I almost got scammed today. As I stated in my previous post, I recently put a few of my unused domain names up for sale. A chap claiming to be the CEO of some company emailed me today enquiring about one of them and asking me to state my asking price.

Shortly after I responded to him, the man came back with what initially seemed like a promising response. First he commented that domains were now big business, linking to a post about porn.com’s recent sale for $9.5m. He said that my asking price seemed OK but that he would like me to have an independent appraisal done so as to confirm that he wouldn’t be paying too much.

He then did something that seemed weird, which I guess precipitated my sense of unease. He said he didn’t want an appraisal from just any old site and he included me a link to some date-less forum thread which he claimed to have started in order to find out what the best sites for appraisals were. What was strange about the thread was that it amounted to a sales pitch for just one site - even though this was carefully disguised and I am actually proud of myself for smelling a rat. It is easy to see how many people might have been fooled though. The thread also rubbished other more popular and cheaper appraisal sites, condemning them for being cheap and therefore offering low value.

Finally, in his email to me, the guy asked how I would like to receive payment once everything was sorted out. If you think about it, the chap’s email to me was actually quite clever. First he whets my appetite with the porn.com story - the hook. Then comes the disguised pitch and finally the talk of payment to keep me motivated.

Anyway, my naturally suspicious mind caused me to check out (google) the site that was being touted on the fabricated forum thread. This led me to the following link where someone reported being scammed in exactly the same way as this guy was attempting to scam me. The name used was different of course but the M.O was unmistakable.

So what’s the moral of this story? Always look up a company before you enter into any dealings with them. This may seem obvious but I am sure not everyone does it.

Update - check out this idea for stopping scams like this.