Criminals in DeKalb county are using craigslist ads to lure victims to places where they supposedly would sell them cheap I-Phones and Sony game systems.
“Sometimes the robbers had guns,” Dekalb County police spokeswoman Mekka Parish said Friday as the department announced it had two suspects in custody.
Someone in Southern California responded to a Craigslist ad for an apartment that turned out to be a fake. However, this hasn’t stopped this person from getting harassed by fake apartment emails and phone calls. The pleas have that telltale feel of Internet fakery, full of West African missionary work and mothers with lung cancer.
These things must work…
Oregon man advertising tax preparation services on Craigslist is arrested for pocketing the money his customers sent him rather than preparing their taxes. This wasn’t Gary Waite’s only scheme; he also advertised that he would help people pay their bills by obtaining a federal grant.
This is a variation of the fake rental agent scam except this time they are pretending to be a man of the clothe. The Winnipeg police are warning people that a man using the last name of Strampher using Craigslists and other such sites claims that he is renting out property while he is away on a religious retreat. He asks potential tenants to fill out an application and then wire money for a damage deposit.
Police in Northern Arizona are warning people about a variation on a scam I posted about before. The seller of an item gets a message from potential buyer, “Michael Armstrong” from England who sends two money orders and tells the seller to cash both money orders and return the excess amount via Western Union. Typically, the money orders bounce after the seller has already sent the excess cash to Mr. Armstrong.
A representative from FullThrottle Productions, an Austin Texas company, was looking for her shipment of NASCAR tickets for a March 14th race that never came. FedEx said they had delivered the package. Another FullThrottle Productions employee noticed that the tickets for that race were being sold on Craigslist. The police responded to the ad, met the suspect and bought four tickets which they confirmed were from the stolen lot, they received a search warrant and found the rest the FedEx packages and other mail that didn’t belong to the suspect, Paul Michael Dejesus 21. The total amount of stolen tickets was approximately $178,000.
Last month I posted about “Libra” a Florida woman arrested for re-posting Craigslist ads and claiming she was the agent for the house and getting interested parties to fork over a deposit that she never intended to honor.
Now comes this Sacramento area scam where a home-owner stopped by their house which they had up for sale and found squatters who claimed they had paid an “agent” $1,450 to rent the house. The owners are allowing the squatters to stay until Feb. 15th. The police couldn’t say if this scam was related to earlier one involving another property but that they were investigating.
A Pennsylvania man advertises a pickup truck on Craigslist. 22 year old Annette Castro sees the truck and writes him a check for $400 to hold it until they could meet again after title had been transferred. On the assigned date, Annette goes to meet the truck seller and leaves three hours later having been stood up. Later she finds the same truck advertised again on Craigslist and this time she sends her mother to meet the man and she invites along the police who make the arrest on the spot.
Article: Courtesy of CrimeN.ews
Update: Fallout from prostitution arrests:
*Dennis Martin, acting president of the Conestoga school board is forced to resign.
*Darren Bates, President of Omaha’s firefighter union has been put on administrative leave pending an internal investigation.
So let me get this straight. The cops put up a sex ad on Craigslist and bust a couple high profile people who have or may lose their jobs based on this sting operation. How is this a good thing?
Its one thing for police to answer sex ads to bust folks for prostitution but now they are running their own ads to bust people?
“I have a small frame with lovely curves. I am playfull and seductive, teasing and tantalizing until you just .¤.¤. well, you’ll see.”
And with that ad, the Southwest Iowa Narcotics Taskforce snag six men including a school board president, attorney, firefighter and school teacher. The police claim this isn’t entrapment because the ads don’t explicit mention $ for sex.
“They can’t initiate a conversation leading to an offer,” Flood said. “They need to be coy and allow the buyer to describe what they want.” Though they did list, $150hh and $250fh but hey, that could be for window washing!
Reading Tea Leaves by Randy Wilson 