Scammers have evolved well past the old “Nigerian prince” email. A while back, running Worthen Media, I got what looked at first like a completely normal business inquiry. It wasn’t, and it took a few days of poking at the details before I realized how close I’d come to getting taken.
The Initial Contact
The first message came from someone calling himself “Paul Bills,” who said he was hearing impaired and asked whether I accepted credit cards. That struck me as odd right away — why would being hearing impaired matter for a web design inquiry, and why would payment method be the very first question, before we’d even talked about the project?
Escalation of Details
When I asked how he’d found me, Paul said he’d come across the business on Facebook. From there, the details piled up fast: he wanted an agriculture import/export website for “bestmanfarmproduce.com,” a budget of $2,000–$5,000, a reference site he liked the structure of, and a hard deadline to have the domain live by the end of the month.
Critical Inconsistencies
The story was detailed, but the timing didn’t add up. This long, specific email arrived within minutes of Paul getting my contact information — faster than anyone actually writing all of that from scratch would manage. On top of that, he asked for my personal cell number and asked me to confirm that I was the owner of the business, neither of which had anything to do with quoting a website.
Investigation and Discovery
A little digging confirmed it: the domain he wanted was already registered to a different developer. And when I searched for North Carolina kola nut importers — supposedly his business — I found another web developer’s write-up describing the exact same scam, almost word for word.
Key Takeaway
However legitimate an inquiry looks, it’s worth the extra few minutes to actually vet who you’re dealing with before you hand over personal information or start planning work around their deadline.