PayPal Scam

Moyglish

I have a "buyer" who wants me to send an item to his cousin in West Africa. :rolleyes:

He wants to pay full asking price and pay via PayPal.

Now I know how the scam works when the scammers send you cheques/drafts etc.. they bounce and you're left with no item and no money.

Buuut, the PayPal one is new to me. How exactly does this work?

If he sends me funds through PayPal he can't reverse the transaction again, would he be using someones hacked account, or possibly just send me a phishing e-mail stating I have new funds or something?

Mountjoy Mugger

Hacked account, more often than not.

Moyglish

Or is it the old "We're holding new funds for you until you reply with the tracking number of the package" thing from "PayPal" ?

Crash Bang Wall

He pays via Pay Pal.

Claims he didnt get the goods

Money is refunded to him.

He gets goods and his cash.

Just a guess btw!!

Moyglish

Mountjoy Mugger wrote: »

Hacked account, more often than not.

So what exactly happens in the case whereby they use a hacked account?

Obviously the hacked person, I would presume would be reimbursed pending an investigation by PayPal, but what would happen in the case where the seller was duped also and sent the goods?

Would PayPal refund the fee from the seller, with them thereby losing out on both their item and money, or would PayPal just cover the loss themselves?

jor el

The seller will lose out. This has been seen here on a number of occasions, with various buyers making different types of claim that all result in the seller losing the money and product that was sold. Sometimes the seller is protected, but there are a lot of ways for Paypal to get out of it.

The simplest scam works by sending the seller an email, pretending to be from Paypal, that says they have received the money. If the seller doesn't actually log into Paypal to confirm that the money is there then they'll not notice it's a scam, and they often just send the goods on. Once it's posted, that's the end of it. Paypal will not offer any protection in this case as they weren't even involved in the transaction. This is probably the most common scam, and it works best because no one will investigate it.

Moyglish

Just received my "funds" from PayPal.

For reference so people here know what to look out for...

Dear Moyglish,

This is PayPal payment department,we use this opportunity to inform you that Santana Mose has paid for the item bought from you and you are expected to provide us with the item shipment tracking number within 24hours of this notification.notify us within 24hours so that we can credit the money to your account.

You have PayPal Authority 100% assurance your account will be credited instantly as follow
Amount: €100.00 EUR
This is 100% assurance from PayPal Authority to you.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The item shipping tracking number should be email to us for confirmation of shipment.

boiledeggs

Yeah I sell alot on ebay and basically I charge for registered post, and list it up front to avoid dodgy buyers.

I never had a problem so much with ebay or paypal though so maybe I am just lucky

mari2222

This meets many of the conditions for a "scam" email. The poor English is a major alert.