Be careful who you respond to!

   My newest Stupid Craigslist Trick isn't a scam but is a very cheap and stupid trick I witnessed in the Ogden-Clearfield, Utah rants and raves section of Craigslist. It has gone on for a few weeks. First a lady was so upset about a guy named Marc who responded to her ad that she posted the picture he sent of her and started making fun of his looks in the rants and raves section. She mentioned how he said he was 5'2" and 165 lbs "as if he was proud of it." and said that maybe he should get a "cancerous" growth removed from the left side of his face and "lose at least 65 lbs". Later her ad was removed and she posted yet another ad telling Marc that he "better watch his back" because she was mad that he got her ad removed-of course her new ad appears to have been removed too. I doubt that it was even Marc who got her ads removed. Heck, others responded that they were upset with her posting his picture and making fun of him. If Marc did flag her ad as inappropriate, I imagine others did too. In fact, I believe I flagged her ad. A few days ago, Marc posted "Another Story of Cinderella" that was funny and made fun of the poster whose name was Mary. I contacted Marc asking if I can post his story on my blog since I liked the story so much. I was outraged that someone would post a person's name, photo and ridicule someone on a public forum and liked how Marc fought back. I contacted Mary for an explanation of why she did what she did and she just said that "Marc got what he deserved" and complained about what a burden she thinks short, overweight men like Marc are to the health care system. Marc Responded to me and said he doesn't mind if I post his rant on my blog so here is Marc's alternative version of Cinderella:

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Another Version of Cinderella (Ogden) by Marc

Mary always lived in a fantasy world where she always felt she was the modern day Cinderella and someday a Tall, Dark, Handsome, and wealthy prince will find her at the ball and sweep her off her feet and she will live happily ever after. She grew sick and tired of all the men she calls "trash" who are shorter than 5'8" and overweight and all short guys are ugly in her opinion. Even though Ogden isn't really considered a rich town, Mary wished there was some kind of ball where she can meet one of the richest men in Ogden. Luck had it, there was a ball in Ogden one night and even a prince when a prince rarely lives in Ogden of all places! Since there isn't a ferry godmother in this story, she used another form of magic to get an expensive dress and sexy shoes for the ball - a credit card.

During the ball, Mary met the rich prince who was really tall but he didn't seem too interested in her. As the clock struck 12 midnight, she left one of her shoes with an address card inside so the tall, rich prince wouldn't have difficulty finding her. He wouldn't even have to go around Ogden and have several ladies try on the shoe or find who has the other shoe. All he had to do was go to the address on the card she left inside her shoe to find his princess.

The next morning there was a knock on her door and her older sister who Mary lives with answered the door. Mary always considered her older sister to be fat and ugly. As her sister answered the door, she was surprised to see a tall, rich prince at the door with a shoe.

The tall, rich prince asked: "Did you lose a shoe at the ball last night?"

Mary's sister said: "No, I didn't go to the ball last night and my feet are too big to fit in that tiny shoe."

The tall, rich prince said: "That's a shame, you look beautiful and should have attended the ball. I'm not looking for who's feet this shoe will fit. What's your name?"

Mary's sister answered: "I'm Jennie"

the tall rich prince said: "Hi Jennie, You probably already know who I am. would you care to join me for dinner?"

Mary's sister answered: "I'd love to!"

The tall, rich prince said: "Great Jennie, now what should I do with the shoe?

Mary's sister asked: "How do you know whose shoe it is?

The tall, rich prince said: "Mary is known to leave a shoe at any ball with an address card in it hoping prince charming will look for her and sweep her off her feet like the fictional story Cinderella. I was going to just throw the shoe away but, it's a good thing I didn't or I wouldn't have met you Jennie.

Mary's sister asked: "You don't like my sister? I'm kind of surprised since she has always called me fat and ugly and she's attractive."

The tall, rich prince said: "Please don't take this as an offense but I think your sister is a bitch and beauty is only skin deep. I meet too many women like your sister who live in a fantasy land and feel entitled to a tall, dark, handsome, and rich guy like me just because they are "beautiful". Do you realize how many beautiful women I met last night at the ball who turned out to be rude? You can hide your flaws all you want but eventually your inner beauty shows through your makup, nice clothing, and fancy shoes. I'm not looking for a woman who likes me only because I am tall, dark, handsome, and rich. There's no guarantee I will be rich forever and I may not always be handsome so I am looking for someone who accepts me for who I am."

Instead of Mary being swept off her feet by a tall, dark, handsome, and rich prince her "fat, ugly" sister was swept off her feet and lived happily ever after while Mary slaved away trying to make enough money to pay off her credit card bill for the expensive clothes she bought just for the ball.

The moral of the story: Don't assume you are above everyone else you may be surprised to find out that you aren't as attractive as you think you are!
Mary, this is a message from Marc. The guy who you blasted and even posted a picture of here in the Rants and Raves section of the Criagslist Personals. Oh, I also am not the person who had your ad removed and have no idea who did.

P.S. Sorry for the long story everyone!

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   Don't worry Marc, You don't need to apologize for a long story. I think the person who should be apologizing for anything is Mary who posted your picture and other information. Your story made me laugh! I tried to capture Marc's story as it appeared but he had a lot of HTML formatting so tried to guess the tags he used to format his story. I added the Horizontal lines to separate his story from the rest of my blog. I thank Marc for allowing me to post his story and the details that Mary posted about Marc (that he is 5'2" and 165 lbs) and will not post Marc's Picture for privacy reasons.
   If the Frauds and Scams are enough to deal with on Craigslist, you have to be concerned that you may correspond with someone as cold and heartless as Mary who will post your Picture, Name, height/Weight, and ridicule you. Mary could have just stopped contacting Marc after losing interest in him but she decided to embarrass Marc in the Rants and Raves section of Craigslist. Be Careful who you respond to!

New scams regarding pictures and one of the common scams I forgot to mention last time

   Summer has gone by fast and is almost over but the craigslist scammers (and scammers to other sites like backpage) don't slow down for the Fall and Winter Months. In my last entry I covered the most common scams but there are a few scams that I missed. One is where a person responds to your ad with a photo of themselves and an email address, another where the person seeks your sympathy because they have a disability, and of course there are the porn site recruiters who like the dating site scams are trying to get you to join their porn site.

Picture with an email address
   In this scam the person includes a picture of themselves and a little note saying "If you are real, email me at ...". To the person who receives the response to their ad, they may think that this person found a clever way to avoid scammers and isn't a scam themselves. It turns out that they are a scam and will respond telling you to join a dating site or age verification site. It is interesting how far scammers will go just to get a response from you. Of course they are receiving a commission for every person they can sucker into joining the website scam that they represent and a lot of people know about their scams forcing them to change tactics. A personal friend of mine that I mentioned in my Craigslist Blacklist blog has been using craigslist and we are doing an experiment to see how many real responses he receives from an ad he placed on Craigslist. So far none of the responses have been legitimate people and he has shown me at least 2 responses to his craigslist ad by women who posted a photo of their chest (wearing lingerie) with a note saying that if he is a real person to email her at an email address. He responded to them and one of the ladies responded back asking questions about him and seemed interested. When he replied, his emails to her started bouncing (returned undeliverable by his email provider) and later she did the sales pitch where her email provider isn't reliable but there is a cool dating site that he can join for free (but will have to pay $9.95/month to be able to even talk to her according to the sites Terms of Service since a non-paying member must upgrade to a paying member to send messages to other members). The other lady was concerned he may be her ex-boyfriend or some stalker and wanted him to join a "free" adult verification site "just to be safe".

Using disabled people to seek sympathy
   Another scam that I have seen is a guy will respond to an ad for a male seeking female ad to ask if you can do him and his wife a favor. He mentions how because of a War Injury, Car Accident, etc he is in a wheelchair and unable to satisfy his wife. He mentions that his wife is drug and disease free and includes a picture of him in a wheelchair being pushed by his attractive wife. Don't worry, he assures he won't be home when you are with his wife since he has to work long hours. The only thing you need to do is join an adult verification site because he is looking out for the best interests of his wife who he so dearly loves.

Adult Website advertisers
   I forgot to mention one of the most common scams on craigslist and other online personal sites. In this scam a person will respond to your ad and after exchanging emails or chatting online he/she tries to get you to join a free adult porn site because they don't post pictures on a public site like craigslist. You also may respond to someones ad and after emailing and chatting be asked to join a free adult porn site to see pictures of him/her. It is always a waste of time to talk with someone who you would like to meet in person only to find out they have no plans to meet you in person, they are just selling a porn site and if you join, they get money for suckering you into joining.

   Three more of the scams you can expect to see on craigslist or other online personals site. Of course if you do find a "real person", you may find out he/she is a prostitute looking for clients. There's very little Craigslist or other sites can do about people who respond to your ad and sometimes they will remove an ad that is one of the many frauds out there but don't count on it. It's nearly impossible for them to follow up on every complaint which may include rival scams trying to get an ad from their rival removed.

The hilarious world of craigslist personal ad scams

   It is amazing how much fraud and scams appear on Craigslist and other sites such as Backpage and surprisingly neither of these sites seem to care. To be fair, there is little they can do about people who respond to ads but you would think they would remove ads that are scams. Here are the most common scams on craigslist and other sites, it's hilarious how these scams work. Sadly some have been suckered by these scams and these scams couldn't exist without someone being suckered by them.


Adult Verification/Background checks
   In this scam, a person responds to your ad or posts an ad and tells you that they are very concerned about who they meet online especially after the Craigslist Murder and "because there are a lot of perverts online". They ask you to join a "free verification site" where you must give out your credit card number for some odd reason as part of the verification process but you will find the real reason they need your credit card number if you read the terms of service and fine print closely or get suckered into joining. It is always a red flag when someone asks for your credit card number when you are not buying anything or what you are "buying" is free. You will be paying a certain amount per month for an "adult verification service" that is practically worthless if you do sign up. These sites usually are named something like safedate.com, meetsafer.com, etc. You probably have just as much of a chance meeting someone who is crazy at your local bar or even a church sponsored dance but for some reason these adult verification sites are everywhere on the Internet as if the Internet is the only place that is unsafe to meet people. How can these sites "verify" your age, "verify" your marital status, or determine if you are a not sexual predator with only your credit card number and address information? You can buy a pre-paid credit card at Wal-Mart when you are under 18 and sex offenders aren't barred from obtaining a credit card from a bank. Imagine introducing yourself to some woman who says she doesn't trust you and tells you before she will even talk to you, you need to get verified to prove you are not under 18, you're not married, and you are not a sex offender. Wouldn't you be offended? If not, wouldn't you think she was a little nutty to be so paranoid? The whole idea of a verification site is ridiculous. If someone is so paranoid that they demand someone go to a verification site to prove that they are 18 years old or older, unmarried, and not a sex offender then they must be crazy or not a real person? If they are so concerned about meeting perverts on the Internet, maybe they should stick to meeting people offline? What happens if you are a member of one verification site but the person who responds to your ad requests that you join some other verification site? You would have to join thousands of verification sites since these women won't accept the verification from another site.


Other variations of the Dating Site recruitment scam
   Everybody has heard of the traditional dating site recruitment scam right? A person places an ad or responds to an ad but tells you that they don't usually read their emails and to join a dating site that is "free" instead because they check messages on this dating site more often. This trick is so old that the ones who conduct this scam have been forced to change their tactics. There are new variations to this old scheme. In one scheme the person sends you an email but when you respond, your response bounces (is returned undeliverable) and they finally tell you that their mailbox keeps filling up with spam, an ex-boyfriend keeps deleting emails, etc and to join a dating site in order to talk to them since their email is so unreliable or they are having problems with an ex getting into their email account. These stories are hilarious. If they have an ex who keeps getting into their email account, why don't they change their password or get another account? If their mailbox keeps filling up with spam, then it's time to find another email provider! All the major email providers (Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc) have spam filters and enough storage space that even if their filter failed, your mailbox most likely won't fill up with spam unless you don't check your email often. Some email providers virtually have unlimited storage space. Another scheme is to post a picture of themselves without their face showing and tell you that they are uncomfortable showing their face because friends may recognize them (even though the photo of them is usually them half naked and friends could recognize them by tattoos or other features such as birthmarks). Why are these ladies willing to publicly share a photo of them posing in lingerie, topless, or even nude but too shy to show their face? This defies logic! There is also the reverse version of this scheme too where they will send some poor quality photo, a photo of themselves dressed modestly and to see better photos, you need to join a dating site where they have an account. In yet another scheme they will ask you to join a site to see their photo. Imagine joining a site only to find that she isn't that great looking or she isn't even a real person.


"Join a site to obtain my phone number"
   This is the newest scam that has shown up on sites like craigslist. This scam is similar to the verification or date site recruitment scams. A person (actually a bot like most of the scams) posts an ad or responds to an ad but mentions that they are uncomfortable giving out their phone number to just anyone. You need to go to a "free" site to obtain a verification code and log in to the site in order to get her phone number. The person is willing to send a photo of themselves half-naked but not comfortable sharing a phone number with just anyone because "there are a lot of perverts out there". Hilarious! If they are so concerned, why not ask the guy for his phone number and dial *67 when they call him to block their caller ID information from appearing on his phone?


   I say this several times but let me say it again, the whole Internet dating thing is a scam. You join a dating site and can usually post a free profile but if you want to talk to someone, you must upgrade to a paid membership. If you do upgrade after receiving a message from someone, there is a good chance the person will lose interest in you after you commit to a recurring billing plan or may even be a fake person posting to free accounts to trick them into buying a paid membership that costs something like $9.95 a month or even more. I just don't see what is so great about Internet dating sites? Why is the Internet considered by so many people as a great place to meet people when posting an ad on Craigslist mostly gets responses from scams and dating sites are such a rip off? The money spent on a membership to a dating site can be better spent going to places to meet people offline.