pay out on the MO even though it wasn't scanning. I assume she figured she could sort out the issue later because she assumed a MO is like cash, like most people do. I told her to verify that the MO was valid as I had serious su**CENSORED**ions that it was fraudulent. The manager came over and verified that the MO was no good. I went home and called the company that was printed on the MO as the issuing agent and they verified that the number on the MO was fraudulent.Â
The guy contacted us a few more times but my wife had actually reported him to the Nigerian embassy and to the police or some US agency I think. She eventually told the guy that we had figured out his scam and reported him and that was the last we heard of it. Â
The worst part to me was that my wife was so excited that people wanted the jewelry that she had taken so much time and effort and passion to make and then for her to have that happen and realize that it was just some dumb jerk trying to scam her really sucked.Â
