We were in legitimate business sales/payment email conversation with Ms. Chen of HANZHONG CITY ZHIHAI PRECISION MECHANISM& TOOL CO.,LTD which is a LEGITIMATE company and contact. When her email was hacked - the scammers set up an almost identical email address (*zhjmaliicechen@163.com* - - not her real address) which they used to reply to our on going conversation. Believing (stupidly) that they were still Alice we ended up sending USD$499.50 via Western unio (although she wanted bank transfer originally) but the sender explained reasons why that could not be done and because of earlier relationship and her amazing technical knowledge we believed it was real. Suddenly the payment was changed - which seemed viable at first because the accountant was suddenly out of town - so in order to start production we had to do Western unio to *First name: JUN Last name: LIANG Country: China (Hanzhong?)* We sent the USD$499.50. Then this "Alice" wanted us to finalize deal 2 days later by paying the remainder. I was suspicious of the sudden changes in the deal. I found email addresses of other employees on their website and emailed my concerns. Those colleagues sent her my concerned email and the poor woman was very angry and upset. She immediately contacted us and explained she changed her passwords and was so confused as to why we used Western unio and did not understand what happened and that she did not want 100% payment up front! When I caught on the scammers started to realise they had been busted after trying to get us to send remaining balance and then set up an email address similar to ours (*raekiindesign@gmail.com -* - not the real address) and started emailing Ms Chen's real email address. Using the IP addresses I could get the emails were routed through Beijing, Netherlands, Nigeria and New York. We understand we have lost our money and Ms Alice Chen has since secured her account - she has reported this to Chinese authorities and I'm trying to get the word out there. *Ms Alice Chen IS LEGITIMATE AND A REAL PERSON. The fake Alice Chen wanted money to go to JUN LIANG and used email addresses raekiindesign@gmail.com and zhjmaliicechen@163.com both similar to the real addresses but not the same.* We are now dealing with each other via fax for important information and resecured our emails. However, we know our identities were falsely used against us. As for us - we feel so stupid - we looked up everything from reviews to registration to length of website being online (9+years). We googled Alice - the company - everything - no problems. No warnings. No reasons to be suspicious. It was the sudden change in terms despite being in the same "email conversation" that led to me figuring out something was terribly wrong. BE WARNED - IF THINGS CHANGE SUDDENLY? IMMEDIATELY CHECK EVERY LETTER AND NUMBER OF THE EMAIL ADDRESS - DONT ASSUME "REPLY" IS FROM THE SAME EMAIL ADDRESS - ConTACT SOMEONE ELSE AT THE COMPANY YOU ARE DEALING WITH! JUN LIANG (? or identity used) OF CHINA - POSSIBLY HANZHONG IS THE SCAMMER WE SADLY DEALT WITH! - OBVIOUSLY - NO MATTER WHAT - FORGET WESTERN unio NO MATTER WHAT! If they can't deal any other way then forget them. Not worth the risk. We learned the hard way...
