[email protected] Challote Peters

This scammer tries to pull a credit card scam by insisting on paying through credit card.

First email:

Hello,
I want to place an order from you, to our store here in Belgium.I want to know if you can ship here and accept credit card as a form of payment.
Reply back asap

Thanks,
Chally.

Second Email:
Hello,
Thanks for your reply back . Its a pleasure receiving your reply back. I want to order for the below items for my customer's here, I want you to reply back with the total cost plus shipping quote. We're ready and can't wait to receive these wonderful products of yours here.
Your utmost reply back with the total quote will be highly appreciated.
...ADDRESS FOR THE SHIPPING QUOTE........


Rue Defacqz 30,
Ixelles,
Brussels 1050,
Belgium.


Hope to read back from you with the total cost and we can proceed and finalized my order.

God bless you,
Thanks.
Chally.

Third Email:

Hello,
Thanks for your reply back. I'm more than comfortable placing my order thru this Email medium, I want to know if the items i want to order for are available in the quantities needed.I want you to get back to me with the total cost plus adjusting the shipping to know if it is favorable via any of UPS,FEDEX and DHL 2-3 days express shipping before my credit card is charged and you can charge my credit card manually and everything can be sorted out asap.
I will wait to read back from you and we can proceed further to the payment of my order.
God bless you
Thanks
Chally.

Thank you for posting this. I received this email this morning (verbatim) via my contact form on my website. I figured it was a scam since my website isn't finished yet, so there is no access to my products and therefore, this person has no idea what they're asking to purchase!

This person isn't in Belgium. The IP address that I have shows Ibadan, Oyo, Nigeria.

I also received that verbatim initial email. The subsequent order request was for nearly $1,000USD worth of merchandise. While I receive requests on occasion from legit customers asking to pay via credit card, this one seems fishy. May I ask what types of products the other two people sell that received this request?

The product types are really irrelevant. In the case of small, high-priced items like electronics and jewelry they might be after the items themselves, but in most cases, the scammer have no intention of actually collecting product, so they don't actually care what you sell. The majority of the time they will use the fake shipper approach and go for cash.

I remember my animal shelter once being approached with this scam, claiming they wanted to buy goat shelters.

@Dotti, so in this type of scenario, is the next likely step of this type of scam that the buyer tries to send funds and then asks for funds back? As the owner of a very small business, I have a hard time determining who is legit and trying to purchase for store inventory, and who is trying to scam me. My concern with this Challote Peters person is that I'd ship off $1k worth of merchandise and then there would be a charge back from the credit card they paid with.

[AlanJones]

As Dotti said, unless you are selling items that would have a high resale value in their country (phones, high end watches etc.), they are not interested in your product and really will order anything, no matter how ridiculous it is - what will happen is that they will tell you that they have a trusted shipper and ask you to contact them and then tell you that the shipper doesn't take cards and they want you to charge for the shipping and then pay the shipper for them (usually by Western Union).

It is this payment to the fake shipper that they are after - they will try to proceed as quickly as possible to get the money to the shipper before the card owners notice the fraudulent charges are reject them.

I have seen a few odd ones when it wasn't electronics or jewelry where they were still after the items (ironically bibles and other religious books are items the criminals are actually after) but when the items aren't on that list, it is exactly as Alan described.

In the most common scenario:

The scammer has bought stolen credit card information from the black market. He wants to turn that credit card into cash. After getting shipping quotes from you, the scammer will tell you that he wants to use his shipper, claiming they are cheaper or more reliable than the major carriers you suggest. Then he tells you to charge one or more credit cards (which are stolen) for the total, including shipping, and to send the money for the shipping to the "shipper", who will come to pick up the merchandise.

A few days later, the charge will be reversed when it is discovered the card was stolen. You will still have your merchandise, but will be out the cash--and the "shipper" of course will never show up.

The writing (not surprisingly) tells me the author is African, not Belgian.

In the less common scenario, the scammer just places the order with a stolen credit card, has you ship the merchandise, and hopes he can get hold of it before the card is reported and transactions reversed.