Don’t sell anything to Steve Mackay
Steve Mackay (or Steven Mackay) and Helen Mackay are two e-mail aliases used by a gang of scammers that buy cars, television sets, dogs, skies, and various items that are sold via the web.
The scam is setup by a buyer that contacts sellers and agree to buy whatever is sold. He or she then sends a check with a surplus of a few thousand Euros. The scammers ask the buyer to send the surplus forth, to a shipper who will pick up the sold item, and ship it to England.
The check is often cleared by the bank, and the seller sends the extra 5-6000 Euros forth. But now shipment agency or shipper ever turns up. Instead, the bank does, after a week or so, with the message that the check has bounced or is false, and that they have taken back the money.
In the end, the seller has lost 5-6000 Euros and seller looses a lot of money.
This scam is pursued by a well organized gang, and has been performed throughout Europe and the US.
A good sign is that the scammers never bargain over the price, but is really quick to agree on purchasing the item, and just as quick to send a check with instructions on what to do with the extra money. If you get contacted by Steve Mackay, Helen Mackay, or any of their other aliases. Just ask them to do an electronic transer, or send cash. They won’t, and you won’t get cheated on your money.
January 4th, 2008 at 4:41 am
My name is Steve Mackay
January 4th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Hi Steve,
Tough. I hope my blog post haven’t put you in some kind of trouble. It’s never good when scammers choose your name as an alias.
Some years ago, I and a few others where writing about a spammer, and he got back by sending out millions of mails with our names as from-addresses. I’m lucky I had my computer off that day, since the flood of return-mails would have filled my hard disk. This happened to some of the others.