Repair Re-Shipping Scam

I received a text from someone purporting to be in CA who wanted repairs to a vintage Les Paul and a Ritter Flora Aurum guitar. Sounded strange so I checked his area code - 315 which is upper NY state. He said he also has a home in NY, had two nephews moving to GA and wanted to ship the guitars to me so the nephews could pick them up.

I was immediately suspicious - Ritter made a one-off Royal Flora Aurum Bass - no guitar - whose asking price was $250,000. So, I played cat-and-mouse with him for a week. He never gave me details and all messages seemed to be edits of previous messages. His English was poor.

Yesterday, he made a request..."I will like to give you an credit card number. You charges $3500, keep $500, and send the rests to shipping company in NY?"

This is a classic con usually originating in Nigeria or Eastern Europe. The interesting thing is that these solicitations are usually form letters sent by email to many people. This one targeted me and used both a Hotmail account and a U.S. cell phone

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