Hello everyone,

Today I received an email which is clearly scam and I wanted to share with all. If you have got anything similar scam please let everyone know. Below is the initial email I got from the scammer named “Aaron Weitzman”.

“Hello!

My client is an investor from UAE (Dubai.) He doesn’t speak English well and I will help him to purchase your abcarticle.com.

Please respond and specify a desired price in the subject line.

If you have other names for sale please email me your list with prices.

Regards,

Aaron Weitzman

Swiss VP Hosting”

The time I opened the email something flashed my mind that it’s scam email. I still wanted to confirm first and Googled it and found Morgan Linton’s post which confirmed by gut feeling. I still wanted to play with this guy and asked him to make an offer and the reply was:

“My client offers $7500 for your domain.
 
My investor has $230,000 budget for 30-40 domain names. How can we pay you: Credit card/Wire transfer/PayPal or Western Union?

Are you a member of domain forums? Probably, we know each other under some nicknames?

Best regards,

Aaron Weitzman

Domain Realtor

Switzerland
Basel
am krayenrain 5
Phone: 0041763987739
http://www.asp-web-hosting.biz”

I wanted to get more information from him as how he deal with others so I told him that I got both singular and plural version of the same domain you have showed interest so give me offer on both domains together if you are interested. His next reply was:

“I get 10% on every sale. Of course, his budget has some limits but he can afford to buy names at high prices.

Ok. Before he makes the payment he needs only one thing from you. Before he makes the payment he needs only one thing from you:

Do you have an official appraisal (certificate of current market price)?

He also needs to know you have no trademark problems. It won’t be a problem for you since some official appraisers offer this option (trademark infringement verification) as a bonus to the appraisal service. It will take only 2 minutes to order it.

Without the appraisal we cannot be 100% sure in the final sale price. The appraisal will help determine the true value of your domain’s worth so you can maximize profits during the sale. On the other hand, it will minimize our risks too.

You shouldn’t worry about the the appraised value. It will be high if you order it at the right place.  I have connections with an official appraisal company. I send them clients and they appraise names at the values my clients need.  If you order the appraisal at any other source  you risk to get a low value (200-300 usd). You will waste money and time in his case. My client is a rich person and I work on a commission basis. So I’m not interested in low figure appraisals.

To avoid mistakes and wasting money on useless automated services I asked about reliable manual valuation/TM verification services. Please read this: http://answers.google.net/answers/threadview4301270.htm
 
The process is very easy:
 
1. Go to the appraisal site and order the valuation with the TM verification. After several hours you will get the results.
 
2. Send these results via email and we’ll proceed with the deal.

If you are new to the appraisal process I can help you with a step by step instructions.”

Now there are 3 things through which I thought this was scam. First, this was received in spam/junk box. Although that doesn’t guarantee the email is scam because I already posted earlier about why you should check your spam box but most of the time emails received in spam box are real junk but you must check each mail as you might miss an opportunity. Secondly, the domain he used doesn’t look to be serious buyer. A 3 word hyphenated name and that too with .biz extension. Last but not least, when I received his first response in which he offered me $7,500 for a domain which is worth $5-8k to me. Who is crazy enough to start his initial offer with $7.5k for a domain worth less than $10k. Does it make sense to any one?