I have been thinking the same thing, Clayton, but actually these scammers are probably too busy searching classifieds for potential "marks" and following through on them to have time to monitor forums. They are probably doing this with hundreds of people all over the country.

They usually seem to target classifieds for large items like cars, boats, antique furniture, pianos, etc. -- things that need to be shipped as opposed to mailed.

All the examples I have seen of scam e-mails, including the ones that were sent to us, use very poor English and have very bad spelling. Most people would think that this proves these people are from other countries. But how can you tell whether an e-mail is actually coming from Africa or Belgium or a town in Iowa? They usually use a free e-mail address, like through Yahoo or AOL or one of many other organizations. Intelligent scammers can certainly fake bad grammar and spelling.

The unfortunate thing is that possibly there are honest people from other countries who really do want to buy something, and they get rejected as being possible scammers.

On the other hand, it would never occur to me to buy something from Europe through a classified ad, and have it shipped over here. So why would somebody do it the other way? Do they really save that much money doing that? They have more catamarans in Europe now than we have in the U.S. They have lots of cars over there and antiques and musical instruments. Just doesn't make sense for somebody from Europe to buy something from the U.S. and have it shipped over there, sight unseen.

P.S. Rick thinks maybe some of these scammers are doing this to raise money for terrorist organizations, like al quaeda.

So far I am thinking they are just con artists who have been around forever, and they are very inventive and creative, and they seem to be keeping up with technology -- or maybe a step ahead of the rest of us.

But there is that other possibility that is more sinister than plain old greed.