I posted an ad to sell an old prom dress on TheDressList.com. About six months later, after getting no responses, someone emailed me asking if it was still for sale. I said yes, but I noticed the email address was in the UK and I wasn't about to pay 100 bucks that I didn't have to ship the damn thing.
The guy's name was Dennis Hoffman, and supposedly he was buying the dress for his fiancee at their wedding. He said he lived in Ireland but told me not to worry about shipping. He accepted my price of $200 and even offered me an extra $20 if I did it all myself. He said his cousin would be coming all the way to the states from France to pick up wedding stuff, including my dress. I am naive, so I just thought, "WOW, this guy must have money to blow if he's traveling all over another country to pick up his cousin's wedding stuff."
He informed me that he would be paying me via money order, and that he had a friend who owed him money make two money orders, equaling about $1400. I was to deduct my charge for the dress from one money order and have the rest of the money wired via Western Union to:
Michel Peter
3 Rue Caill
Paris
France
75018
I just figured this was his cousin. I had him mail the money orders to my mom's address back home in San Diego county, just in case my roommates weren't comfortable with me giving the address out to strangers.
When the envelope arrived at my mom's mailbox, it had no return address, but was postmarked from France. I was confused so I asked her to open it. Well actually, she just demanded to open it. I was annoyed because she was being all overprotective and I just wanted my damn money, but I just decided to appease her so she'd leave me alone. She said the name on the money orders was "Allgin Smith" and that the address where the money orders had come from was Waynesville, Georgia, USA. I wasn't aware this dude had friends in the states, so I had my mom take it to the bank and fact check it.
About a week later, Dennis started emailing me asking what was going on, where was the money, had I wired it yet, yadda yadda yadda. I told him the bank was sending them to me just to be safe and they would be there soon. For some reason the things take two weeks to be fact checked. He started bugging me saying he needed the money and the dress by the weekend, so I had my mom rush deliver the dress to me and told her to hurry up with the money. She went back to the bank that day and they bank informed her that the GA address on the money orders didn't exist. Not only that, but the writing on the money orders was completely different from that on the envelope they were mailed in. She got them back but had the bank took copies, and the called a lady at the local FBI. She said they were definitely fakes. Meanwhile, Dennis was emailing me to wire the money to Stephen Allen, at the same address in Paris as Mr "Michel Peters" from a previous email. My boyfriend and I looked up the address on Google earth and saw that it was probably the most run-down, ghetto, trashy street in the history of civilization. So, I accepted defeat and resolved to take the bank's advice and not communicate with Mr. Hoffman any more.
A few days later my mom took the money orders to her friend at the post office just to be sure they weren't legit. The postal worker said they were definitely fakes; and not even good fakes. Meanwhile I was getting "urgent" emails from "Mike Walters, " saying it was Dennis on a friend's email and demanding info on the whereabouts of the "payment." I gave him a short response along the lines of "The payments are no good, I'm having them sent back to the address from whence they came. No further communication is required." I haven't heard from him since.
Tl;dr: Guy in "Ireland" tried to buy a dress from me with money orders, sends me through like 4 different people, turned out to be fake. Was almost out $1400.
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