Scammed

Most of you know that I'm a huge fan of www.snopes.com. Whenever you send me one of those chain e-mails about Christian TV being taken off the air or some other nonsense, I'm the one who replies to all sending you to the Snopes link showing you that it's bogus.

That's what makes this so painful.

A few weeks ago, Lynn put her name and resume into the Nanny Network, hoping to do some childcare for a local family. She got a few good leads, including one from a local businessman who traveled alot, and needed someone to collect his mail, pay his bills, etc. while he was away. He offered Lynn $400 a month to do this, and he sent a cheque for $2500 drawn on our local BMO. Lynn deposited the cheque, took her $400 as agreed, and set up a PO Box for him. A few days later he had her wire a "supplier" in France $1900 through Western Union. A few days after that we received notice that the $2500 cheque had bounced. We've been scammed. We're out $1900 (which we could not afford to lose) and we have no way to find this guy. Almost like he planned it that way.

So we went to the bank (ours and BMO), and they have their fraud people on it. Also reported it to the local police as we have some indication that he may be local. When I went to Snopes, like I should have done in the first place, I found the very similar "reshipper scam". They prey on people that want to work from home to earn a little extra money, the very people, like us, who can ill afford to lose any extra cash. That was a rent payment and a car payment for us.

I tell you this just so you can be wary. If they can scam me, they can scam you too!

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