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Showing posts from December 30, 2007
Ever wonder how those Nigerian scams work? Mary Baker at Dover Canyon (have I mentioned recently it's my favorite winery?) does too, and the matter got almost personal when someone attempted to entangle the winery in one of these scams. Read her fascinating account of it in the posts on her blog . Here's a taste: First, the scamster orders wine from the winery or retailer. But there's a problem. He lives out of the country. He knows this is inconvenient for you, so he'll ask a shipping firm he's used before to pick up your wine, and take care of all the export documentation. All you need to do is charge his credit card for the sale and the shipper's fees, and then wire the transportation fees to the shipper, as they are not set up to take credit cards. How easy is that? Cha-ching, cha-ching. Because the wine is being shipped overseas, the cost of shipping is high--maybe $200 a case. An order for 10 cases of wine would involve $2,000 in transport fees; a p