Klarinet Archive - Posting 000041.txt from 2005/10

From: "Ken Wolman" <kwolman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Scam artist watching woodwind.org classifieds
Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 12:40:11 -0400

Lelia Loban wrote:

>Yup. This is the familiar "Nigerian scam." It's so old there was probably
>a drive-in movie about it, complete with 3-D glasses, 1.85:1 MonsteRama and
>ThundeRound Sound. The trailer starts with a high-pitched screeeeeam as
>the taglines wheely-iris out: "SEE the scam so old it's got whiskers down
>to its knees! CRINGE as the dumb-bunnies fail the IQ test and FALL for
>this obvious trick! THRILL to the sights and sounds of craven, slobbering
>GREED!"
>
>I think the average clarinet player, including the average nine-year-old
>beginner, is too smart send this clown three cents, let alone $3000. Let's
>hope, anyhow.
>;-)
>
>
Don't bet the store on the last one, Lelia. Greed becloudeth vision.

I have hardly been a "player" on eBay, but I learned one lesson,
courtesy of Niccolo Machiavelli: "Trust no one, fear everyone." Ugly.
I have dealt with really nice buyers and sellers and I have also seen
screw artists at work like the jerk a year or two back who put up an
Evette as an R-13 and found a stooge to buy it. "For sale: one ABS
plastic Bb clarinet made in Hong Kong played at La Scala by Ernesto
Cavallini in Ponchielli's La Forza Del Gravita in 1862." No, I don't
have that instrument, I sold it:-).

For all that, I don't understand what the object of some games are. "I
am Ngwabobo Kwakiutl, son of the murdered Finance Minister of Ruritania,
I want to buy your camera for the $800 buy-it-now price but all I have
is a check for $8,000 drawn on a bank in Antarctica, my agent in the US
will come to your house with Zena, Princess of the Andes to personally
collect and jack-roll you." I know I fended off a scam like this once,
but I don't see how it works: you overpay me, is it a bad check? Do you
try to come to my house and work me over? This sounds perilously like
those con-jobs that people pull on retirees in Florida. I'm not ready
for THAT yet. What is the game?

Ke

--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538

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