Craigslist Evil People

I put a camera for sale on Craigslist since there were 13 of them already on Amazon.com, and even at the lowest price, I had no buyers after two weeks. On Craigslist, I immediately got three responses, one from Sam asking for "shutter actuations," which I don't know what that is.

Then another from Mike with a Yahoo email account that has a peculiar, un-Mike like email address, alessandraazh. He wants to know if I still have the camera. Well, yes, I just posted it 5 minutes ago late on a Saturday night.

Then I get an email from "Mario" also asking me if I still have the camera. Mario has a gmail account which is also two names, johnandjacob. I say I do.

Within minutes, I get an email from John Powell, also from the johnandjacob email address.

Hi,
Thanks for the mail...i was introduced to this site by a friend at
work and i will like immediate purchase of this item for my Niece
'Bella' who is away of the state and been requesting for this item...i
will offer you $500 including the shipping charges to her.. there
because she is in need of it as a matter of urgency and due to my work
i don't have time to handle the shipping..i will want you to help me
handle the shipping very well to her..Get back to me with your
confirmed PayPal email address so that i can send the payment..
Get back to me asap...

That's pretty fractured English for someone with the very English name of John Powell. Mario, at the same email address, had a street address in Boyertown, PA on the bottom of his email and a telephone number. John has no location. I do a Google search on the telephone number and I get all hits about Nigerian scams. All the reports are about people trying to buy things on Craigslist giving this phone number. Some reports say the phone is located in Jupiter, Florida, others in Seattle, Washington. Not surprisingly, the middle three digits of 206-666-5748 are demonic.

(Area code 206 covers Seattle, so John and Mario of Boyertown, PA have a very, very long telephone cord.)

Also, I am amused that the niece's name is the same as a currently popular character in vampire novels and the offer is for more than I am asking for the camera, almost twice as much. Who pays more, plus shipping? Where does Bella live that she can't find this camera locally? There's 13 of them on amazon.com right now. Even so, I write back a reminder that the ad said cash only and I meant to sell it locally. If this person wants to pay for it electronically, they need to go to my listing on amazon.com and pay for it through that company.

John writes back immediately and now he is getting bossy.

I have already confirmed shipping cost to her which is not more than
$60 to her via usps..kindly get back with the confirmed paypal email
so i can send the fund..Kindly go to www.paypal.com and set up account
and get back to me with your paypal email so i can send the fund..my
husband have already sent the fund into my paypal account thats why i wanna pay via that..
John has a husband? His husband must be Mario. Who am I to question a gay marriage in Boyertown, PA? You can send money to people through Paypal if all you know is their email address, and John is corresponding with me, so he already knows how to send me money. Something else is going on here. They are either going to also ask for the password and think I will give it to them, or hope I will mail the camera before their payment has cleared because they are using stolen credit card numbers.

It's probably a mistake that I continue to talk to them out of my email address, but I remind them the ad said cash only. It is now 1 a.m. on a Saturday night, but John, who is too busy to send his niece a camera, but not too busy to be writing me in the middle of the night, gives it one more try. Never once have we discussed the condition of the camera.

but i dont mean to hurt human beign like me..is just that am a busy
person that work trice in a day..get back if you can help me out..
If John is working thrice in a day, he must be working inside a Dickens novel. Who works thrice? I have lost interest in helping out Bella.

Meanwhile, I have not heard back from Mike, but since his first email started the same way Mario's did and he also had a double-named, free email address, he was probably a Nigerian operative who went to bed early or found a deal to work that was actually going down.