kimsrk
Just a newbie
Posting for more visibility. I hope it doesn't break any rules...
Just here to call out a scammer on this forum and to remind people to be very, very vigilant, use all the tools at your fingertips before buying. The most important tool being your brain. I'll give you some insight to my thought process so that you can see my mistakes and how I got within 5 minutes of being out $400. So begins the story….
I have a wanted ad looking for an angled 60mm Fieldscope III, these are pretty hard to find so I think the first red flag was how quickly this person responded; within 24 hours. I checked the user's post history and although it was not extensive, it looked normal at first glance.
User LOC4 DM'd me instead of responding to the post (probably the second red flag):
"Hello Kimsrk, I’ve got a Nikon Fieldscope EDIII 60mm with 30x eyepiece i may consider parting it out. [email protected], Shoot me a message if interested."
Immediately moving the conversation off the forum and to a more private place. As a side note, in the information age it may not be exactly clear what someone wants from you. In this case it was likely just money, but in other circumstances they may be looking for PII. I am incredibly wary about giving out any personal information that could be used nefariously or just annoyingly against me. E.G. email address, names, or phone numbers, I have found it is best to keep those as tightly guarded as possible, at the very least to keep the spam away.
One other thing that got my attention was referring to me as "kimsrk" when I signed the post with my name. Not a very big one, but I have had to ward off plenty of lazy FB marketplace scammers that miss the details of how real interactions tend to unfold. I still wrote it off because,
A. I really wanted the scope
B. He sent pictures with a today’s date on a hand written note
“Hello Steve, Thanks for reaching out, I have a Nikon fieldscope EDIII-A 60mm with WA 30x eyepiece in excellent condition, I do love this scope, but I just don’t use it, and I’d like to get it into someone’s hands who will do more with it than store it to look at it every now and again, I'm asking $500 shipped, please let me know if you're interested in it. Thanks”
OoOoo, he got my name in there, great attention to detail, but I saw no major flags here, he even got in very nice appeal to pathos. The rest of the conversation was pretty straight forward, I unfortunately did pass my address to him which referring back to my earlier thoughts, I am not very happy with myself about and consider a bit of a failure on my part.
So he has my name and address and I’m about to get his Paypal info when my thinking brain finally got my attention and I decided that had to check these photos out a little more closely before I hit the send button. Of course, with hindsight the photo shop is pretty bad in at least one of the photos, but the others easily pass the quick-look check. Google’s reverse image search is an amazing tool you need to be familiar with if you already aren’t.
Do be too harsh on me….
This one is decent he was smart enough to include the shadow, but the lighting isn’t quite right, the glare in the green circle doesn’t make sense. The pink circle has some odd digital correction from the cropping. The yellow circle shadow should be more diffused and less sharp. The choice of background is odd too, it looks like bathroom floor tile that hasn't been touched in years.
It should be pretty clear this is the real photo and the same exact scope. The light source angle looks natural, and the shadow is diffused naturally
Another valiant attempt by our scammer. It strange that the background is weirdly similar, but hey, this guy is laying his dusted off scope on his disgusting bathroom floor to take pictures, so he has already established himself as kind of weird. He was smart enough to use a different perspective of the background, however the perspective makes it look like he’s 4 inches from the ground. Again you see the lack of diffused shadows you’d expect from indoor lighting sources that come from all directions. You also can see more digital errors from the cropping.
Again it should be clear, especially from the pattern in the blue circle that this is without a doubt the same scope photoshopped to a dumb background (in the previous photo).
This the most obvious, terrible, joke of a Photoshop but it won’t go without some praise. The note with his user name is pretty cute, but once again, is he actually laying his scope on the filthy floor again for photos? Why? Also that piece of paper is somehow huge and small at the same time, with first grader spacing between the lines?? My favorite slip up here is the red circle. That is a piece of the background from the original photo he accidentally left in from the crop. The perspective also makes no sense and the shadows are weirdly razor thin compared to the last photos with what you would assume is the same lighting source. He also got the perspective so wrong it look like its floating…Lol. What a clown. But I still hadn’t noticed any of this yet!
And another original that looks correct. Red circle to show one of his many slip-ups.
I’ll give him a D for effort over all. It's a bit like he attended the class but then put in the laziest pathetic effort he could have for the homework. He scaled parts of the photo to be slightly different than the originals, he tried to add shadows, and a hand written note. If i'm being completely honest, he did almost succeed.
I know this topic comes up often and a lot of the information has been shared before, so I just saw this as an opportunity for me to remind myself and hopefully help remind others to remain vigilant.
To summarize:
1. Check the users post history, and be extra wary of anyone under 1 year.
2. Reverse image search immediately, don't wait. Use google's, it has always found duplicates for me if they exist.
3. Don't engage in the conversations unless all of your attention is available. Stay aware.
4. Look at my close call and please learn something from it, and ask me anything you want, if you want more info.
And to you buddy, Almost! but oh so so far.
I hope you are still lurking reading about your utter failure, thinking about how you poured hours into your silly little scam and it failed. You aren't good, at all. Just remember that.
Just here to call out a scammer on this forum and to remind people to be very, very vigilant, use all the tools at your fingertips before buying. The most important tool being your brain. I'll give you some insight to my thought process so that you can see my mistakes and how I got within 5 minutes of being out $400. So begins the story….
I have a wanted ad looking for an angled 60mm Fieldscope III, these are pretty hard to find so I think the first red flag was how quickly this person responded; within 24 hours. I checked the user's post history and although it was not extensive, it looked normal at first glance.
User LOC4 DM'd me instead of responding to the post (probably the second red flag):
"Hello Kimsrk, I’ve got a Nikon Fieldscope EDIII 60mm with 30x eyepiece i may consider parting it out. [email protected], Shoot me a message if interested."
Immediately moving the conversation off the forum and to a more private place. As a side note, in the information age it may not be exactly clear what someone wants from you. In this case it was likely just money, but in other circumstances they may be looking for PII. I am incredibly wary about giving out any personal information that could be used nefariously or just annoyingly against me. E.G. email address, names, or phone numbers, I have found it is best to keep those as tightly guarded as possible, at the very least to keep the spam away.
One other thing that got my attention was referring to me as "kimsrk" when I signed the post with my name. Not a very big one, but I have had to ward off plenty of lazy FB marketplace scammers that miss the details of how real interactions tend to unfold. I still wrote it off because,
A. I really wanted the scope
B. He sent pictures with a today’s date on a hand written note
“Hello Steve, Thanks for reaching out, I have a Nikon fieldscope EDIII-A 60mm with WA 30x eyepiece in excellent condition, I do love this scope, but I just don’t use it, and I’d like to get it into someone’s hands who will do more with it than store it to look at it every now and again, I'm asking $500 shipped, please let me know if you're interested in it. Thanks”
OoOoo, he got my name in there, great attention to detail, but I saw no major flags here, he even got in very nice appeal to pathos. The rest of the conversation was pretty straight forward, I unfortunately did pass my address to him which referring back to my earlier thoughts, I am not very happy with myself about and consider a bit of a failure on my part.
So he has my name and address and I’m about to get his Paypal info when my thinking brain finally got my attention and I decided that had to check these photos out a little more closely before I hit the send button. Of course, with hindsight the photo shop is pretty bad in at least one of the photos, but the others easily pass the quick-look check. Google’s reverse image search is an amazing tool you need to be familiar with if you already aren’t.
Do be too harsh on me….
This one is decent he was smart enough to include the shadow, but the lighting isn’t quite right, the glare in the green circle doesn’t make sense. The pink circle has some odd digital correction from the cropping. The yellow circle shadow should be more diffused and less sharp. The choice of background is odd too, it looks like bathroom floor tile that hasn't been touched in years.
It should be pretty clear this is the real photo and the same exact scope. The light source angle looks natural, and the shadow is diffused naturally
Another valiant attempt by our scammer. It strange that the background is weirdly similar, but hey, this guy is laying his dusted off scope on his disgusting bathroom floor to take pictures, so he has already established himself as kind of weird. He was smart enough to use a different perspective of the background, however the perspective makes it look like he’s 4 inches from the ground. Again you see the lack of diffused shadows you’d expect from indoor lighting sources that come from all directions. You also can see more digital errors from the cropping.
Again it should be clear, especially from the pattern in the blue circle that this is without a doubt the same scope photoshopped to a dumb background (in the previous photo).
This the most obvious, terrible, joke of a Photoshop but it won’t go without some praise. The note with his user name is pretty cute, but once again, is he actually laying his scope on the filthy floor again for photos? Why? Also that piece of paper is somehow huge and small at the same time, with first grader spacing between the lines?? My favorite slip up here is the red circle. That is a piece of the background from the original photo he accidentally left in from the crop. The perspective also makes no sense and the shadows are weirdly razor thin compared to the last photos with what you would assume is the same lighting source. He also got the perspective so wrong it look like its floating…Lol. What a clown. But I still hadn’t noticed any of this yet!
And another original that looks correct. Red circle to show one of his many slip-ups.
I’ll give him a D for effort over all. It's a bit like he attended the class but then put in the laziest pathetic effort he could have for the homework. He scaled parts of the photo to be slightly different than the originals, he tried to add shadows, and a hand written note. If i'm being completely honest, he did almost succeed.
I know this topic comes up often and a lot of the information has been shared before, so I just saw this as an opportunity for me to remind myself and hopefully help remind others to remain vigilant.
To summarize:
1. Check the users post history, and be extra wary of anyone under 1 year.
2. Reverse image search immediately, don't wait. Use google's, it has always found duplicates for me if they exist.
3. Don't engage in the conversations unless all of your attention is available. Stay aware.
4. Look at my close call and please learn something from it, and ask me anything you want, if you want more info.
And to you buddy, Almost! but oh so so far.
I hope you are still lurking reading about your utter failure, thinking about how you poured hours into your silly little scam and it failed. You aren't good, at all. Just remember that.
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