I got this today:

Good day,

I would like to place an order for my up coming wedding, well I will like you to bake me a Vanilla Cake with strawberry filling that can serve approximately 250 guests and I want the cake to be decorated with pink roses and the cake should be covered in fondant and packed a box and let the inscription be writing on one of the tire as (HAPPY MARRIED LIFE). And I want you to have the cake ready for pick-up on 25th of APRIL. Let me know if you can fulfill the date?? do you accept credit card for the payment??

I await your reply soon.

Thanks and God bless.
XXXXX

Does this sound a bit like the emails some of you have received and it turned out to be crooks??

My red flag went up immediately but I can be a little paranoid sometimes. Let me know what you think please. TIA!

Seems very similar to what other people have received...I wouldn't reply.

good ole delete key!

DUMP IT...

Iwould go with your gut feeling. Sounds alittle weird to me. If there's no contact info, then it's probably a hoax.

Yep - this is the same e-mail many of us have received in which the sender will eventually offer to overpay us for our services. Then, you are apparently supposed to reimburse the difference of the overpayment before their fraudulent check/money order made out to you bounces all the way to wherever the e-mail originated and back again!

This is the first time I have seen this type of thread. For us newbies here, what exactly is in this email to be wary of? To me it just sounds like someone has poor english/grammar skills. I hate to tell you how many times I've seen poor writing skills in business and i'm in IT!

Well I guess Tracy1970 answered that, Thanks!

thats scarey, thangs people do get money theses days you never know. glad you let us know thanks

Nope, delete, The key for me was the "Happy Married Life" thats what gives these people away! RUN!

LOL! Take care!

beat them at their own game my wife and I caught them at their own game we told them 15 times that any money over what we had originally agreed upon would be a tip they said no problem and still sent the money so we went to the bank it was drawn from and cashed it and kept the money now the FBI has the case and we got the money we think that if enough people do this it will eventually stop. btw they tried to tell us that we would be arrested by the fbi but we just reminded them that they don't work that way but we would be happy to talk to the fbi if they wanted us to they haven't called for several weeks now always a very heavy accent (maybe Sri-lanka or India) but the post mark on the envelope that came to our house was from an adult film company in florida! so be VERY careful.

Thanks all! I deleted the email.

I am grateful for CC and its members. Because of the members here I knew about these types of things happening and was not a victim. Thanks to you all! We are blessed to have this kind of community!

I received the same thing, along with a cell phone number. Is there a government agency we can report this too??? If you think about it the person who is picking up the cake and collecting the cask could be in on it?

MIME-Version: 1.0
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:50:35 -0700
From: Iman <[email protected]>
To: Alex Bryant <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Wedding Cake April 11
Organization: Bonn Boni LLC
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
X-Sender: [email protected]
User-Agent: RoundCube Webmail/0.1-rc1
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Hello Alex,

I'm sorry I will not be able to comply with that plan. I will not pay for
any shiper to come and take the cake. That is something that should be
worked out strictly with you and that company. I believe since you are in
Nebraska you would save a substancial amount of money by hiring a cake
decorator from your region.

Thank you for your intrest and good luck

Iman
Bonnboni.com

On Tue, 1 Apr 2008 04:03:29 +1000 (EST), Alex Bryant
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello Iman,
>
> Thanks for the mail and here are the information you requested for. My
> wedding reception will be at Nebraska Kearney City Hall at Nebraska and
the
> wedding is on the 12th of April so i suggest the pick up time should be
> sometime between the late afternoon of the 11th. I want a strawberry
> flavoured cake covered in fondant icing with hand made or gum paste roses
> on each tier of the cake for a guest of 250. As I have told you donÃât
have
> anything to worry about, the shipping of the cake will be well secured
and
> in a good condition on arriving the location of my wedding reception, my
> shipping agent will be coming there with a refrigerated truck for the
pick
> up and it will be shipped under the fragile shipping insurance scheme.
>
> So I want you to calculate for me what will be the total cost of the
order
> including the decoration including tax if included and also I want you to
> add $600 for the cost of the pick up and the shipping, so once I have
your
> reply for the total I will remit my credit card for you to charge for the
> total cost. so that you can have the order booked right away. and once
you
> have the order in progress, I will provide you the shipper's information
> and they will be the one you will give the $600 for the pick up and the
> shipping to enable the pick-up.
>
> I will be waiting to have your reply for the total cost.
>
> Thanks and God bless.
> Alex.
>
>
>
>

So happy married life... That is a direct translation of a chinese saying. This guy called me at a number that was untraceable. I barely understood his english and I can guess he was of asian orgin. His cell phone is 203 (Seattle WA) and a girl who speaks perfect english has a recored message on it.

Just very strange, and innovative as well.

The first clue was "Happy married life" We all know that....... LOLOL Sorry couldn't help myself

Mike

Definately a scam that has been going around for a couple of yrs now

I got one some time ago and just replied "I dont' ship cakes". Never heard from them again.

HEY YOU GUYS!!!

THIS SAME EMAIL ARRIVED IN MY BOX THIS MORNING!!!!!
" WHAT DO THEY TAKE US CAKERS FOR "IDIOTS"?????

Not going to happen on my watch!!!

My reply went something like this:

Dear Alex,
I am sorry but I do not accept credit cards. I would require payment in full no later than Wed. April 16, 2008 in the amount of $1,275.00 to be paid in cash due to the short notice of this order. I do not allow pick ups of wedding cakes over 50 servings, due to liability issues. Wedding cake orders require a personal consultation at least 2 weeks prior to date. If you would still like me to do this cake for you, you should schedule a time for the consultation ASAP and bring your payment to get this underway.
Regards

I even added the PITA fee Indydebi speaks so highly about. Now, If this dope attempts to contact me again about doing this cake I will have another not so nice reply for him.

BEWARE STUPIDITY LURKS OUT THERE (on more fronts than we can count!).

HEY, Willman, what an idea! awesome thinking. I really like the TIP thing.

Donna

same one that emailed me a few months ago.....they want to overpay with a bogus money order...and want you to send them the overpayment back.

i guess it still must work on some people, cause they are still trying it

"happy marriage life"...is the tip off...you think they could change the order up some

This isn't only happening to cakers. I had something for sale on Craigslist and one of these guys tried to get me. It was obvious, because he offered one hundred over asking price and of course wanted me to ship. I emailed him back telling him about himself and his mother who raised him.

I had once something like that and then those people will ask your personal info to put money into your accout or something like that. Of course I'm not stupid!!! I would say this is fonny order stay away and don't reply to it all all, if you do they will keep on sanding you more convincing emails that this is serious order. Good Luck!!!

I think the fact that they know exactly what they want, when it will be picked up, etc. It's the over confidence vibe. Like they are TELLING you what they are going to have. I can't put my finger on it. It is obviously a scam, but do you know what i am getting at?

How are they finding all of you who they are contacting? Do you all have websites?

Theresa

I was laughing hysterically when u said that. Okay just on my behalf It was like 4 am when i typed that so i'm not responsible for what I type after 12am So I guess we all don't know happpy marriage in Chinese...Maybe we all need to take some chinese classes you never know when it may come in handy

What's a PITA fee?

kelleygirl - PITA stands for "pain in the a$$"

I got that same email in the middle of March. I didn't respond back because it didn't sound right. I also thought it was weird that someone would want that written on their wedding cake. That sounds like something you would do on a bday cake. I too, just deleted it.

I rent a basement apartment to college students, and I got a similar e-mail last summer, asking if they could take my apartment for September 2007. The girl said she was e-mailing from England, but the message was clearly not written by a native English speaker. That, in itself, wasn't rare as I often get e-mails from legitimate foreign students looking for housing. Because of how awkwardly worded the message was, I mailed back many questions about the person, such as what program they were going to study in, etc. I didn't receive a reply to that, and not long after, we got a message from the housing director at the college warning all landlords to be aware of this scam, which was apparently orginating out of Nigeria (thus the oddly worded message, I guess). Thankfully, I never heard back from the sender, and we didn't get caught in a scam. Now that I know, I will be on the lookout hereafter.

yes I got this on friday. i replied sorry I do not service your area.

Delete.....Julia

I swear, people work so hard at defrauding people. Why don't they just get a real job!!! Every time you turn around, there is a new version of the Nigerian scam.