Martins Cole - Martinsoffshore Attempted Credit Card Fraud with bogus needs of my small Interior Design business. Wanted me to purchase art for him using a stolen credit card number. Tacoma Internet

I was contact through my business email address with a request for design Services. Said he was with his offshore drill team at the time but he and his family would be moving to my state from the UK in December. He had already purchased a home that needed complete furnishings and had a budget of $150,00-$165,000, and do I accept Credit Cards. All emails had many gramical and spelling errors and used many British terms.

In the 2nd lengthy email, he still would not give an address or city of his new home only that his real estate agent (a good friend) would be contacting me soon. In the mean time this friend was attempting to purchase art for him and the art was being shipped to my company address. However, the art company didn't accept Credit Cards so I was to charge his credit card (that he was going to give me) $16,000, send $8000 to this art company, keep $2000 as my fee and keep the remainder $6000 as a down payment for my Design services.

My son works for Microsoft in the criminal/fraud dept. I sent him the first email I received and he was able to back track through emails and servers to see the original email was sent from a server in California using 2 different email addresses and then CC'd to my company email address. The email I replied to was a 3rd email address. So we new it had to be a scam and waited for the final scam email!!

Gayle
Tacoma, Washington
U.S.A.