Archive for October, 2006
October 20, 2006 at 11:04 am · Filed under The scam
This morning I got an early email from Rob Baker (co-host of the Vintage Airstream Podcast) offering to take the call from our scammer Valecia, AKA Dr. Lilian Williams AKA Alvaro Mendoza.
So Ayres wrote back to the “shipping clerk”:
OK I have a lot of questions so call me at 703 ***-*****. I don’t like Western Union, maybe we can work something out. I still have the check too because I didn’t get to the bank yet, and I still have a bad case of aluminitus and the doctor says it could get worse and become bauxitis.
And Ayres wrote back to “Dr Lilian” too:
I didnt deposit the check yet so dont worry. Dont call the cops because my unckle is a cop and he will kill me. Im already in trouble with him because of the car accident. He had to hide the police report again for me. Still sick but I will get to the bank soon. I email your shipper today too.
Meanwhile, Rob and I have been collaborating on things to say during the phone call. I am hoping he’ll be able to record it. If so, I’ll either type up a transcript or provide an MP3 file for downloading.
October 19, 2006 at 9:05 pm · Filed under The scam
We left Jane’s house this morning with the intention of meeting some Airstreamers-in-the-making along the way, and then proceeding to Cape Charles, VA. But fortune intervened. We met Bobby, Danine, and their 6-year-old daughter Elise in the parking lot of the Annapolis Mall and found we had a tremendous amount in common.
They are planning to sell their house next year and go out on a 10-month voyage around America. They are considering buying a Airstream Safari 30, just like ours. Being readers of this blog, they are considering the Nissan Armada or Titan as a tow vehicle. They are planning to homeschool Elise. So we had a lot to talk about …
By the end of lunch, they had convinced us to stay in the area a few days longer and courtesy park at their in-laws’ house. We’ll take the girls to the DC-area sights over the weekend. I know Emma will like the Museum of Natural History, since she’s into rocks and creatures. So we are now in Falls Church VA parked in a tree-lined suburban cul-de-sac. We’ll resume our originally scheduled route on Sunday or Monday.
We are getting no solar power lately. Everywhere we park we are under trees, and today has been very cloudy. Fortunately, our courtesy parking hosts have been allowing us to plug in, so it has not been a problem at all.
By the way, our water heater, which absolutely refused to do anything yesterday, is now working perfectly. I have no idea why.
Our scammer is getting bold. Today he started to threaten Ayres!
hello,
i got a message from my mover that you cant use western union,what do you mean by that,i am beginning to think this is a whole else of ****,if they dont get the money today via western union,i will invite the appropriate authorities.
thanks
Talk about cajones. A person who writes phony checks drawn on non-existent banks, uses four different aliases, and commits fraud is threatening to call in the authorities?
The “shipping company” wrote in too:
HELLO,
JUST TO REMIND YOU THAT WE ARE NOT THE BUYER BUT JUST THE SHIPPER,WE DONT TAKE
ANYTHING OTHER THAN WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER,I AM LOCATED IN VA AND I DONT
KNOW HOW YOU WANT TO FIND YOUR WAY.I AM JUST THE MOVER SO I URGE THAT YOPU FIND
A WESTERN UNION OUTLET OR MONEY GRAM OUTLET AND SEND THE MONEY AND IF YOU ARE
CONFUSED ON WHAT TO DO LET ME HAVE YOUR NUMBER SO THAT I CAN GIVE YOU A CALL.
GET BACK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
VELECIA FARMER
Does anyone want to take “Velecia’s” phone call? Talk about an opportunity for fun! I’ll start the bidding at $1. 😉
October 18, 2006 at 9:59 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Jane says for me to tell all of you that this was the best stop ever. It certainly has been good to see our old friends/co-workers. I was very closely aligned with our friends here, through business, for about nine years. We traveled everywhere together: Orlando, Las Vegas, Tel Aviv, Italy, London, etc… and so even though they aren’t Airstreamers (yet!) we have a common bond in many other ways.
We all went out for dinner this evening at a local Italian place. Seafood pizza? Mmmmm… only in Maryland.
Herschel gave Emma a short ride on his shoulders after dinner. He took me for a 2.5 mile walk, roundtrip, today. Can you believe this is a guy who is currently undergoing chemotherapy for cancer? His powerfully optimistic outlook is absolutely amazing.
We have had a system failure today: our water heater won’t go on. It worked the day before yesterday. So we’ll need to make a stop at an RV dealer, or an Airstream dealer if we want it covered under warranty.
October 18, 2006 at 5:21 pm · Filed under The scam
She’s back to upper case. I think desperation is setting in:
HELLO,
YOU MUST SEND THE MONEY VIA WESTERN UNION OR MONEY GRAM TO THE INFORMATION
GIVENT TO YOU,YOU CANNOT COME WITH CASH.
KINDLY GET BACKK TO ME AS SOON AS YOU SEND
Ayres wrote back tonight in his own fractured English:
Sorry had a wreck with the car. It has bent fender and in police inpound. Do you want to buy anyway? I can knock off $50 and come by with cash tomorrow. Why don’t you take cash? This is America after all.
October 18, 2006 at 9:27 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Our trip down through Pennsylvania yesterday was just no fun. Two construction zones where we had to park on highway for half an hour, two accidents which blocked the road, and lots of traffic slowdowns. The 200 mile drive took about six hours … but at least the roads were fairly decent.
We are now parked in a nice suburban neighborhood at the home of a friend who I used to work with in the days before I became an itinerant magazine publisher living in a trailer. We are going to meet up with some other friends from the business today, and go out for pizza tonight.
I forgot to mention our newest trailer accoutrement: a custom-made laundry bag courtesy of our friend J. Rick Cipot. Rick is one of those amazingly handy guys who can handle anything from a sewing machine to an F-14. I spotted his laundry bag at the rally two weeks ago and asked him for one — and he whipped one up for us last Sunday, complete with zipper. It’s amazing that we’ve gone the last year full-timing without one.
I also forgot to mention that on Monday we had an interesting challenge trying to get out of our courtesy parking spot in Connecticut. The way the driveway and turnaround were constructed, we had a comfortably large radius for backing into our space. But pulling out was another story. The radius in that direction was much smaller, and we couldn’t get out.
The alternative was to pull out in the other direction and back out all the way down the driveway. But the driveway was full of S-turns, tricky even to navigate going forward, and the slightest error would have resulted in us hitting a tree. So we yanked the trailer back and forth, gradually maneuvering it toward the garage and increasing our effective radius a small amount.
At one point it seemed hopeless. The driveway was bordered closely by trees and low stone walls, which I managed to scrape a few times with the Armada’s lower air dam. As a last-ditch effort, prepared to unhitch the truck, move it to another angle and re-hitch, then repeat the procedure a few times. This would have worked but it would have taken a long time.
Then we finally got a break and managed to juuuuuust barely scrape by the turn. The front wheels of the Armada were dragging against the stone wall and the entry step of the Airstream clipped a stone wall on the opposite side, but we made it. It had taken nearly an hour.
I’m always cautious about courtesy parking for exactly this reason. We’ve had to maneuver our 31-foot tube very carefully to get it in and out of tight spots before, but this was definitely the most challenging spot — even harder than in Santa Cruz! When we pulled into this spot in Connecticut, I was so enthused at the ease of parking that I neglected to consider what we’d have to do to get out going in the opposite direction. Lesson learned!
October 17, 2006 at 9:20 pm · Filed under The scam
A quick scam update tonight. Our scammer has switched to lower case, and is wondering why Ayres didn’t wire $1800 on Monday. Ayres received two emails. The first was from the “doctor”:
hello,
have u sent the money?i am expecting the mtcn number as soon as possible.
dr.lilian williams
And the second email to Ayres came from the “shipping clerk”, in response to his promise to send money on Monday:
okay,get back to our client with the mtcn number as soon as you send it out.
thanks.
velecia farmer.
Boy, don’t those emails seem similar. And of course I got one too:
hello,
whats going on whats going on?why havent you sent the money./
dr.lilian williams
So Ayres, being an upstanding fellow, has made the following offer:
Hey I live near Hampton where you are. Instead of sending money Western Union can I just come by your office with cash? Give me an address and I’ll come by with cash. Been busy this week and don’t like Western Union. They always give me a hard time since I don’t have a drivers license for ID anymore. Lost it when I rammed a police car with my car few months ago.
Somehow, I doubt Velecia Farmer will want Ayres to come by with his pile of cash. And I wonder if Velecia will be concerned that the car being sold seems to have been in an accident recently?
October 17, 2006 at 9:37 am · Filed under Uncategorized
As I had dreaded, the drive down I-95, I-287, and I-80 was pretty awful. Northeast road conditions can be challenging for anyone with the constant heavy traffic, and when you add to that a series of S-curves and teeth-jarring bumps, it turns into a trailer-punishing rock-n-roll adventure.
Bert & Janie had the same experience on their route down I-84 to I-87 and 287: pictures flying off the walls, upset storage bins, heart-stopping moments when the trailer bounced crazily over a frost heave … not fun. We all had to spend some time cleaning up later, but fortunately nothing broke and despite the sensations all of our tires remained attached and inflated.
Last night we courtesy parked with Bert & Janie at Janie’s daughter’s house here in Great Meadows. There are three great kids here, who adopted Emma for the evening while the adults spontaneously began an unintentional “Bert Gildart Roast”. Between us, Janie, Janie’s daughter Katie and Katie’s husband Keith, there were plenty of common experiences to share about travels with Bert.
Apparently everyone who goes hiking, kayaking, bicycle riding, etc., with Bert ends up with a story to tell. There was the time that Bert took us on an “easy” hike through Glacier National Park last summer (and it ended up being 12 miles up and down at 7000 feet elevation); the time Bert took Janie kayaking in the Bay of Fundy and they ended up getting caught in the mud flats at low tide; the time Bert put a 20-lb rock in his sister-in-law’s backpack during a hike; the time he and Janie were watching icebergs “calving” and the polar bears showed up, etc. We were laughing hysterically when all the stories kept coming.
Our trailer parked with the Gildarts’ trailer
It has turned gray and rainy here and we are facing a long day driving down to Maryland. The good news is that our route will take us through Pennsylvania, so we will have somewhat more pleasant driving. Most PA highways are not exactly parkways, but they are much nicer than I-95.
Our approximate parking spot last night. (You need Google Earth to view this.)
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