Craigslist verification scam - but with a Paypal secure card.

[eharsh87]

I (foolishly, I'll admit) fell victim to a verification scam on Craigslist. The same one documented on this site; the names and e-mail addresses and URLs are different, but the e-mail the person received after their 'verification' was the same one as mine, down to the URL mentioned in the mail.

The gist is this: The company running the site would (supposedly) only use your credit card to verify that you're of age, and do some sort of background check, I guess, to make sure you're not a crazed axe murderer, at which point you'd receive the other person's contact information. In reality, what happens is they charge you 40 dollars for crappy porn.

Now. I'm doubtful that there's any hope of getting my monies back, since those types of sites usually have crazy pages of legal doublespeak that somehow makes it so ripping you off is legal - so I'm willing to accept that it was a $40 dollar lesson on the internets and ways they can **bleep** you.

My main concern, then, is safety and security. Having the foresight to use a secure card (read: being too lazy to dig out my actual physical card), I decided to use a single-use PayPal secure card, which I promptly closed once I realized what had happened.

So, am I safe? I mean, the card was single-use anyway, and it's been closed on top of that. They can't use it to do any crazy fraudulent things with it?

Secondly, do I have any hope of disputing the charge and getting a refund? - 40 dollars isn't an insane amount of mony, but it's a lot when you're working minimum wage.

I'm rather new to getting ripped off, so I have no idea where to go with this.

[profdata]

This is consered an unauthorized charge. You need to file with Paypal or your bank

[profdata]

Contact you credit card company

[eharsh87]

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@profdata wrote:

This is consered an unauthorized charge. You need to file with Paypal or your bank

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And, erm. How do I do that? Sorry, I'm just an idiot when it comes to this stuff sometimes.

You might have to either spell it out for me, or point me to the Help section that does.

[takingover]

i think what he means is that you need to call either paypal, your bank, and/or both. because the message you received clearly stated that it was to "verify" if you are real, then if any charges were made can be disputed. if it's a scam, and it clearly looks like it is, you are somewhat protected. but banks beings the banks they are... and their policies as ambiguous as they are, you may get lucky with an in-the-mood rep to help you.

[cjlemansky]

I was too smart for this guy, but as the story goes. I was selling a Men's Wedding Ring on Craigslist because I was short on cash and needed to pay a bill. Anyway, this guy from Nigeria, his name is Cain Bruce, he said he was located in NY but on business in Libya. He wanted my ring for his daughter, who's schooling is in Nigeria. I had no reason to distrust him at this point, so i said okay sure. He asked how much? I told him 300.00. He offered me 350.00, thats the ring purchase plus shipping. I said okay. Then he brought up paypal, and said he needed my email address connected with that account. I gave it to him the email address. He emails be back saying he sent it. I checked, and it wasnt there. Then he said its pending because of a new policy paypal has. They need the tracking numberbefore they'll release the funds. I didnt buy it. I told him he dont get the ring til i get the money in my account. Then I get this email from "Legal Action With FBI" that says this:

   It is important we know the status of the item "Men's Wedding Ring" bought otherwise, legal may be taken against you, since you have not replied to the confirmation of payment made to your account by  Mr Cain Bruce as soon as possible.

    We believed you entered into binding agreement by requesting money through PayPal,and by non-response to the payment confirmation made to your account you have violate the PayPal agreement.  This is a legal deal and however the buyer has already contacted us in other to take actions about your non-response.We are ensuring to make PayPal a safer place, therefore we need to set confidence on our users. Shipment tracking details must be sent to some check tracking account email.

      

PayPalTeam
Sincerely

Copyright 2000-2010 PayPal . All rights reserved.
PayPal Belgium Ltd. is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the United States as an electronic money institution.
PayPal FSA Register Number: 226056.

His daughter's address:

Name:    Salako Isa
Address:   No 95 igbore road ijeja,
City:   Abeokuta
State:     Ogun State
Postal Code:  23439
Country:      Nigeria

His email is a gmail one. Username: cainbruce006

I mean come on. I use paypal all the time. I know that if he really sent something through my account, and even if it was processing, which its highly unlikely. He would have been addressing me by my real first and lastname, not my internet first and lastname. LOL.

[snteev33]

I was selling a video camera on craigslist and I think I may have run into the same person or same company running this scam. They told me the funds were pending and would not show until i sent the confirmation code to the hyperlink in the email. I however put my mouse over the hyperlinks for the email to respond to and it was re-routed to a different email address. I found it interesting how I got two emails about my camera and both wanted it shipped to Nigeria as your email did. 

I did some digging and I am pretty sure I found the guy online because the email address all the links were routed to matches his exactly and coincidentally works for a film company in a different state.

I would love to find out how (if possible) to take some legal action against this guy, even though I didn't fall for the scam, it's these people, who often threaten to send you to the FBI, say that they too have been scammed before,  do not ever give a name, and might I add type with horrible spelling/grammar, that make it very inconvenient for all people online who try to do legitimate buys and sales.

[msedano]

I was totally in the same boat as you guys. I am still a bit new to the whole online selling portion of paypal. My story is as follows:

I had read up on the rules and security before selling. I started by selling a game system on craigslist, within two days I had received an offer via phone (i declined that one), the one I did agreed to was via email. It was from a 'Laura Franklin' offering me $300 as payment for the item plus shipping. Now this 'Laura' character claimed to have a grandson in France (who was in some sort of research program), so I suppose it was somewhat plausible.

Ok so even though I originally wanted $185 for my game system I figured that international shipping would bring that cost up some. I checked it out and it was like $30 so I would be making like $90 profit. It only got more suspicious from here on. This person sent me a fake paypal confirmation email demanding I ship the item. It also said that paypal had changed its policy so payment won't show up on account until shipping was confirmed. I read through the email, numbers didn't even match...............it said I was paid $200 then further down it was $300. I checked my account and nothing. I forwarded the email to spoof@paypal.com and it confirmed it was a phishing scam.

I told the person no payment was received. They were getting real aggitated and claimed they didn't know what I was talking about. The last email was a threat to contact the FBI about how I was scamming them. Also as you guys have said about the grammer/spelling totally horrible. Their ability to spell and write seemed to go down with every sucessive email. Example "what is going on am have paid  you need to ship item to my grandson am think you are trying to scam am going to contact FBI about this Issue ok".

Now this was my first attempt to sell something online. Moral of the story would be to read up on security topics and keep in touch with the paypal team. Big thank you for paypal, for keeping me from falling for that scam.

[luvstampin]

I am so glad you did your homework BEFORE selling! To many sellers jump right in and get taken.

Any mention of the FBI is also a red flag. Actually the FBI is pretty peeped off that thee name 'FBI' is in the scam letters. It is their #1 fraud of 2009 - you can read it on the FBI website. Very informative of all the scams out there. 

Another great site is the IC 3 internet crimes site- the link is also on the FBI site -

I had a scammer emailing me once. I replied to to them that I already forwarded the email my self to the FBI and never heard from them again........

Good luck and stay safe!

Tina

[clou627]

Hey,

I'm new to paypal and online selling. I listed something on KSL (similar to craigslist but for the western US only). I got an email from a "Mrs. Laura Jax" who said she is not local b/c she is taking care of her sick grandma. She offered me an extra $100 to ship the stuff to her. The grammar in the emails is pretty horrible. I'm suspicious but I want to sell the stupid things. Any thoughts? Here's a snippet from the messages:

"thanks for the mail...am okay with the explanation,so you will have to send me a paypal money request or send me the full name and the e-mail address you use to register with paypal so that i can send you payment for the items on time...thanks"

Any thoughts would be appreciated...I'm a paypal noob.