Erik Welsh Classified Ad Scammer Internet

Watch out for these classified scammers. I am selling a boat, and "Erik" pretended to be interested in buying. He said he was from England, but he wrote in broken english. He made an offer and said he was sending a deposit and extra that I would use to pay for an inspection and shipping or something. Anyway, I looked him up on Google and found 3-4 people in the boating/marine forums that had dealt with him too. I saw his correspondance with these other boat sellers. His wording is nearly identical to what he wrote to me.

These are examples of what he says:

xxxxxx
I would like to inform you that the check will be mailed out to you and I will need you to notify me once you do receives it for further proceedings
Thanks
Erik


xxxxxx
Thanks for getting back to me. I will offer you $60,000 for it and i will like to inform you that i will be having our local transporters to come to your location for a test drive process on the boat and moreover I will have to make a down payment to you so as to make you reserve the boat for me for not getting it sold to other interested buyer's till the test drive and the sale will be done as it would take time to get all of that done
 
I will make a down payment of $4000 and also I will include the test drive fees which will cost for $3000 and mind you I want the payment made out to you by check and also as soon as the funds of $7000 have been cleared into your account I will like you to have the boat ready for the test drive process and also you will make the remaining funds of $3000 payable to the transporters to cover for the inspection/test drive fees and all other expenses during inspection
 
I will be looking forward for proceedings to you and also get back to me with the full names, mailing address and phone number the check can be made payable to you
 
I will be looking forward to hear from you
Regards
Erik