Check Fraud Scams

December 2002:
A very serious matter has come to our attention and we feel it is our duty to inform our users regarding any type of large-scale fraudulent activity that may be taking place related to the horse industry. We strongly believe in educating everyone to create an environment that is beneficial to both the buyer and the seller.

We are doing our best to intercept, record, and report contacts of this nature here on DreamHorse.com while protecting your email address from public display. We hope you will read this warning because you may have horses for sale on other sites that do not take these measures.

People selling horses are receiving buyer inquiries from a third party regarding the purchase of a horse from a potential buyer in Nigeria, Africa, London, Hong Kong, AND OTHERS. This inquiry commonly attempts to arrange the purchase of the horse with a cashiers check covering the price of the horse and shipping. After the horse has been shipped, they commonly ask you to refund the shipping charges as part of a finders fee arrangement. They may also send you a check larger than the purchase price and ask for a refund of the difference.

Unfortunately, the CASHIER'S CHECK IS COUNTERFEIT. This fact is not uncovered until the horse and/or your own money (the difference in the check they send to their victims and the lower sales price of the horse) have been forwarded to the scam artists.

This scam may take various forms including purchasing frozen semen, tack, equipment, using WIRE TRANSFERS, even scammers posing as SELLERS on our sites, etc. but all of the emails we have seen have various similarities including misspellings, bad English, foreign countries, and making offers for a client or other third party.

On DreamHorse, we are doing our best to block reported scammers and you can see the latest examples of scammer emails that our users have reported to us so you can learn to easily recognize a scammer.

Unscrupulous Horse Traders

Aside from the check-fraud scams, there are fraudulent horse traders in this world who make their living making money from unsuspecting horse buyers who do not take the time to check all the facts before purchasing a horse. PLEASE do ALL your homework before buying any horse. Here is one site where you can check for unscrupulous dealers:

Horse Trader Category

Fake Buyer Protection Programs

There are all kinds of scams in this world which apply to the horse industry just like any other industry. One of these is a FRAUDULENT BUYER PROTECTION SITES. We are NOT affiliated with any "eBay Purchase Protection Program involving Money Grams" or "TackTrader Buyer Protection Program" escrow service in any way. We have also seen an insurance deposit fund scam using a spoofed TackTrader return email address to make it look official. TackTrader does NOT have any kind of deposit insurance on payments and any messages received of this nature are completely fraudulent.

Reporting Fraud

Internet Crime Complaint Center

For U.S. complaints use the Federal Trade Commission Consumer Complaint Form.

For Canadian Complaints contact the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Report to RipoffReport.com.

Reporting to DreamHorse: If you have received a scammer-response through a DreamHorse ad response, please login to My DreamHorse. Click the button labeled Show Ad Responses for the appropriate horse. There is a button next to each recorded Ad Response to submit a fraud report to DreamHorse. This will record the email address and IP address used on your ad response in our database of scammers and will block them from sending future responses through our site. (This does not stop them from responding to you directly if you have already responded to them so that they already HAVE your email address.)

Reporting to Scammer's Email Provider: We have noticed that most of these scams are coming from free web-based email accounts. You can usually report this scam to the email provider by send a copy of the scam email to abuse@[EMAIL-DOMAIN-NAME].com for the email address that is being used by the scammer and the provider may close the account. It may help to visit the website of the email provider by going to www.[EMAIL-DOMAIN-NAME].com where you can look up their abuse policies.

Guidelines

To help you in recognizing these types of scams, we have provided below a list of indicators. They are only guidelines, and as always, should be tempered with common sense.

- Big Promises

Claims such as offering more money than the asking price without an initial conversation regarding the horse are almost always a sure sign of a scam. Be careful of any individual who wants to send you more than your asking price.

- Cashiers Cheque (note spelling) for MORE than Your Asking Price

They will send you a (COUNTERFEIT) cashiers check or certified check (usually spelled cheque) and ask you to send the difference to them or their shipper by wire transfer or Western Union.

- High Pressure Tactics

Be wary of individuals asking you to speed up the transaction beyond your comfort range. Again, a legitimate deal probably isn\'t going to move as fast as your money. Don\'t let yourself be pressured -- think things through.

- Requests for financial information.

Don't give out any bank information without establishing a comfort level with the buyer or seller.

- Always get something in writing.

You should never complete a transaction without first writing down the terms of the deal and have each party sign it. If you can't afford a lawyer to draft up a contract, you still should write down the terms of the deal in plain English and get it signed. Any buyer or seller that is hesitant or resists is usually a sure sign of a potential problem.

- Remember the old saying, "If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is."

From Our Knowledgebase:
What Are Your Recommendations for Horse Sellers?"