Update: sure enough, I missed the obvious. After some prodding, this bloke wrote a half-way intelligent email. Or maybe 1/4 way. I'm still not clear on what happened, but I'm guessing the guy stopped and gave his name, which is also my name. So I'm censoring the identifying bits from the email, to product the innocent but confused.
Just so that Google has it in its index in case anyone else gets one of these, I got this gem today. This guy claims I hit him -- and then bailed. That's a serious thing. But somehow, the only contact info he has is my name and email address, not my license plate. I emailed him back and said I'd be happy to cooperate but needed a brief description of the vehicle that him and the person driving it and got an angry threat thing back. I tried really hard to remember hitting any vehicle, or giving anyone my email address other than friends, and have failed. I don't have a bumper sticker with my email address on it. I also have been OUT OF TOWN FOR TWO WEEKS. I also DON'T OWN A CAR. So I either ran into him with the motorcycle and then was somehow able to both leave the scene of the accident and remove the motorcycle too, or else I biked into him on the peddle bike, and likewise. And either we were both on vacation in Minnesota or else this happened more than two weeks ago and he just somehow tracked down my email address. So *probably* either this guy is a scammer who broke into someone else's mail box or else someone really did hit him and he's trying to find a pool to pin it on.
Without further ado:
Subject: Hit and Run
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2008 14:25:40 -0700
Hi Scott-
Do me a favor and tell your insurance company that you hit me and they
should expect a claim. I'd like to settle this in a reasonable fashion,
but that's partly up to you.
Thanks,
Gene
Re:Or perhaps he googled the name
scrottie on 2008-12-02T13:01:05
Good call. I wrote that after two emails from him. The third was more lucid but still not very helpful. The first confusing thing was calling it a "hit and run" yet claiming to know the name/email of the person who hit him. That didn't add up. So, it's probably not a scam, so I took the identifying information out.
-scott
This sounds like an extortion scam. He wants to settle it "in a reasonable fashion", which sounds like he means he wants you to give him money not to make a claim. He figures you'd rather lose a little money than a lot of money, even if you did nothing wrong.
I would say you should go to the appropriate law enforcement agency and make a complaint. If there was an accident, there has to be a police report.
