What scam is this?

[mignolo]

Hi, I've just received this e-mail:

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Dear Sir,

we are interested to buy your domain name REFINANCEMORTGAGELOANS.INFO and offer 65% of the appraised market value.
As of now we accept appraisals from either one of the following leading appraisal companies:

sedo.com
pddomains.com
accuratedomains.com

If you already have an appraisal please forward it to us.

As soon as we have received your appraisal we will send you our payment (we use Paypal for amounts less than $2,000 and escrow.com for amounts above $2,000) as well as further instructions on how to complete the transfer of the domain name.

We appreciate your business,

Domain Resale
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the sender is a @gmail.com account and I'm not the owner of REFINANCEMORTGAGELOANS.INFO...

 

[Michelle]

It's an appraisal scam spoke about many many times on the forum and obviously doing the rounds again atm

 

[mignolo]

Yes it's an appraisal scam, but this time they are trying to make me appraise a domain I don't own...

 

[Michelle]

Yes it's an appraisal scam, but this time they are trying to make me appraise a domain I don't own...

ooo Have you ever owned it? sold it? Could the whois be in your name

 

[mignolo]

mmm, I've just checked my e-mail backup, and it seems I owned this long time ago...
They should update their database to make better scams

 

[DnEbook]

yep i got this one 2 years ago ...... and yesterday

 

[thewebhostingdir]

Yes, these scammers are increasing day by day and people receive such emails quite frequently. So it is always recommended to ignore such emails and never deal with it.

 

[namebug]

Got hit with about 5 of these today. Looks like they're ramping up the operation.

 

[cwinhall]

Got hit with about 5 of these today. Looks like they're ramping up the operation.

Can I make a stab and say the domains they were asking about started with an S? :gn:

 

[Joep]

I got the same mail this morning.
Deleted it.

 

[ARonald]

Can I make a stab and say the domains they were asking about started with an S? :gn:

The domain name started with an 'S' and the funny thing is I do not own the domain name at all. Someone seems to have purchased whois email addresses a while back and is using them to con people.

 

[tristanperry]

I got a similar one a few weeks ago.

I played along and wasted the sender's time.

I was replying asking for detailed steps of how to get an appraisal etc. Then, once they sent that through (over the course of a few e-mails), I said "Okay, I've bought an appraisal from Moniker"

They replied saying "No, no, Moniker are a scam company, just like Sedo and GoDaddy. We recommend [their own appraisal scam company]" :hehe:

I just kept playing along (with short replies; I wasn't going to waste my own time) and they kept biting. I ended up saying "Okay, I've bought an appraisal with [their own appraisal scam company] now. They value it at $6,581 [or something like that]. Should I go ahead and set-up the Escrow?" to which they asked me to forward them the e-mail/link to the appraisal. I then played dumb and asked how to forward an e-mail, etc.

Must have wasted their time quite a bit.

Seriously, try it - I'm not suggesting to click on any dodgy links (some of the more serious phishing scams will link to sites with viruses in, etc), but just reply and try and waste their time. It's quite therapeutic actually

 

[namebug]

Can I make a stab and say the domains they were asking about started with an S? :gn:

Yeah, S and Ts. Anybody ever track down these guys ?

 

[intheflow]

I got a similar one a few weeks ago.

I played along and wasted the sender's time.

Good job.


I going to send them an email asking for a 'spoon pic' !

This could be fun.

 

[tristanperry]

Good job.


I going to send them an email asking for a 'spoon pic' !

This could be fun.

It's always good fun It taken them 10+ e-mails before they started to realise I was just wasting their time, too