btw, the domain of mine that she's speaking about here is my daejavoo.com domain.Dear Site Owner,
I am contacting you today in reference to a proposal for your website from one of my biggest clients. My client is a major entertainment website developer that is looking to expand their online presence by purchasing promotional ad space on select websites. Your website has been selected as a target for this advertising purchase, which will promote one of my client’s top online gaming websites. The advertisements will be in the form of simple text copy (no pictures or banners).
Please let me know at your earliest convenience if you’re interested in receiving more information about my client’s offer to you.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you and best regards,
Lisa Jones
My reply:
Her reply:Hi Lisa,
Please give me more details. Who's the client? And please forward me the actual ads so that I can have a look.
Furthermore, what kind of compensation can I expect?
Regards,
blah blah blah...
Note, her email address - joneslisaadvertisment@gmail.comGood afternoon,
We are happy to hear from you. As per my prior email, my client is interested in purchasing text-based ad space on your website to promote one of their dish network websites. I believe that you’ll find their proposal to be mutually beneficial. The details are included for your review below.
My client would like to purchase advertising space consisting of 3 small text blocks of ad copy that contain 2-4 sentences and 2-4 links each. One ad block would be placed on each of three different sub-pages of your website. In exchange for this ad space, we are offering payment in the amount of $120 per year. Payment would be made via Paypal or Neteller within three business days of reaching a finalized agreement.
Further, if you own or operate other websites, we would be interested in reviewing them to see if they fit our criteria. After review, if they are approved, we would like to purchase additional ad space on these sites on a ‘links per portal’ basis.
I hope that you are interested in our proposal and that we are able to move forward with finalizing an agreement
Now, in my mind, this just felt like a scam, but I hadn't come across this one before, or even read about it. Furthermore, I didn't see how I would get screwed. Nevertheless, I did a quick google, and this is how it all goes down:
I've got to admit, this is definitely one of the smarter 419s out there. Anyone else received this?In reality, the supposed enquiries are just rather clever variations of the long-running overpayment scam. If a website owner falls for the ruse by replying with advertising rates, the scammer will ostensibly "agree" to the price and send a cheque. However, the cheque will be for considerably more than the agreed price. The scammer will claim that the extra amount is to cover some third party debt and ask that the victim electronically wire the excess funds to a specified address. Alternatively, the scammer may claim that the overpayment was accidental and request that the victim wire the excess amount back to him as soon as possible.
Unfortunately for the victim, although the cheque may seemingly clear, the bank will later discover that it was stolen. By then the victim may have wired off the excess funds to the criminals responsible. The scheme is a method of laundering the proceeds of crime and will ultimately leave the victim out of pocket and possibly in legal trouble for receiving stolen cheques.