[hikerduane]

Over on Coleman Collectors Forum, scams where a member is wanting to buy something gets a PM from someone who says their friend has the item and to email their friend. All a scam, done by recently opened accounts. I just got a message from a member here regarding my wanting a white MSR pump, they gave me a person who had some for sale. After contacting the third party, showing them in a second email what I wanted, said they had some and sent me photos of pumps I owned and had posted on another stove forum. Just a heads up. Duane PS: Message from this member to start it all. benworthy058

[Waterman]

Thanks for the heads up. I'm looking for tents.This same individual directed me to the following email address; bandbadgers@gmail.com. supposedly for Route Loser who has the tent I want. Route Loser is collateral damage here as his name is being high jacked. Will be contacting him next. I posted that I'm looking for Hilleberg tents. So yeah, scammer.

[hikerduane]

That's who I was told to contact. Duane

[Route Loser]

Hey Waterman, thanks for the PM. Sounds like I'm just an active username that was picked at random to lend the scam legitimacy, yes? You weren't messaged from my account somehow? That's definitely not my email, and I'm not selling any items online.

[bccarlso]

Thanks, yup I was also told you were selling tents by user benworthy058, got some pics of a TT double rainbow and asked him to send a pic of my address next to the tent and haven't heard back from him yet, though that was just 30 mins ago. Glad I did some more search here too.

[Tom]

The scammer's account was disabled a few days ago. As always be very wary of doing transactions with anyone but established members. I recently sold something on FB marketplace and was surprised how quickly scammers tried to lure me. Within minutes of listing I had a message from a lady wanting to purchase and asked me to text their husband. Husband responded to my text that he texted me a verification code to prove I was legit. Of course all a scam to dupe me to giving them a verification code to access a google voice account, which I assume was a way to then get access to other accounts.

[sunwildernesshike]

Oh man, I hear ya, it's such a bummer when scammers try to take advantage of forums like ours. Thanks for the heads-up though. In general, I've found it's a good practice to try and do a bit of verifications of sorts on unfamiliar contacts before dealing with them, especially if the deal seems too good to be true. Since we're talking about scams, I came across this site a while back: https://florida.recordspage.org/. I’ve used it to check up on people locally (legally). It's not foolproof, but it’s been useful in weeding out a few questionable characters. Although, it only covers Florida, but it's still a good starting point especially that I also deal with lots of trading. Better safe than sorry!