And, what is this Nigerian check fraud?
There's different variants (popularized in Nigeria, but all over the place now), but they go along the lines of "You get a check for Y amount over your asking price. If you accept it and send back the difference minus 10% or so for handling, it would be great". You do that and then find out after the fact that the check was counterfeit, forged, or stolen, and are out the item + the money.
They used to do that with cashier's checks because it can take 5 days before the bank will identify that it is fake. I think they're doing it with regular checks now. I had a buddy several years back that wanted to sell his car, got the cashier's check and was about to send the money back when he mentioned it to me. He wasn't too happy when I told him it was probably scam. We looked at the check and it was obviously printed on a laser printer (plus no back to the check, and no watermarks). Wasn't Nigeria by the way.
These scams all either center on 1) your greed "you'll get X amount more if you do it this way", 2) your honesty "I accidentally sent you a check for more than the price, can you send back the difference", or 3) your desperation to sell.
Can't really teach common sense/ethics in a post, but in general, if it sounds hinky and is outside the simple norm (I pay you X, you give me Y), it's probably a scam.
