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Yeah, so am I, thanks for posting this in an easy to find place. It bothers me alot more than I thought it would that some scammer would use AskMe to refine his technique. And it was incredibly stupid of him to think he'd get away with it.
Actually, ubranwhaleshark, the scammee joined mefi after someone directed him to the askme thread.
I just can't believe that airnxtz thought that the mefi braintrust was smart enough to help him work the angles for his scam, but not smart enough to realize it was a scam.
cobra!, the "Hoyt Puppet Theatre", that's awesome. My brain is still struggling to wrap itself around that one.
The ebay scam is very interesting to follow, and not a heck of a lot seems to have changed with fraud departments in the six years since I worked in one in terms of responsiveness. It would be kind of nice if this could tip the balance in the victim/victims' favor.
For all of our collective gnashing of teeth regarding MeFi, it does facilitate some pretty incredible things.
I can't believe that airnxtz would be so daft. Not only did he use a highly popular online forum like AskMe to help his fraud business, he/she is silly enough to leave online fingerprints everywhere with his handle of choice.
D'oh! Advice for the budding crook: use different handles for your nefarious deeds. Use many throw away email accounts, not the same AOL account. Use an anonymizing proxy for the times when you are really dumb and attract the attention of a web site administrator.
And for Pete's sake, separate your online fraud business from your day to day online minutia!
Of course, if you could figure all this out, you wouldn't be a penny-ante crook.
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