Con Artist Alert

My Saturday started much the same, a little sleep in then up to make breakfast in bed, then I had to get into that garage of mine to rescue Anastasiya from years of neglect. Oh dear even my breakfast looked sad.

We are in the market of buying a home for ourselves especially after the loss of Patch, my Italian Greyhound. By going back into the property market means that Scarlet, my red Vespa GTS 300ie Super, has to be sold and I thought that at the same time Anastasiya, my black Vespa ET4/8 150 which has been standing for nearly 2 years should also be sold. So reluctantly I have put both Vespas onto the marketplace.

Two friends immediately responded with interest to buy Anastasiya, shown here covered in dust, which means I had to take her out of storage in the garage and wash her, hence I needed to get into the back of the garage this morning. Deep somewhere in the depths of my garage, I found Anastasiya with a rear tyre that was flat so I had to get that fixed before washing her nice. Later when I tried to start her up, I found that her battery was also flat which after standing for 2 years was to be expected so I had to charge it up but it looks like she needs a new battery. Also she is not idling properly which means I need to get her sorted out. Uhmmm maybe this is not a good idea.

Anyway back to Scarlet and the reason for my Con Artist Alert, I have had only one response for her but it seems that it might be a con artist trying fleece me of a beautiful bike as his email to me seemed suspicious.

"Thanks for the response! i'm interested buying this for my son but only if you can assure me it's in a good condition and please send me more some pics? note well: Pick up agent will come for the pick up as soon as i have made the payment"

And later

"Got the pics and love it, so do you have an account with payfast so i can arrange for the payment? i don't want someone else come for it"

I am not sure about this one so I went onto the world wide webs and trolled around and found this con artist going by a different name but using a nearly identical message.

"Hello , Thanks for the response, i am really interested buying this for my Son as a surprise gift for him,its Graduation that is coming soon only if you can assure me that everything is in order and it works fine,i am a petroleum engineer currently on a rig offshore i really want this to be a surprise gift for my Son so i wont let him know anything about this until it gets delivered to him , i am sure he will be more than happy with it.It will be secured paying via Payfast as i'm on rig offshore.So let me know if you have an account with payfast so i can make the payment.

note well:
Pick up agent will come for the pick up as soon as i have made the payments, i would have loved to talk to you on phone but I work mainly offshore, our phone is down on the rig right now due to bad weather, we can only communicate with our base for now."

Digging deeper I found many more similar messages of how people have been conned. I need to sell Scarlet if there are genuine buyers but it looks like I would have to be careful out there.