Articles by Trench Reynolds

Conn. women accused of using Web to solicit sexSeptember 30, 2008:

Police in Manchester, CT arrested five in a craigslist hooker sting.

Arrested were 28-year-old Heather Bolling, 23-year-old Monica Collins-Saatci, 24-year-old Terri Henderson, 21-year-old Elna Marcano, and 20-year-old Krystal Cardello.

Same ‘ol.

Everett man gets 26-year prison term for pimping:

Do you remember Washington state pimp Jerome Todd? He was the one who was pimping out women on craigslist so he could pay child support to 13 Children by 8 different mothers if my memory serves me correct.

Now he’s got 3 more dependents. A judge ordered him to pay $70K to the three women he was pimping out. Plus a pesky 26 years behind bars.

Pleasantville man found guilty of prostituting underage teen girls from Allentown, Pa. in Atlantic City:

27-year-old Kevin R. Mayfield of Pleasantville, NJ was convicted yesterday of pimping out minor girls on craigslist in Atlantic City.

Mayfield also took nude pictures of the girls to use on the craigslist ad.

Mayfield’s cohort was 25-year-old Casson L. Coward who pleaded guilty back in 2007 and was sentenced to 10 years for his part.

Again I say who says there’s no victims? Are two underage girls not victims enough for you?

Have you ever heard of the Cameroon puppy scam? It’s like the Nigerian 419 scam but the scammers are usually advertising pure bred puppies for sale and sometimes free, with a massive shipping fee. They ask you to wire the money to Cameroon and then of course you don’t get the puppy because there was no puppy to begin with.

It seems that the Cameroon..ians? Cammeroonites? Kirk Cammerons? Anyway the scammers from Cameroon have graduated from puppies to babies.

Reader and anti-scam advocate Trish found the following ads on Hallo London, a free classified site in London, England.

A BOY AND A BABY GIRL FOR ADOPTION IN NYC

I have a boy and a baby girl for adoption.please help me I have no means to take care of these children.I want to give out these my two babies for adoption.I want them to go to good and loving homes as soon as possible.I can not afford to take care of them.Any body who is interested in adopting them should kindly help me as soon as possible. details,contact

Thank you

And that ad lists a cell phone number in Cameroon.

LOVELY CHILDREN SEEKING A NEW HOME

We like to tell you that if you are looking to get a child we have some that we want to give out to any families that are interested in get a child if you one of those then get back to us.

That sounds just like one of the puppy ads except with the word child instead of puppy.

Trish requested that Hallo London take down the ads since they are obvious scams but received no response.

First off I’m disgusted by these particular adoption scams because they are preying on people who can’t have children of their own. Secondly I was adopted so I take offense to anything that gives adoption another black eye such as these scams. Adoption processes already have enough headaches without having to worry about scammers. Lastly anybody who is going through a craigslist knock off to find a child to adopt is obviously looking in the wrong place.

I got the following e-mail from Christa who was looking for an apartment on carigslist…

I’m 20 years old and this is the first time I began searching for apartments. When I saw an ad that looked too good to be true- I hesitated but gave the guy the benefit of the doubt and emailed him. This was his exact response:

“Hello. We are so much excited. My name is Mcgrath Garrett the owner of the apartment and also want you to know that it was due to my transfer that makes me and my wife and little daughter to leave the apartment and also want to give it out for rent and looking for a responsible person that can take very good care of it while we are not at the state as we are not after the money for the rent but want it to be clean at the time and the person that will rent it to take it as if it were its own. So for now, we are here in West Africa, our new house and put all my worries off concerning the maintenance of the apartment for, since i am not residing there for now. I left behind some Facilities and electonics which include the rent, DVD player, air conditioning, alarm system. The kitchen is fully equipped with all necessary cooking utensils, refrigerator-freezer, four-hob and oven, microwave, dishwasher and washing machine, my computer connected with Internet access also the keys and document of the apartment are right here with us in West Africa, and the lease document. Which i can send to you after all necessary agreement has been accepted. Also i will like you to know that the rent charges is not really the issue, hope you are okay with the price of $900 per month including utilities like hydro, water, gas, heat laundry facilities, air condition and so on, but your absolute maintenance of my apartment is most important thing, if you are really interested in renting this apartment get back to me so that i can forward you an application form for you to fill so that i can start all necesary arrangement asap.

Here is the apartment address : (California address)
…. Pls note that you will be viewing the apartment from outside only and 100 % sure that you would love to stay in the place because it is locatedin a very cool, quiet and safe neigbourhood. There was a man who want to rent my apartment his name was Mr Daniel called me about the apartment, i told him that I can’t give him the apartment because he loves smoking, drinking and dont want him to get drunked and damaged my property one day so If you are still interested, no extra fees. I will like you to give me a call at (foreign number) or (other foreign number) on this effect to know how serious you are. I personally will actually come visiting you sometimes during the year as our new tenant. Looking forward to hear from you with all this details so that i can have it in my file in case of issueing the receipt for you and contacting you. Awaiting your reply so that we can discuss on how to get the document and the keys of the apartment to you. “

I soon googled the e-mail and the only response was for a rental fraud website. I want to make sure this story gets posted because it might help a stupid person from making an even more stupid decision of sending money.

Thanks for your time

Thank you Christa for sending this in. It gives one more fake scammer name to post.

I received the following from e-mail from Paula after she read about one of the many tutor scams…

I just read about one of your readers who was almost a victim of a tutor scam. I’m a student at (a California university) and was looking for a tutoring job. I came upon this job that looked wonderful. A woman wanted an English tutor for her 7 year old son from the Philippines, and she was willing to pay $80 per hour. My instincts told me that was way to high for a tutor, but I kept thinking maybe she is just really serious about her son learning English. She said she would pay me for the first two weeks. She would send me a money order for over $2000 by UPS and then have me wire the difference to the boy’s nanny. This was fishy and I was starting to worry because I sent my name, address and phone number to her. So I went online and looked up “tutor scams” and found the exact copy of the email “Mrs.Mary Phillips” had sent me. I sent her an email back saying I will not cash the check until I meet with her and her son fact to face. I’ll wait and see what happens. I’m glad that I listened to my guts. I hope others will, too.

The more people that send it in will the more people that hear about it. Thank you Paula.

And in case you’re caught in the middle of one of these scams and you’ve already given out your info I highly recommend calling your credit bureau and let them know that you may be an identity theft victim.

Deputies find stolen hard drives for sale on Craigslist:

Sacramento police were alerted to some 250GB hard drives being stolen. Police decided to look on craigslist and lo and behold there were some 250GB hard drives sale marked ‘first com first served’.

Police arrested 21-year-old Eduardo Quiroz who was selling the hard drives. Also arrested were Edgar Hoffman, 45, and Lynda Hoffman, 41.

Stalking charges may follow Internet postings:

If you ever wanted to know what a stalker looks like they kind of look like that.

That’s 38-year-old William Baldwin of Atwater, California. He’s under investigation for stalking after posting on craigslist intimate details of the life of a woman whose family Baldwin used to work for.

He claims he did it because he was bi-polar and off his meds. Here’s a thought, stay on your meds.

I wonder why these ads weren’t flagged by craigslist’s alleged self-policing community?

Durham Police Arrest 24 In Prostitution & Drug Stings:

Police In Durham, NC have arrested 10 in a craigslist hooker sting. The 10 included johns and hookers.

The drug sting did not involve craigslist.

Dragged To Jail:

This is awesome just for the mugshot alone.

39-year-old Peter Abramczyk of Connecticut was busted by the Concord, NH police for being a craigslist hooker. In his ad Abramczyk claimed to be a ‘passable crossdresser’. You couldn’t tell by looking at the mugshot.

The Smoking Gun even has his craigslist ad. 6′ and 160 lbs. does not constitute passable.

I got this e-mail from reader Lee who almost got taken by the fake check/tutor scam…

Here’s another incident to add to the list.

Over the past couple of weeks I was in touch with someone claiming to be an Italian business person who was sending a son here to learn better English and needed a tutor.

The odd twist here is that after the check arrived I was to send the remainder of the large amount to a person, who it turned out to be was a real person.

He/she gave me a name and address, so I looked her up on the Internet and called. She felt comfortable calling me back. It turns out that nearly the same thing happened to her recently, but the fake check was identified by her bank.

My question is…how were they going to get the money if she is a real person?

Odd…but I checked it out and now have a souvenir of how gullible I can be…yet I didn’t have to pay the heavy cost of the lesson that might have been.

Thank you,

Lee

It sounds like someone in Nigeria slipped up on how the scam works. Lucky for you their stupidity was your gain. And I wouldn’t say you were completely gullible. You actually stopped before cashing that check.

Two plead guilty to renting foreclosed homes they didn’t own:

At least some of the craigslist scammers face justice.

For example take Alexander Braslavsky, 34, and Anthony Patrick Marshall, 38, of Orange County, California. Even though one of them has a legitimate real estate license that didn’t stop them from renting out houses to people even though they didn’t own the house.

They took it to the next level with one victim though. After 44-year-old Linda Smith gave them $4500 for for a deposit and first and last month’s rent they gave her keys that actually worked for the house. When she tried to get the utilities turned on she found out that the scammers didn’t own the house.

The pair pleaded guilty yesterday to felony grand theft. They’ve been ordered to pay the money back to the victims and could spend only 90 days in jail.

Ex-Pa. radio host pleads guilty in NYC:

Former radio host Bruce Bond pleaded guilty yesterday to second-degree grand larceny, identity theft and possession of forgery devices. Bond was part of an elaborate fake check scam that would prey upon people looking for jobs they could do at home on craigslist. He would send them the bogus checks and have the victims cash them, have them keep ‘10%’ then wire the rest to his buddies in Nigeria.

It’s alleged he bilked people and companies out of $4.3M.

Hopefully he’ll be sitting in cell #419.

Detectives: Prostitutes Paid Man to Post Ads on “Craigslist”:

58 year-old Henry Gardner of East Memphis, TN was arrested for posting ads on craigslist for various hookers in the area. Gardner was paid $50 a day by the hookers to post their ads to craigslist. Gardner has previous charges of promoting prostitution. And a crackhead was in his motel room.

Stay Classy Henry.

7 arrests in sex sting:

Police in Henderson County, Tennessee arrested 7 in a craigslist hooker bust.

Those arrested include Vanessa McClain, 30; Amber McKenzie, 29; Keosha Jones, 21, and Shelatta Young, 22, all of Jackson. The women will be arraigned Sept. 30 in Henderson County General Sessions Court.

Also arrested were Donta Givans, 25, and Destiny Thomas, 21, of Memphis, and Teresa Blackburn, 38, of Lexington, according to the sheriff’s department. Those women also will appear in General Sessions Court on Sept. 30.

Take a look at their mugshots. Whatever they were charging it was too much.