About a year ago I wrote of a MacBook Pro scam on Craigslist that was showing up in various cities around the United States. To this day, I’ve gotten over 250 comments on that particular post from concerned consumers who had either stopped themselves before sending their money or already gotten scammed.

Unfortunately, I’m assuming Craigslist hasn’t found a resolve for this problem, as the scammers are still at it! Here is the original email I received after inquiring about this dirt cheap MacBook Pro:

Selling a slightly used 15.4″ Macbook Pro. I’m asking for $680/obo but please do not lowball me, I am in no hurry to sell this machine. I use it only for word processing and internet use, so I don’t need such a powerful laptop. Here are the specs:

-15.4″ Macbook Pro
-2.16 Ghz Core 2 Duo Processor
-2 Gigs Ram
-100 Gig HD
-Superdrive DVD+-RW Drive
-Airport Extreme
-Axio Hardsleeve

Preloaded with
-Adobe Creative Suite CS3
-Microsoft Office 2008
-Mac OSX Leopard 10.5
-Final Cut Pro Studio

Naturally, I emailed the seller asking them to call me to discuss the product. I wasn’t about to get screwed! Linda, which I know isn’t his/her name, emailed me back, completely avoiding the fact that I asked her to call me. She told me she lives in the UK now and will ship through a company called TNT. She told me the company was comparable to FedEx and UPS and gave me this link:

http://cargoexpresstnt.com/about.tnt/index/details.html

The scammer/scammers are going by several different names including:  Linda Hamilton, Lisa Carter, Megan Sneddon, Dennis, Ryan McCoy, Warren Caldwell, Andrew Lonegan, Jenny, Steven Lewis, Andrew Hogan, Linda Cullison, Amy Benson, Thomas Haley, Kyle Mosson, David Summers, Warren Duggan, Bradley Henderson, Sean Barry, Martin Macy, Thomas Hardie, Ashley Arsh, Amelia McGuire, Roger Matt, Lucya Matt, Carl Nichols, Amanda, Brave Taraza, and more.

It also looks as though they are expanding to different products and not just MacBook Pro’s. According to several comments, a lot of people are getting their local law enforcement involved. For all the other comments and responses go to:

 http://chrisclemons.com/blog/index.php/2008/macbook-pro-scam-on-craigslist/

I will continue to post about this scam. If you run into any of this on Craigslist, post as much info as possible here in a comment.

Moral of this story is: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.