This is the original email that I received from moris.andre@yahoo.com. Looking back, I should have been suspicious, but I wasn't very busy at the time and I have had several orders from customers in other countries whose command of the english language is a little unusual. So I sent my standard price list.

June 5th, 2006:
A friend of mine introduce me to you and i was given your email address to talk to you i am interested in purchasing some indoor sculpture and garden sculpture for my resident.

I will appreciate it if you can send to me a website with the images of your work so that i can feel the kind of feeling my friend felt when he saw your work. Have a nice day Moris

July 20th 2006
Hello Rick
thanks for the mail and your response,i really appreciate you getting back to me with the prices,i have what i want from you okay......here are the one's i need asap.

best regards....

July 21st 2006, my response:

Hi Moris,
Thanks! I will give you the information, can you first
tell me where I will be shipping them?

July 21st, 2006
Hi Rick,
Thanks for the mail. Shipping to the UK

July 21st, 2006 I send a total price for the mobiles he is interested in and shipping costs to the UK. I receive this response:

Rick
thanks for the mail and your information about the Quiver and Aquilla.anyway payment will be inform of money order which i will immediately instruct my associate to send the payment to you asap....all is ok by me i will provide with the information of where to ship to as soon as payment is in your hand.

Moris.

At this point I am hooked. I consider this to be a legitimate order and begin constructing the mobiles that he has ordered. My policy at the time was to complete the work and then ask for payment before I was ready to ship.

On July 30th I notified the buyer that the mobiles were complete and gave him info on where to send payment. I did not get a response until I sent a second email a week later:

August 6th, 2006
Rick

thanks for the mail,sorry for the delay in payment but it will soon get to you ok i will let you the update asap.

August 13th, 2006. I receive this email, now I'm getting a bit worried:

Rick,
Sorry for getting back to you this late, my computer went crashed and i just restore it back now.Am verry sure that the payment will get to you by coming Friday or weekend. i promise to keep you posted on eacvh development asap. Have A Great Day.......

This is followed up by a second email:

Rick,
The payment is inform of money order....
do get back to me as soon as you get it,you will get it by friday this week.
thanks.

August 15th. I have not yet received payment, but I get this email. Now I suspect that something is fishy:

Rick
i will like you to take the payment to your bank and deposit it as soon as you get the money order ok.

August 21st.
I finally receive his letter of payment, which surprisingly had stamps and a postmark from the Republique Du Benin (found out later that this is a small country in West Africa). I'm getting more suspicious. I open the letter and there are FOUR money orders in there totaling over $3,000.00. Three times the payment I expected!!! What the heck? And not only that, the M.O. payee reciepts are still attached and the payee is shown as someone in Massachusetts. So why were they postmarked from Republique Du Benin? There's no return address on the envelope and no shipping address for the mobiles is included in the letter. The money orders look VERY real. The dollar amount is machine embossed into the paper just like every one I have seen in the past. The colors look right.The paper feels right. The serial numbers look right. The perforations look right. I can't see any watermark but the security thread is there so I figure that I might be looking in the wrong spot for the watermark.

When I returned home to check my email and respond back to the buyer about the counterfeit Money Orders, I found this message from my little buddy:

Rick,
thanks for the mail and your response,i got a confirmation that there was overpayment on the payment sent to you,i will really appreciate if you can go ahead and have the money order's cashed and deduct your own part of the funds and send the balance to my associate today asap to avoid further delay...ok.

August 21st.
So now the scam is obvious. It is a good thing that the bank clerk was able to verify that the Money Orders were bogus, otherwise I may have fallen for this. From this experience I have learned to require a downpayment in advance of starting work so that I can be sure that the order is legitimate. In the end, I was able to resell these mobiles to another buyer, but a problem developed with that client too! Check my forthcoming posting regarding Albert Von Allen at the Organ Matching Center.