YES THIS GUY HAS HIT TWICE THIS YEAR...,
SAME method.
He trolls the want ads, and one of our members who is interested in a gun, but writes how he wish he had the funds, etc etc, will get a PM from a very new member. The PM will say the new member knows a third party ("I know a guy" or "I have a friend") who is selling a gun just like the one you want, and maybe you can get a good price. The sender of the PM will provide an email....,
..., IF the member contacts the email, they indeed will get an offer to be sold a gun at a very reasonable price. The money will be sent in some fashion but the gun will never show up....., the new member will have disappeared as well....,
..., Sometimes if you ask for photos, you will find the scam artist will send you some..., but if you then look for that gun on the internet and check the images, you will find they are the same ones emailed to you as "photos of my gun for sale".
..., the problem with catching this guy, is that the amounts are normally under $1500.00 threshold for a felony, so a local PD isn't going to invest much time following up any leads to find the guy..., and he knows it. The more complex the trail, the faster law enforcement will run out of motivation to catch him. His drawback is that he has to do a bunch of these in many different parts of the internet, to get a good amount of cash, which is why he is impatient. Folks are onto him and shutting him down.
LD