When Nick Nall, music industry sophomore, received a check for $4,000 to give guitar lessons, he said he was more than ecstatic.
His excitement turned the other way when he realized his post on Craigslist.org for lessons had been the target of a common scam.
Nall, who plays classical guitar and teaches lessons as his source of income, received e-mail from a man named Matthew Medley responding to a guitar lesson listing Nall had posted on Craigslist.
Medley, who told Nall he was an American physician practicing out of the country, said he wanted Nall to teach his 14-year-old son, Alex, while he was visiting New Orleans.
The two agreed to begin lessons in mid-October, and Medley told Nall in an e-mail he would send a check for $4,000 to cover a month’s worth of lessons.
He gave Nall instructions to wire the remaining balance to Alex’s nanny in Tennessee.
Immediately, Nick said he sensed something was wrong.
If Nick has followed through with the instructions, he would have been out $2,950, according to Gerard Kuhn, vice president and manager of Whitney National Bank.
The bank informed Nall of the scam when he deposited the check.
Nall said he learned later that checks like this often show up in an account before the bank realizes the check isn’t legitimate. It would have seemed like the check cleared, and Nall would have sent the money before it bounced.
If Whitney Bank hadn’t caught the scam, Nall said he would’ve had to pay a fee along with the $2,950 he was scammed out of.
“Craigslist, in addition to other Web sites, is just another avenue for the crooks to navigate and target the innocent,” Kuhn said. “The Internet just makes it easier to locate a victim that will fall for these scams.”
Web sites such as www.bustathief.com or the FBI fraud alerts help to inform the public about such scams and offer mediums in which people can report fraud, Kuhn said.
“If it’s too good to be true, it is,” Nall said. Nall said he later performed a Web search of the address Medley gave him, and realized it wasn’t a residential house.
“Don’t get caught up in the smaller steps of the deal, that you neglect to see the bigger picture,” Nall said.
Russell Shelton can be reached at [email protected]
