Dog shit may be biodegradable...

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 14:53:42 -0500

According to this article, dog poop may be biodegradable. The article is very funny and the gentleman that wrote the article appears to have done his homework. My point is that just maybe my shipping the dog shit to Nigeria was not illegal after all.

Did I do something illegal?

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 14:51:09 -0500

It has been brought to my attention that by shipping the dog shit out of the country I may have committed a crime. I am not sure why but apparently it is illegal to ship dog shit to another country. Maybe I should have put a little more thought into the contents of the package before I shipped the package to Nigeria. My wife didn’t like the idea from the very beginning. Next time I decide to take the law into my own hands I am going to consider the consequences a little more thoroughly

The Story...

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 14:52:39 -0500

On Jan 4th of 2006 I decided I would sell my Canon GL2 video camera because I’ve rarely used it since its purchase. I had a few options if I wanted to sell the camera online, either ebay.com or amazon.com. Since I had recently sold a MAGELLAN ROADMATE 760 on amazon.com I decided to stick with amazon.com. I searched amazon.com for the current price of the Canon GL2 and much to my surprise there weren't any used GL2's for sale. I listed my Canon GL2 for $1879.00 which was a few hundred dollars less than a new Canon GL2.

A day or so after listing the GL2 I started receiving emails from interested parties. I was immediately suspicious when I received multiple inquiries wanting to pay for the GL2 via Bidpay and requesting that I ship the Canon GL2 to Nigeria. Each time I responded that the Canon GL2 had to be purchased via the amazon.com purchasing system and that I could ship the GL2 to Nigeria. I also would inform the prospective buyer that I would ship the GL2 as soon as I received confirmation from amazon.com confirming the sale of the GL2. Soon after responding I would receive another email that looked as if it originated from amazon.com, I believe this is called phishing, stating that my camera had been sold and to ship it to some person in Nigeria. Whenever I receive a sale confirmation email from amazon.com I log into my account at amazon.com to verify the legitimacy of the email and each time the camera was still listed as not sold and there was not any money transfered into my amazon.com account. At this point I was certain that the confirmation emails from amazon.com were fraudulent and I was being scammed.

After receiving a few fraudulent confirmation sale emails from amazon.com, and to hopefully expose this scam-artist, I decided I was going to play along with the next fraudulent attempt at purchasing my Canon GL2. Along comes Mr Henry Roop, who claims to live in the USA but would like to purchase the GL2 as a new year gift for his cousin in Nigeria. Everything went as I outlined above, except this time I let the buyer, Mr Roop, believe that I thought the sale of the Canon GL2 was legitimate. Mr Roop was very anxious to get the GL2 shipped. I didn't want to expend any money exposing him so I told him that I wasn't going to be able to get out for a couple of days because I was sick and that if he needed the Canon GL2 quickly that he may want to have Fedex pick it up at my house. He took the bait and called Fedex to request a pickup at my house on his Fedex account.

My dilemma was, what was I going to put in the box that I shipped to Mr Roop? It didn't take me long to come up with a rather insulting item to put in the box… I would fill it with the excrement from my 2 large Rottweilers.

Because the GL2 was being shipped out of the country the first attempt at pickup from Fedex resulted in the driver not having the proper documentation. The Fedex driver stated that he would have to return the next day with the proper documentation. Somehow the GL2 was not picked up until the following Monday and during this period Mr Roop contacted me numerous times in attempt to get the camera shipped ASAP. A transcript of our email correspondence can be found here.

I am of the opinion that anybody exchanging monies or goods is a target of thieves. I also believe that it is in the interest of the internet retailers to keep the publicity of the fraudulent activity to a minimum to avoid loss of business. I would hope that retailers are doing their best to keep fraudulent activity to a minimum.

UPDATE: I now believe that all the fraudulent attempts at purchasing my Canon GL2 were attempts by the same person, Mr Henry Roop. I have not received a single inquiry into the sale of the camera since Mr Roop received his shipment of dog crap.

BTW: My name is Don Perreault and I can be reached at dwp@mac.com

It appears that some customers of Apple.com are being deceived in the same manner.

Scamming the Scammer! | Donald Perreault

Dog shit may be biodegradable...

Did I do something illegal?

The Story...