Although I’d rather not admit, I figure I might as well go ahead and spill. This weekend, I realized that I was a part of a huge scam on craigslist, and I lost quite a bit of money… makes me want to vomit a little just thinking about it.

These guys, whoever they are, are hiding behind valid businesses (in my case TNT Shipping), and scamming people out of money… a lot of money. They’re extremely talented at what they do - so much so that it’s a bit disgusting. Then, they take your money and never give it back. End of story. Boom. Done.

You know, you think you’re a fairly intelligent person, and then something like this happens… and you feel right back in with the ignorant masses. It’s a pretty awesome feeling, really. Kind of like a four hundred pound man kicked you in the stomach with steel toe boots… ahhhhhh.

* * * * * * * * *

A few days later, I went on to brave the metaphorical craigslist apartment waters again. And what did I find? A listing EXACTLY like the one that scammed me. Seriously. So, I reported it to craigslist, and then I decided that I might want to do my good deed for the week and warn the people. I posted a listing on craigslist warning people of this scam. It said SCAM a couple of times throughout and explained what my listing looked like and what happened to me. You know, just to give people a heads up.

One guys replied to me and said the same thing happened to him. He was scammed out of over 2,000 dollars just recently, and, needless to say, he was pissed. So, inevitably we bonded over our momentary and expensive stupidity. And I also think he’s going to join my police case.

That being said, not two seconds later, I received an email from a girl inquiring about the apartment that I listed. WHAT? I immediately responded and asked what she was talking about and if she was serious. She responded with a seriously smart ass response. All it said was, “I said…” with the original email posted right below that. I couldn’t help but laugh. This girl actually gave ME attitude when she just replied to a craigslist advertisement that most definitely and obviously said SCAM in it multiple times. I then responded to her, thanking her for the attitude and warning her that maybe she should read ads much more carefully before replying to them. If she’s responding to an ad like mine, which wasn’t even a real ad, then she’s definitely at risk of being scammed out of a lot of money.

Truth is, she probably deserves it. Joke. Nobody deserves it. But I definitely thought it was people more like this that get scammed besides myself. What was I thinking?

The point of that last story: it’s always good to know that there will always be someone out there that makes you feel so much better about yourself, no matter how low you think you’ve sunk… it’s sad and comforting at the same time.