I got a scam email that used nearly perfect English and grammar!

[wurm]

I won't say I nearly fell for it, but I'll admit I did reply. The timing was perfect.

I've been casually thinking of selling an extra domain name I own, so I've had a "This site is for sale" page on the site itself for a few weeks. Well last night I got an email that expressed interest. Like I said, the only reason the email passed the smell test at first is because it was very well written*.

Well, to make a long story short, my second reply (after 'yes, I'll entertain offers") was in response to a request for "certification, blah blah blah, Trademark, blah blah, blah" and a link to a place where I could get the appraisal, blah, blah, blah. My reply was basically, "Yeah, I'll sell the domain, but I'm not putting up any money." While waiting for his reply, I enlisted Google and did a search for "domain broker scam". Ha! Pretty much verbatim to what I received. I replied with a simple "I guess you'll have to try someone else" and a link to the search results. But I could definitely see someone falling for it.

* Then again, I guess I should have immediately dismissed it when he started tossing around his "client"'s budget of $15,000 - $20,000.

[Speedy]

Suggest that you will only accept a cashiers check. It will cost them money to mail it. You can have it sent to any PO box anywhere.

[S. Pupp]

Nearly perfect spelling and grammar is a bad development, and is going to make it incredibly difficult to avoid scams in the future.

[mikebw]

S. Pupp wrote:
Nearly perfect spelling and grammar is a bad development, and is going to make it incredibly difficult to avoid scams in the future.

Yes, this is (was?) probably the single most effective method of filtering out the scams.

[freeradical]

I just assume that any email I get out of the blue is a scam.