Were they trying to Scam me?

[tubbysnowman]

Hi guys,

I am trying to sell an item on Facebook marketplace, and was contacted by a woman who said that she wants it straight away, but she will get her cousin to pick it up.

She said that she can't pay cash, but would send money via paypal or straight away to reserve the item. When I said I'd prefer cash, and why didn't she transfer the money to her cousin and he can pay me cash when he came to pick it up, she said he had an issue with his account.

I was very suspicious at this point and said sorry, no cash, no sale.

I'm very curious if there is a way that she could have scammed me by making a paypal payment, and then when she had the item she could cancel it, or anything like that?

Her language made me very suspicious.

Thanks,

[kernowlass · Accepted solution]

@tubbysnowman 

SCAM.

They encourage you to accept a direct Paypal payment.
No funds or activity of the transaction shows in your Paypal account and any emails may go into your junk/spam folders.

They don't quibble on cost and may also say they can't view the item as they are disabled or working abroad or sending as a gift to a family member but they will arrange a shipping agent or courier/friend to collect it. 

You will get/got a "fake" email that looks as though it is from paypal.....it isn't because they don't have a Paypal account and have no intention of paying you.
It will say the buyer has paid ...you won't have been paid.

The fake paypal email will tell you that the buyer has paid for the item + shipping costs but you must send those shipping costs to the courier/ shipping agent via another payment processor than Paypal or by providing some vouchers or tokens before the funds are released to you. OR the family member would be arranging the courier for them.
They are not interested in the item, they just want that couriers/shipping funds and you will never see money in your paypal balance. OR the person collecting will then chargeback if they do actually collect it as you have 0 seller protection for items that are personally delivered or collected.

Paypal NEVER tell you to send an item before the payment is showing in your paypal account.
Paypal NEVER expect you to use a rival money transfer service eg Moneygram, Western Union, Bank Transfer or any sort of gift token or voucher.

[nvines]

SCAM!. I advertised some prints for sale on my Facebook business site. I was contacted by a potential customer interested in buying one of my prints. I was a little suspicious as to why someone in the USA wanted to buy a print from someone in Australia, so I checked out their Facebook site. There was a lovely profile photo of a middle-aged gentleman and his wife with their beautiful home on the banner. He was a University professor and had many university-type Friends. There were nice comments from his friends about his home and photo.  I assumed he was legit so I proceeded with the transaction. He asked me how I wanted him to pay. I said direct debit and supplied my bank details. He said he did not do online banking and that could he pay with Paypal. I agreed. However, he soon contacted me to say that PayPal would not accept his money as I wasn't set up as a Business account but this issue could be easily fixed by him placing $400AU into my Paypal account. I declined his "generous" offer as I told him that he didn't know me from a bar of soap. I quickly turned my Paypal account into a business account but in the meantime, I received another email from him saying that he had placed the money into my PayPal account and he trusted me to do the right thing and deduct the amount he owed for the print and return the change to his PayPal account. I assured him I would and proceeded to wait for the money to go into my PayPal account. No $400 went in and then the penny dropped....I was in the process of being scammed! He kept insisting he had sent the money and began to panic when I wouldn't send him the "change" from his transaction and told me his son was in hospital dying with COVID and that money was to pay his hospital bills. I was furious. Mostly with myself for falling for this scam, but also with the scammer. I decided to play along. I told him I would send the money and repeated his Paypal account number back to him with some obvious mistakes. He came back to me with a different account number and again I repeated it back to him with obvious mistakes such as zg123abc...nothing like the number he gave me. I got a single response of "LOL" from him and he was gone. He knew I knew it was a scam. I quickly tried to contact the man whose Facebook site the scammer had used to warn him that his site had been hacked, but there was no way to leave a comment or message him?? So I proceeded to message a lot of his Facebook Friends so that they could tell him that his Facebook site had been hacked. Only one of his "Friends" got back to me 3 days later and said they didn't know this person they were supposedly friends with. I can tell you that this was a very sophisticated scam operation that I almost fell for. Scams are becoming more highly developed. If it appears fishy, it probably is. Be Careful.

[kernowlass]

@nvines 

That is a very common scam and not sophisticated at all.

Basically its the 'refund' scam. All you have to do is remember, no funds in your balance = you have been paid 0 money. Even pending payments SHOW in your paypal balance but either on hold or with a clearance date. This scam is all over the internet and this forum on a daily basis. Glad you were not caught out.