I was looking to buy a Canon 50mm 1.2 lens a couple of weeks ago. On the first night I post my WTB ad, I received a message from "batchelor".
This is what the message said:
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I have a clean copy of the Canon EF 50mm f1.2 L. This lens is truly like new. I purchased it for a low light job and ended up not using it. If you were to open a new lens and compare it to this one you could not tell the difference. You will be thrilled with it. It will be all yours for $1060.
I'm located in Canada, and will ship via Canada Post. Please let me know.
Jameel.
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This sounded great, however for some reason my gut was telling me something was 'off'.
After emailing him, he sent me some photos. These photos were very small, and I couldn't really see the lens in much detail. When I asked him for his paypal info, he told me this:
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My Paypal account is currently limited, I was on vacation recently and opened it on a different computer to make withdrawals and it got limited. Working with Paypal to rectify it, I currently don't know how long it will take to rectify it.
EMT is what I can work with for now, let me know if this works for you. If not good luck in your search.
Thanks,
Jameel.
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The email address he sent to me to use for an EMT seemed like a random mix of letters and numbers. At this point I looked around the forums and read a thread about people who have had their accounts hacked. It looked to me like "batchelor", despite tons of good feedback, may not be the actual guy who achieved that feedback months ago. I ultimately PM'd the last couple of people "batchelor" dealt with months ago, and they reported to me that they had sent money to a totally different email.
I opted not to send him money, and instead found another seller which worked out well.
This member has been banned a while back.
Yes, there is a pattern here. All recent scams on the buy and sell board originated from Canada and canadian transactions using money order as payment option. I would advise only using insured payment, especially to a canadian transaction.
Fred
