Examples of Suspected Fraud/Fake Emails

[PayPal_Adrian]

Hello everyone!

One of the greatest strengths consumers possess against fraud and phishing is education and collaboration.  To help support your safety online, I'm going to open this special thread up for you.  Here, you can post examples of what you believe to be attempts by individuals to defraud you or others of their hard earned valuables and money. 

Before we begin, a few housekeeping points:

• We will be using this as a "master thread," so if we find an example in other areas of the boards, we may merge the post into this one.

• For everyone's safety, please remove any last names or contact information (including email addresses) from your examples.  In many instances, the names provided by fraudsters are fake or may actually be the name of someone they already defrauded. 

• On that same note, please don't ever attempt to confront a fraudster or attempt to track them down.  Instead, turn the information you do have over to your local authorities. 

• Please also remove any links from your posts, as these could potentially go to spoofed or phishing websites.

Other than that, we only ask that you keep it productive and stay within the Forum Decorum and posting guidelines.  I'll be stopping in on a regular basis to clean house and comment on posts, so don't be surprised if you see my mug - or another moderator - stopping in to say hello! 

With that said, I'm going to start moving posts in, so you might see some older examples mixed in with the new posts.  I hope this thread becomes a great resource for everyone!

Stay safe,

Adrian

[CST]

I have a small home based business & use PayPal for credit card transactions.

I recieved a very odd/suspicious contact. They want a large $ order but won't give me any contact information (no phone number, address etc), only contact has been through email. They want the order sent to a suspect adress in Europe (from Canada). They want to pay for the whole thing (product +shipping) with their credit card - would be about $8000. They specify the shipping company to use but address is an email (<removed>) - again very suspicious !

I can't figure out their scam/angle... I wouldn't send product until credit card transaction was cleared. Are they just trying to annoy me & waste my time or is this some scam for paying the shipping company...???

Any help, advice would be appreciated !

Thanks,

J

[PayPal_Adrian]

CST -

Welcome to the boards!

That all seems very, very odd.  A legitimate purchaser would have no problem providing you their contact information, and wouldn't be using a free web-based email address.  I'd be willing to bet their English is poor and so is their grammar; there are multiple spelling mistakes.  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Adrian

[Pugwash]

I just listed a large ticket item $10k for sale, within the hour I had an email from someone very interested and wanted pictures, we agreed on the sale and he was in a big rush to get it asap and wanted to pay by PAYPAL, I didn't have a paypal account so I signed up, then all of a sudden I get notice that the funds have been taken out of his account but are being held by paypal until I go to Western Union and give $900 to a pickup agent, I contacted the purchaser and said I was not comfortable doing this, he had asked originally if he sent me the $900 ontop of the price of the item would I do this for him and I had agreed, but when I said that I did not agree to fork over $900 of my own money to some third party

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@CST wrote:

I have a small home based business & use PayPal for credit card transactions.

I recieved a very odd/suspicious contact. They want a large $ order but won't give me any contact information (no phone number, address etc), only contact has been through email. They want the order sent to a suspect adress in Europe (from Canada). They want to pay for the whole thing (product +shipping) with their credit card - would be about $8000. They specify the shipping company to use but address is an email (deltashippingcom@ aol.com) - again very suspicious !

I can't figure out their scam/angle... I wouldn't send product until credit card transaction was cleared. Are they just trying to annoy me & waste my time or is this some scam for paying the shipping company...???

Any help, advice would be appreciated !

Thanks,

J

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 and would withdraw the sale he got quite mad at me.  I figured that at the end of the day he is the one in a big rush, not me, why on earth am I doing all the running around and paying $900....if he is legit then yes I'm making his life harder, but at the same time if he is legit then he would also understand that putting me in the position of shelling out $900 before I get a dime is also not sitting well with me. 

[jamesnupoort]

yes that is a scam if they are trying to get u to send them money via western union. this just happend to me today. i also noticed that the paypal emails i recived were from a fake email and not the actual (at)paypal.com but they looked almost identical to the paypal msgs that they send asides from a few spelling errors and grammer. he wanted me to send 300 to a guy that was going to pick up the item for him. he said he would add the 300 plus 50 for me doing the western union transfer n make it worth my time.  that got me looking into things and thats when i figure out a fake adresses n spelling errors etc..  so look out ppl

[mud79bronco]

i had someone want to buy what i was selling sent me $1700 through paypal but was being held untill i pay western union $600 to a shipper in london,and as soon as i got the code from western union contact paypal customer services and my money would be released,as i have never spent money to sell something before,scam

[Hanke]

I just had the same kinda email..he wanted to pay $700 more then what I was asking.. Then through emails he wanted me to send $600 to a shipper first then send reference number to PayPal before funds were released. He texted me on my phone first because my number was on kijiji so I had his number.. I looked it up and it was in Florida and I live in Alberta.. He wanted to ship it to Ontario for his brother

[Scam-Catcher]

After reading the posts it is clear that some of the same guys continue to try and scam the innocent consumers by saying and using the same offers posing the same to good to be true lies over and over and over again. The guy who tried to scam me "Darren B" we shall refer to him. Made the axact same promises to many other PayPal'rs ... he offered me $700 over my asking price for a vehicle ... said he was away ...working lots ... could not make the pick up himself ...said he was buying  the truck for his brother in Ontario as a surprize ... and would arrange a third party pick up and transport it to his parents so they could handle things in his absence. Found out he was operating out of Florida, and indicated he lived in CA. Said he could only pay via PayPAl, said he would sent me the funds and that I should receive a confirmation email, of course i did but something looked suspicious about it. Bc i just set up my account for the sale, i was unsure about things so i called PayPal customer service and they gave me good intel. Same as many others indicated, he wanted me to send back to the third party the extra funds he was sending me ... said i could use any WalMart, Post Office or Western Union that he incuded extra so i would do this for him ... which would go into my account ... once i sent him the 600 he had included to cover his proxy services... doind so would allow me to receive the funds he had sent as soon as his proxy person receive it first from me ... his proxy person was going to be some some guy by the name of Brown (red flag) in the US and his funds to me would be released into my PayPal account as soon as his receive them from me. I was so F'ing **bleep** off I wanted to track the guy down and send him exactly what i thought ... but I did not. How can we nail these **bleep**? ... If it seems almost too good, conveninet and timely to be true ... it is!

Be Vigilant .... Scam Catcher out!

[rommel6]

Upon opening my account and waiting to confirm my checking, several people are trying to scam the account. Please review and take appropriate action with these paypal clients.

[Heiss]

The same thing just happened to me, I put an ad on Kijiji, and this guy texted me, offering $700 more than I asked. It sounded really suspicious, then I googled these scams and came across this thread.