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More Dirt On Esources.co.uk – Just How Grubby Is Their Laundry?

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Is Esources.co.uk Being Used As A Means Of Collecting Credit Card, And Personal Details Necessary For Identity Theft?

Here’s something new on the Esources scam trail. I happened to be reviewing the key words used by visitors coming to the blog this evening, and saw a particular string, which I followed, and which brought me to an excellent resource known as FraudWatchInternational.com, and under the section: Home > Fraud Education > Fake Jobs (Money Mules), I found a note on our old friend Stefano Carboni’s company, Esources.co.uk, entitled: Esources Limtited UK – Fake Job (Money Mule Scam).

What’s a “Money Mule”? I hear you asking.

Well, our splendid friends at WikiPedia provide us with a simple and concise explanation, or definition, of the term, as follows:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A money mule is a person who transfers money and reships high value goods that have been fraudulently obtained in one country, usually via the internet, to another country, usually where the perpetrator of the fraud lives. The term money mule is formed by analogy with drug mules.

The need for money mules arises because while a criminal in a developing country can obtain the credit card numbers, bank account numbers, passwords and other financial details of a victim living in the first world via the internet through techniques such as malware and phishing, turning those details into money usable in the criminal’s own country can be difficult. Many businesses will refuse to transfer money or ship goods to certain countries where there is a high likelihood that the transaction is fraudulent. The criminal therefore recruits a money mule in the victim’s country who will receive money transfers and merchandise and resend them to the criminal in return for a commission.

I then came across the following site: http://www.banksafeonline.org.uk/moneymule_explained.html, where they present a lovely interactive graphic of how the scam works, and a very plain English overview of the scam in action, and include such warnings as:

“Remember that even if you have nothing to do with the actual extraction of funds from another person’s account, by allowing your account to be used to receive and transfer such funds, you will be acting illegally.”

Therefore, one might actually conclude that Mr. Carboni isn’t satisfied with swindling people out of their payments through his scam-site, esources.co.uk, but is actively attempting to engage people into placing themselves in a criminally damaging position, in the pursuance of satisfying his need to feed his greed, and his swindling addiction. I mentioned in an earlier article that similar letters from his company were lodged on file at www.data-wales.co.uk under the Representative Fake Cheque Scam.

www.banksafeonline.org.uk go on to explain the steps involved:

  1. Fraudsters contact prospective victims with “job vacancy” adverts via spam emails, letters, newspaper job adverts, Internet chat rooms or job search web sites. Jobs are usually advertised as a “financial manager” and suggest that no special knowledge is required.
  2. The fraudsters convince the victim to come and work for their fake “company”. Some fraudsters even ask mules to sign official-looking contracts of employment.
  3. Once recruited, money mules will receive funds into their accounts. These funds will have been stolen by the fraudsters from another account that has been compromised.
  4. Mules are then asked to take these funds out of their account and to forward them overseas (minus a commission payment) typically using a wire transfer service. Acting as a mule is an illegal activity. When caught, money mules often have their bank accounts suspended, containing *all* of their money.

Of course, having your bank account, and the assets therein frozen, will be the least of your worries; one would assume you’d be more worried about the possible prison time you may have to serve.

Certainly in Australia, the Australian Federal Police, as cited on the Australian Bankers Association website, state clearly that the penalty for being a Money Mule is up to a maximum of 20 years in prison; whilst in the US, according to the US Department of Justice, you could be facing a possible 30 years in prison, a fine of up to $1,000,000, and up to five years of supervised release.

At the present moment, I am unable to furnish a penalty for the UK, but can state that it obviously is illegal, and that you will have your account, and assets frozen, you will be liable to repay the monies you earned, and perhaps more, to the actual victims, you will serve some time in prison, and you will carry both a criminal record, and shredded credit rating for the rest of your life.

So, this is no laughing matter, and Mr. Carboni seems to be entangled in this, along with his “company” Esources.co.uk, and quite possibly his alternative site Wholesaledeals.co.uk, by virtue of being under the ownership of the same individual.

Here is the extract from FraudWatchInternational, and the link to the page direct, and I’ll leave you to make your own opinions, and to draw further conclusions, as to the legality of the man and the “companies” he represents. Please, also take note that in the email, right at the beginning, the author states that Esources is a Ltd. company, but in actuality it is not registered as such in the UK.

“The following is an example email for this fake job, otherwise known as a money mule scam. Please forward all fake job emails to scams@fraudwatchinternational.com

Dear Sir/Ma.

Esources Limtited UK (http://www.esources.co.uk) is in search of a book-keeper/company representative in the U.S.A/CANADA. This project has been developed in a way not to affect your present job nor bring you any form of stress but in order to help take care of those extra costs while you work for us. Esources is a small company thats deals in whole sales of T-Shirts, Cardigans,Ladies Tops,Kids wear & Silver Jewellery . We offer exceptional customer service and quality at discounted prices!. Everything in our catalogue is priced in UK/US funds. You can check to see from our web-site.

Recently It came to my knowledge that there are a lot of lapses in
handling funds coming from our clients in the USA which come in forms of Cashiers checks,Company checks and Money Orders which are not readily cashable outside the United States. So we need someone in the U.S.A to work as our representative and assist us in processing the payments from our various clients which come in on a weekly,monthly and annual basis.This is why we decided to employ a representative over in theU.S.A to help us receive our payments at your contact address you shall be providing us,in order to process our payment from our clients.

All you need to do is receive these payments from our clients in the U.S.A get it cashed at your banking institution. You are entittled to(10% of each payment) that you process. After payment must have been cashed and deducted your working fee. You will send the remaining fund to us. Our payments will be issued out in your name as we will inform our clients to do. Therefore the following details would be needed: I would require you to send me an email with the following details:

1)Your Full Name:
2)Contact Address,City,State & Zipcode:
3)Home & Cell Phone number:
4)Age:
5)Occupation:
6)Sex(Male/Female):

Reply to: jeannettehintz@aol.com

We would forward these informations to one of our clients and they will start making payments to you as the company’s representative in the states . Once we have all your details in our records.We would notify you as soon we confirm that one of ourcleints is mailing payment across to you.

I await your urgent response.
Warmest Regards.
Jeannette Hintz.
Head Of Human Resources.
eSources.co.uk”.

Finally, look at that lovely line in the email, “We offer exceptional customer service and quality at discounted prices!”

What a load of rubbish! Obviously Mr. Carboni’s idea of “…exceptional customer service…“, doesn’t run as far as actually having an operating telephone, where customers can contact him, or his representatives; wherever he is, and wherever his “company” is, as all we have are mailing addresses, and a website! There is no physical presence, and no means of direct contact, other than email.

A parting thought: Might you be in danger of identity theft, if you’re paying for membership to either of Mr. Carboni’s websites. After all, you’re giving him a huge amount of personal information, not to mention your  credit card details. Just think about it for a moment.

Safe Trading!

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Originally posted 2009-08-13 01:40:20. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Popularity: 59%

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Posted in Hall Of Shame, Scams And Scammers | 2 Comments »

Mr. Stefano Carboni And Wholesaledeals.co.uk

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Isn’t fate a strange and flirtatious creature?

Here I am being ripped-off by Mr. Stefano Carboni, and his “Trade Portal” eSources; when I check out search terms on my blog and see that someone has arrived at my pages through a search in Google for the following string, “stefano carboni scam“.

I think to myself, “Hello, what’s this?“, and follow the link to the Google search page where I find a number of links connecting Mr. Carboni’s name to the word “scam“, and not in a very positive way. Actually, in a very negative way.

Interestingly the first two listings are mine. One I published on the RipOffReport website immediately after I lost my first money to him in April; and the other directing people to my previous eSources article in this blog.

Another Of Mr. Stefano Carboni's Sites.

Another Of Mr. Stefano Carboni's Sites.

The third link connected me to a site called UK Fraud Forum, where I found an article simply entitled “wholesaledeals.co.uk“. In which article an individual describes his or her attempts to get the goods for which they’d payed £ 476.80. This individual had tried to email the site, for support, backup, and information; however this was apparently nothing but a send message function, not a real email address, and so simply bounced back.

Additionally, no one answered the phone, as is also the case with eSources, where they provide a phone number to make the page look legitimate, but don’t “offer telephone support“. Meaning, absolutely nobody to talk to at any point in the event of anything going wrong.

This person, then got on to the police, their bank, and also the Trading Standards Office, but eventually got Mr. Carboni’s attention by ordering goods to the value of £ 30,000, but didn’t complete the payment schedule section.

By which point, it had now been three weeks that this individual had ordered their goods, without them having arrived, and had been unable to attract Mr. Carboni’s attention by any of the usual media.

Now, however it would seem, that since Mr. Carboni could see the potential of reaping a £ 30,000 windfall, as it flickered across his screen, or shot him off an email warning him of a failed transaction of  £ 30,000; within a mere hour of seeing this failed transaction notice, Mr. Carboni himself called the victim. Isn’t greed a wonderful motivator? Evidently, he hadn’t checked the details of this “client“, and wasn’t aware that he was in for a bit of an ear-bashing.

In the complainants own words, “it went on from there. a few excuses followed. delivery never turning up and another excuse, and on and on. they turned up in the end but some things were broken, items were of a cheaper nature then what i ordered. i definately will not use them again. one of the worst companies i have ever had to deal with.”

I think this individual was extremely lucky to even get these things. It’s quite possible that Mr. Carboni’s own greed for the possible £ 30,000 was behind this individual getting anything remotely resembling his or her actual order.

Another point to note is that the street address, as published on this website  is different from the eSources address; moreover, the complainant, in this particular case, did a little research, and discovered that the post code for the address given, was not actually in concord.  A fake address? They didn’t match. I haven’t confirmed this myself, but I’m quite interested to try the same with the eSources address. Although, I have recently been informed another victim of Mr. Carboni’s unusual business practices, that the address for the eSources business is merely a postal address, and the business doesn’t reside there in actuality. Indeed, this former victim is in doubt as to whether Mr. Carboni’s business enterprises are actually located in the UK.

Why not publish a real address? What’s he got to hide?

So, what do we have here?

We have faulty addresses, no phone, no proper email service, failure to deliver, and only contacting the client in the hopes of getting his hands on £ 30,000.

Another interesting connection to Mr. Carboni is to be found on the following link to a page on Data Wales’ website entitled:

“The fake job offer fraud. They promise a percentage, but you would lose money (and possibly your liberty). The checks they send are forged!”

Where they list the following, “Stefano Carboni, eSources UK, esources.co.uk, 27 Old Gloucester Street London  WC1N 3XX, st.carboni@yahoo.com.hk.” as being an alleged perpetrator of such an email scam or fraud.

It’s interesting to note that, Mr. Carboni doesn’t use his eSources email address, as one would expect from a respectable business person, but uses  instead a Yahoo, Hong Kong email address.

Why is that I wonder? Something to hide perhaps?

Moving on, I next find Mr. Carboni’s name connected to the Antifraud International website, where his name is listed at Number 286 on the Representative Fake Cheque Scam (RFCS) page.

Sprinting on, we next find Mr. Carboni’s name mentioned on the Scam Baiter website in connection with the RFCS cited above; and again on the 419 Scam site, and on.

So, it certainly seems that Mr. Carboni has a history of fraud and scamming; unless he has been the victim of identity theft himself?

Check it out for yourself at Google.

If you have had any problems of this kind with either of Mr. Carboni’s websites, please email your details to me. Thank you!

Keep you posted!

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Originally posted 2009-08-13 01:05:32. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Posted in Hall Of Shame, Scams And Scammers | 4 Comments »

eSources Innitiate Smear Campaign Against YCTP

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

eSources Attempting To Smear Your China Trading Partner.

It has recently come to my attention that eSources.co.uk, owned by the now infamous (to many of us unfortunate enough to have had any dealings with the company or the individual) Mr. Carboni, have now attempted to smear Your China Trading Partner, quite probably due to our unflinching stance on the the truth of the issues surrounding him and his company; as well as our unwillingness to back down in the face of earlier threats for legal action. Many of you out there have already communicated to me that you have backed down under these threats, whilst many fora have removed negative comments regarding eSources out of fear of these threats.

It would seem that since these threats have failed, as I have enough documentary evidence to take to any court should I be called to do so, which demonstrates the voracity of my claims, and is supported by many others out there who have lost money to eSources, that Mr. Carboni has now, as of the 19th August 2009, decided to attempt to attack my credibility by making false statements and slanderous remarks on sites such as the RipoffReport, and which you can view by clicking the link.

In which short statement, and without any corroboratory evidence whatsoever, Mr. Carboni states that I have, “…committed numerous contract infringements and failed to cover his payments” None of which, strangely enough, he has ever presented to me either by email, or by telephone.

And all of which I have documentary evidence for, including the fact that my bank is currently getting a reversion of funds back from his for taking money from my account when clearly not entitled to do so. I refer you to earlier articles on this site, and which you’ll find in the Scams and Scammers category.

Mr. Carboni goes on to say, “We believe his behaviour is an indication of the values this person adobts in his business dealings and invite potential customers to evaluate this person’s full business practices before considering trading with him“, which sounds more of an indictment upon himself, rather than upon me or my company.

I too invite you all to make the following searches of Google: “your china trading partner scam” and “yourchinatradingpartner.com scam” and finally “david kenneth stone scam“.

From such a simple search you discover nothing negative about either myself or my company. Indeed, I find it interesting that Mr. Carboni also cites our full company address, albeit with a couple of minor errors, as: ChangPing Qu, HuiLongGuan, LongTengYuan 3Qu, 2HaoLou, 2DanYuan, 201
Beijing – to which you are more than welcome to pay a visit, or have someone you know, or an embassy official here, make a call to determine a suitable time to come and pay me a visit; whilst, on the other hand, Mr. Carboni uses the address of: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London – WC1N 3XX, United Kingdom, and which is a mere postal address, and little more than a PO BOX, as his company’s formal HQ address.

In fact, however, should you run a Google search on “27 Old Gloucester Street, London – WC1N 3XX“, you will discover that you get 64 pages, and a grand total of 16,200 hits for that address, all with a wide diversity of companies claiming it as their UK registered office; companies as diverse as cleaners to clairvoyants. Strange that Mr. Carboni has no wish to have made public either his personal or a genuine office address. Who is hiding what from whom?

It may interest you to know that the following search strings are regularly used and bring visitors to this site (visitor search percentage included):

esources scam 5%.

esources stefano carboni scam 3%.

esources co uk scam 3%.

wholesaledeals co uk scam 2% (Another of Mr. Carboni’s Companies).

esources co uk 1%.

wholesaledeals co uk 1%.

stefano carboni  1%.

stefano carboni wholesale 1%.

carboni-company 1%.

what do you think of wholesaledeals co uk 1%.

esources co uk membership 1%.

wholesaledeals uk 1%.

whats wrong with esources 1%.

who is registered on esources co uk 1%.

e sources taking money from my account! 1%.

In fact, I receive more visitors in search of  his company than for any other individual company via my website; and, as you can see, more than a few are connected with the word ‘scam‘.

I have, of course, written to rippoffReport (please do take the time to visit their website and lodge any grievance you may have against eSources with them) and explained the situation, and post my email below for your edification:

EMAIL BEGINS:

Dear RipoffReport,

Firstly, I would like to thank you for the valuable service you pose to the community in general.

However, I would also like to say that your service is also being abused by known scammers to damage the reputation of honest business people who’ve made genuine complaints against those scammers.

Me, for instance. Recently it has come to my attention that you posted a warning against my company Your China Trading Partner (YCTP), and which has been posted by eSources.co.uk.

Article Here

This company is a known scam company and regularly rips people off via the internet, and has even been involved in the fake check scams and money mules as far back as 2006.

If you run a simple Google search on esources.co.uk and the owner’s name Stefano Carboni you will find a plethora of results from Fraudwatchers.org, scambusters, etc. regarding the perfidy of this company.

Now, I do have a genuine grievance against this company, as I was actually ripped off by them to the tune of $ 345 USD; and indeed, it was I who first lodged a report with you when this happened, and which you have now modified to be a retaliatory response by myself.

http://www.ripoffreport.com/e-trade/Stefano-Carboni-ESou/stefano-carboni-esources-co-7y5we.htm

By doing so you have fallen directly into the hands of this long-time scammer, and are causing genuine harm to a genuine business.

Indeed, my business is not only product sourcing, but to wheedle out scammers, and warn people away from them, as can easily be seen if you visit my blog at www.safelysourcingchina.com, and where you will find the following reports directed at eSources.co.uk, my experiences with them, and what my research has shown:

Be careful when dealing with esources co uk.

More on esources how dirty is their laundry?

I strongly recommend that you read the above two listed articles, where you will discover enough information, external to my website, which will demonstrate clearly just who is scamming who.

On the other hand you will find hundreds against Mr. Carboni and his company eSources.co.uk, some of which have been published by me, but the vast majority are in fora and on anti-scam websites scattered across both the globe and the internet. Really, it isn’t a difficult task for you to prove this to yourselves.

It is a tragedy, and a travesty, that you publish such material without first having made a background check against my company or his.

May I suggest that you take a moment to perform a Google search on the following three sets of terms:  Those search terms include my company name, my web address name, and my full name, plus the word scam.

I assure you that you will not find one single bad word against either me or my company.

I would like to say that the following search terms hit my blog, which is a new blog, in the following percentages:

esources scam 5%.

esources stefano carboni scam 3%.

esources co uk scam 3%.

wholesaledeals co uk scam 2% (Another of Mr. Carboni’s Companies).

esources co uk 1%.

wholesaledeals co uk 1%.

stefano carboni  1%.

stefano carboni wholesale 1%.

carboni-company 1%.

what do you think of wholesaledeals co uk 1%.

esources co uk membership 1%.

wholesaledeals uk 1%.

whats wrong with esources 1%.

who is registered on esources co uk 1%.

e sources taking money from my account! 1%.

One final search you may wish to carry out is to search the company address on Google, and look at the quantity, and the quality of companies registered at this very same address.

27 Old Gloucester Street London – WC1N 3XX

Do the same with mine, and you will find, but one company, and no negative comments.

Finally, in response to Mr. Carboni’s allegation, on Ripoffreport, that, “The owner David Kenneth has since committed numerous contract infringements and failed to cover his payments.” This is in itself a patent absurdity, as I have all my accounting data to demonstrate otherwise. Indeed, I have more than that, in as much as my bank is currently claiming back monies which Mr. Carboni’s company took from my credit card without permission, and with no right to do so, as he’d actually suspended my account several months before, and less than 14 days after receiving my payment, as the copies of his communications, which I have kept, and which I also have logged on PayPal, will attest.

I refer you to my blog for full details of this particular issue:

Be careful when dealing with esources co uk.

RippoffReport and Your China Trading Partner, are partners in the same battle; we are allies in the field. And as such I would like to ask you to remove the revision from my first posting, and to delete Mr. Carboni’s report about my company.

I am not really a litigious kind of man, and have always fought my own battles, and I really don’t want to threaten an organisation I respect with a case in court; however, I do expect you to do a minimum of research before you allow postings to be made.

Dear Ripoffreport team, you have participated in a great injustice, and are now standing against an innocent party, indeed, a fellow justice seeker, and backing a company known, easily known if one simply performs a quick Google search, for defrauding people of their monies, failing to answer their calls, and hiding behind a postal drop address, rather than a genuine reachable address.

I shall be publishing this letter on my blog, as will I too the fallacious and slanderous (as I can prove every word of my testimony) article and the link to it on your own website for my own readers.

Kind regards,

David Kenneth Stone

EMAIL ENDS:

I encourage all my readers to carefully follow the suggested searches above for their own piece-of-mind, and at the same time I invite anyone who has had troubled dealings with Mr. Carboni or eSources to send me their detailed information, which I will file for later use against this company and individual; below is a special email account where you can send me your details. Thank you for your time, folks!

carbissue@yourchinatradingpartner.com

Safe Trading!


Some Sources For You In Your Search Regarding eSources
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Originally posted 2009-09-13 19:25:05. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Popularity: 29%

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Posted in General Information, Hall Of Shame | 7 Comments »

The China CEO Gift-Giving Scam

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Municipality of Tianjin
Image of Tianjin via Wikipedia

I was recently contacted by Eric Vermaas, the CEO of PT Team Wood (www.teamwood.org), a Dutch-Indonesian timber and furniture partnership based in Jakarta, to run a background check on an Import Export company based in Tianjin, China, and which had just placed an order for $915,000 USD in speciality wood furnishings.

Fortunately, for Eric I just happened to be in Tianjin at the time, as I was visiting family for the Mid-Autumn Festival, one of the two main traditional festivals along with Chinese New Year, and therefore checking them out was a fairly simple process for me.

The Chinese company details are as follows:

Tianjin Tanbo Import & Export Trade Co., Ltd.,

Address:

43 Nanjing Road, Heping District,

300350, Tianjin, China

Web: www.sjzdingsheng.com.cn

Tel: + 86 228 143 92 09

Fax: + 86 400 67 61 100 ext 1010

Email: heiyexingguang8@126.com, tanbo_2003@yeah.net

Trade Manager: Chen Jinliang

I quickly discovered that telephone number is not a land line, and is actually a mobile number known as a xiao ling tong, and which looks like a land-line number, can’t be easily traced, and is very cheap to buy.

The fax number isn’t in Tianjin and seems to be out of town, and is perhaps a fax service somewhere, hence the extension number; quite probably a big room in a cheap building with a number of fax machines in it – linked to a PBX if the extension number is anything to go by.

I visited the address provided on the website and discovered that it doesn’t actually exist. Basically the numbers on that street jump from number 35 to number 57 Nanjing Road, with nothing but an abandoned construction site between these two numbers, and therefore no sign of number 43.

Of course, all of this seemed somewhat suspicious at best, particularly more so since I further determined that they allegedly scammed a businessperson from Europe out of 8,000 Euros on or about the 22nd or 23rd of September 2009 (you can find the details here), and have also placed large orders with several other companies, in one case up to $600,000 USD in value, and all since the 31st August 2009.

I further discovered that Tianjin Tanbo Import & Export Trade Co., Ltd., also operate under the name of Hebei Dingsheng Import & Export Company, and have the same non-existent address.

In consequence to all of the above I strongly advised PT Team Wood to have nothing whatsoever to do with this “company“.

Tianjin Tanbo also failed to respond to my repeated phone calls or emails. Particularly when once they realised they had Chinese speakers, currently resident in China, on their tails. The only call we had, and which I instigated, was brief, and led to their prevarication and a lot of stuttering, particularly when I asked for their address, and they said it was the same as the website – to which I responded that I’d been to visit the location, and it didn’t exist. Whereupon they responded that they’d just recently moved. How convenient and how odd they’d forgotten to mention this when first asked, or even to update their website.

Finally, I asked them to have a senior executive call me back, and have had no response in the three days since that call – and neither do I expect one.

The CEO Gift Scam Works in the Following Manner:

1. The scammer places a large order with you.

2. They then invite you to China to finalise the contract.

3. When you arrive, they will tell you that in traditional Chinese business culture you should buy the CEO a gift commensurate with his position. This in the case of the last person I found scammed by them was for gold bars worth 8,000 Euros.

4. After you have signed the contract and returned home, they then contact you again and tell you the contracts must be translated and stamped and sealed by a notary, and that the fee for this is 1,350 Euros or something of the type.

5. If you pay that then the next step would be for them to cease contact with you, as they are in no way interested in a purchase.

Gift-Giving In China

Gift-giving in China is common in business, but a bottle of wine or a treat from your own country is usually more than acceptable, and I know of no CEO who would expect me to buy them anything expensive. Moreover, since you are a foreigner you’re usually expected to be ignorant of gift-giving in China, and so are exempt from this. Most gifts between Chinese businessmen are cigarettes, Chinese white spirits (baijiu – a strong clear alcohol), or a good tea; certainly never in the form of gold bars, unless you have plans on bribing your way into a contract.

In conclusion, and as a rule of thumb, you should never feel obliged to buy anybody any kind of gift in China during the pursuance of your business interactions. However, out of politeness, a small gift of not-too-great an expense from your own country or culture will be gratefully received and appreciated.

Safe Trading!

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Originally posted 2009-10-07 22:50:26. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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