It’s been a couple months since Jerry Solie, a fishing buddy who lives at Mission Beach on the Tulalip Tribes reservation, came in with a story I hadn’t heard before.

Being the smart man that he is, he’d bought a classified ad in The Herald to sell a set of four snow tires. He wanted $200.

What he got in response was someone who wanted to send him $5,000. He was told to keep $250 and send the rest back.

It sure sounded like a scam, which is why Solie wanted to alert me to it. I just hadn’t heard that variety before.

Then a few weeks ago, a fishing guide friend named Ryan Smith was lamenting a situation when a group from a foreign country wanted to come to the Seattle area for a week and fish.

Ultimately, the members wanted to send him an overpayment in which he would forward the extra to someone else. The deal didn’t sound right, so Smith scratched it.

Solie and Smith both made the right call.

On a visit to my favorite anti-scam site on the Internet, ScamBusters.org, I learned such overpayment scams aren’t new. But they have become increasingly common these days.

In Solie’s case, he said they buyer sounded on the phone like a foreigner, certainly not someone familiar with English.

“He called me back three or four different times,” Solie said. “It sounded like gibberish to me. It was all designed to get you confused.”

Solie said he gave the man his e-mail address and was told in a reply the man was from back East.

“He said I was supposed to take the money and send it back to him. And I could keep $250.”

According to ScamBusters, the overpayment scam has lots of variations, but the key is that someone wants to pay you more than you’re asking for a sale item, often an expensive item such as a car or a wedding dress.

Often the people claim to be from overseas.

Usually, they’ll send a fake money order that looks very real. There will be some plausible reason why the payment is more than you sought: international fees, special taxes or even payment to you to become a U.S. representative.

What they want is to secure personal and banking information from you so they can assume your identity or steal money from you directly by looting your accounts.

The bottom line is that if someone is offering an overpayment and you don’t know the person, forget it.

That’s what Solie did.

And he ended up selling his studded snow tires for the price he wanted to someone in Granite Falls.

“He was a real nice guy. and he was tickled to death,” Solie said. “I think it was snowing when he came to pick them up.”

Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459; benbow@heraldnet.com