Same thing just happened to me. I have an ad on craigslist and got a response from this number. He wanted to know if i would send him a paypal request or if he could send a payment via western union.
Good post. I'm in Atlanta I was curious why someone in California was interested about my computer for sale. Surely there are thousands of computers for sale between California and Georgia.
Scammer! What this person does is finds something for sale on craigslist and email the person saying that they want to buy it for their cousin or someone. Then they ask if you take paypal or want your through western union. I'm not sure how the paypal scam work but if you go for the western union they will send you an email that looks like it's from western union but if you check the address closely it's not even a western union email address and basically you ship the item and submit the tracking number and then you will get your payment. Accept like I said the email is not generated through western union so basically you would send your item to an unknown place and then submit the tracking number to an email address and bam your out your item and the money.