DAMN IT GUYS STOP HELPING THE SCAMMERS

If you have a scammer contact you, then tell an admin ASAP.

Do not ignore them, do not forget about it, do not worry about it later., do not turn it into someone else’s problem.

We post up something about scammers and then immediately folks follow up with “That guy tried to scam me too!”  Who knows how many other folks have not posted about it.

Why the hell did you decide to HELP THE SCAMMER by not reporting them BUT NOT HELP ANYONE ELSE by reporting the scammer to an admin? You don’t have to make a thread about it, just send us a message and it gets dealt with discreetly.  

STOP STAYING SILENT.  Do you know we get almost zero help from the people that have scammers contact them? For some reason they just feel that the problem went away for them, so it is not their problem any more.

GROW UP PEOPLE.  This is not tattle-tales in kindergarten.  People are stealing from you and your friends, but you don’t care enough about them to help?

Since YOU keep quiet, we have watched them multiply here like cockroaches.  This was almost never a problem, now it is 90% of my job.

I am mad as hell about this.  I cannot believe you folks would stand by while these people try to ruin this forum.

It’s like someone try to rob your house.  They don’t succeed and break in next door.  Do you just stand there and watch the robbery while saying to yourself, “I sure took care of that guy.”

BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE DOING.

You want to be ”the good guy with a gun”, but not “the good guy with a keyboard”?  There is not a large enough eye rolling emoji on this forum.

In my case, I may have suspected but did not have anything definitive to suggest that the guy was a scammer. I wouldn't want to post publicly about the guy because he might have well been legitimate.

Who are the admins we should notify? That way we don't risk calling out the innocents who perhaps are just newer to the internet and aren't familiar with common practices.

Thanks for the hard work!

I know one is too many but just curious how many are we talking about?

In my case I would have never known I was being scammed if I hadn't read founder's post. I thanked him and told him I didn't need any grips and that was the end of it.

Is there an easy way to restrict people from PM'ing and posting in Commercial Row until they have "X" number of posts? That would likely fix 99% of the scamming.

LenV wrote:In my case I would have never known I was being scammed if I hadn't read founder's post.

Same here.

SingleActionAndrew wrote:
Who are the admins we should notify?
Thanks for the hard work!

Will, I echo Andrew in saying THANK YOU for the thankless work that you do.

I often browse the forum on my smrt fone. What's the best way to report a scammer to the admins?

(I haven't been phished by one yet. I guess they don't think there's any blood left in this dried-up turnip. But if one of them wants to spin the dial and mix a metaphor, I'd be happy as Mrs. Malaprop in a mitten to give that wheel a spin.)

Jeez, John, what ya smokin? The Oxford English Dictionary? Is it legal in CA?

Some red flags for me are when a new member: 1. First says that I don't compete but... 2. Builds posts by a lot of off topic comments 3. Wants to sell something at the early stages of membership 4. Doesn't list address, phone number, etc. when asked by a buyer.

Lane579 wrote:I have just recently created an account but I could have sworn I had one from 2011ish but I guarantee that account was with a now defunct work email.  I can provide my PPC credentials to anyone who wants to check.  But anyway, I believe I have a scammer on the line.  Is the consensus to air it out here or PM a mod?

Forward the information in private message to an administrator

(Hint. Says admin in their login name)

The problem with post minimums is that we get folks just making posts to look like they did not sign up ten minutes ago trying to make the minimums.  They are already doing that anyway.

Scammers gonna scam.

willnewton wrote:The problem with post minimums is that we get folks just making posts to look like they did not sign up ten minutes ago trying to make the minimums.  They are already doing that anyway.

Scammers gonna scam.

Right but if you have a 50 post minimum it will be brutally obvious when someone is dumping crap posts and can give you a chance to ban before they can attempt to scam. Most scammers won't bother learning much about our sport and posts will be nonsense.

I know something about this game and some of my posts are nonsense!

PM sent, but this time to John

joy2shoot wrote:PM sent, but this time to John

Reported joy2shoot to the admins.

john bickar wrote:
Reported joy2shoot to the admins.

Won't be the first time and probably not the last.

My sixth sense comes into play when I'm trying to sell something and someone who just made an account on the website here ten minutes ago sends me a message asking to buy it. Then sometimes they decide to buy it, I send them my address to send a check, and they go ghost. Is it just someone fishing for info on someone who has guns? Who knows, but with the world we live in these days I'm not going to take that risk anymore. From now on I'll only sell to someone who has at least a few months' worth of activity on this bulletin board. I don't mean to be a scrooge but that's the safe bet.

Wobbley wrote:I know something about this game and some of my posts are nonsense!

I'm pretty sure most of my posts sound like newbie nonsense. I've been at this game for four years and I am still spinning my wheels.

I did not realize I was falling for a scam because I was being presented with something I wanted at a reasonable price. However, the signs were there, if I had been paying attention.
Right now I have three goals: make the scammer pay - I am a retired prosecutor and I know something about this subject; identify scammers proactively using internet identification to keep them off of this list, and by  informing others about how I was scammed.
I was the victim of a scam to the tune of $230 on this site and it was not pleasant - I did not think I was susceptible.
I plan to post in a separate thread with names, phone numbers and email addresses used to scam me. I hope that among us we can gather enough information to identify these (not)-people.
Once I know who and where they are, well I have an airplane and I can get anywhere in the continental U.S. the same day.

Since you’re a retire prosecutor, do you know if this is ever prosecuted?  I know mail fraud is prosecuted, but there doesn’t seem to be much prosecution of internet scams.

Probably because you'd have to get the Russian/Ukranian/Nigerian/PickAnotherCountry police involved and they could care less about Americans getting ripped off.

flyer898 wrote:Right now I have three goals: make the scammer pay - I am a retired prosecutor and I know something about this subject; identify scammers proactively using internet identification to keep them off of this list, and by  informing others about how I was scammed.
I was the victim of a scam to the tune of $230 on this site and it was not pleasant - I did not think I was susceptible.
I plan to post in a separate thread with names, phone numbers and email addresses used to scam me. I hope that among us we can gather enough information to identify these (not)-people.
Once I know who and where they are, well I have an airplane and I can get anywhere in the continental U.S. the same day.

While this sounds like a lot of fun, I recommend simply messaging willnewton the usernames of suspected scammers. You can use the message functions of this forum to do so.  Willnewton is the best among the admin team at finding fishy users and how to ban them from the site. Our administrator tools are fairly powerful and we have had fairly good success. Let us do our thing as far as the forum goes. The purpose of this thread is to encourage users to let us know when something seems fishy. We can't dig into every user's IP address profile and background. We need your help to direct our attention to the suspected scammers.

If you want to go Wyatt Earp/Doc Holladay on somebody in Nigeria who tricked you into flying to Detroit and Sacramento because of their VPNs, knock yourself out. But before you file your flight plans, drop a note with the suspected username and a few details to willnewton so we can make it impossible for the scammer to dupe anybody else.

Effectively seeking redress against scammers who may be on a different continent is difficult to impossible at best. Spreading information as sort of an inoculation was and is my primary goal.
I think posting publicly is the only way to ensure the information is spread without editing. Under federal law the forum host has no responsibility to moderate content.

Hey flyer898, it is not going to do much good as the scammer is switching names and phone numbers with each new userid, unless you have more info to add since your relationship with the scammer did go further than others here.

As fas as the comment on moderating content, it stands this way.  

We are a privately owned forum and we can and do moderate our content as necessary to keep our site focused on Bullseye shooting.  We moderate content at the request of users that wish their own topics or posts modified.  We also appreciate users behaving politely overall and do not allow personal attacks or discussions to devolve into shouting matches.  I am sure there are a few other reasons here and there that may cause for adjustments, but we try to be very very infrequent and open about moderation “of consequence”.  Thankfully, Bullseye shooters tend to have their heads screwed on better than most and we have a good time learning and teaching, with little supervision needed.

That is precisely why I have started this topic to get it out in the open.  We are working on it, but what has helped most is our community.   This scammer is now hitting the same folks over again with a newly created userid, name of a “friend of his you need to call”, and a phone number.  This is very similar to Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace scamming.  Thanks to our forum members, this guy now has a userid measured in hours, not weeks.  Inoculation indeed flyer898, is our methodology as well.

I hope they are reading this and realize our community is too small, tightly knit, and willing to help each other to be worth the effort.

The scammer switched names when it came around for a second shot at me. However, the MO is the same as is the contact number. I reported the attempt within minutes and within a very short time (possibly a few hours) the forum blocked the scammer's latest account.
For other users' eddification, I am posting the pm sent to me in the attempt yesterday to scam again. I generally do not have much contact on FaceBook marketplace or craigslist.
"LEFT-HAND HERRETT NATIONAL GRIPS FOR EARLY RUGER AUT

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From Jekings021 To flyer898, Yesterday at 11:11 am
I purchased some items from Aristant some days ago and  Left-Hand Herrett National Grips for early Ruger Aut is among the items he showed me that he wanted to part out with. Maybe you should text him to know if it is still available.. Here's his number [url=tel-306-3748]346-306-3748[/url]"