Around the beginning of January I posted up my Ion for sale in Classifieds and not long after this I received an email from a man named Bill Winston who expressed his interest and said he was able to pay right away.
At first I thought this a little weird, that he was not from these forums nor did he seem too knowledgable about paintball either, but I continued nonetheless. The next email I received contained the follows:
This set of alarm bells for me, as every single part of this seemed like a scam but I continued, as I thought providing the cheque was OK and cleared without a problem, the money was in my hands and the Ion as good as sold.
So, I receive an envelope from him this morning with a Spanish postmark on it and the address written in scrawny handwriting, which I would not expect from somebody who has "agents" to pick goods up for him. Contained within the envelope was a cheque for £4,500(!). Adding to that, he had spelt my name wrong (which I had typed out for him correctly many times) and the signature also looked slightly dodgy.
From what I've now discovered, if I were to proceed to cash this cheque it is not likely to clear and if it does, the money may later be removed if the cheque was found to be fraudulent.
I will be sending him an email to cancel the transaction later, as well as emailing a scanned image of the cheque to the corresponding bank to check its validity.
The reason I've explained the different parts of this scam is to make everybody here aware that these sort of people operate even on these forums, so to beware if an offer of a similiar nature should be emailed to them.
-Will
