Potential Scam - Selling camera.

crushproof

Hey there,

I'm selling a camera at the moment and Gumtree and I've received an offer from someone who is willing to pay X amount into my Paypal account. Great news.... but naturally enough I was perplexed when they said they want it sent to their cousin in "West Africa" and the email address was blumail.org, which I never heard of but is apparently a UN associated email.

I'm very wary of scammers and after years of internet buying and selling nothing has ever happened me.

What potential risks are there if all I am doing is providing my Paypal email address for payment and nothing else?

Cheers folks

Judgement Day

Walk away!

jor el

crushproof wrote: »

What potential risks are there if all I am doing is providing my Paypal email address for payment and nothing else?

You will lose the camera and the money. That's not potential, it's guaranteed.

crushproof

jor el wrote: »

You will lose the camera and the money. That's not potential, it's guaranteed.

Yeah I know, 99.99999% of me said obviously walk away you fool.....but I was just interested in how they scam you out of it through a Paypal payment.

Do they claim the item never arrived or what?

the groutch

crushproof wrote: »

Yeah I know, 99.99999% of me said obviously walk away you fool.....but I was just interested in how they scam you out of it through a Paypal payment.

Do they claim the item never arrived or what?

either the paypal payment will be made using a stolen/cloned credit card

or they'll pay by paypal and have some collect it, then claim they never recieved it, and because you don't have any proof od delivery you'd lose the claim

jor el

Another classic scam method is to send you a spoofed Paypal mail saying you received a payment. It looks genuine, and unless you actually check your Paypal account you may believe it is real. You then send on the goods, but you haven't even been paid at all.

This is one of the most common and easiest Paypal scams to run, as you need no stolen cards or hacked accounts. You don't even need an actual Paypal account, as it can all be done from an anonymous email account.

The Lovely Muffin

jor el wrote: »

Another classic scam method is to send you a spoofed Paypal mail saying you received a payment. It looks genuine, and unless you actually check your Paypal account you may believe it is real. You then send on the goods, but you haven't even been paid at all.

But surely you'd check your PayPal account before sending any goods at all?

Or in your PayPal account does it look like the money is there?

crushproof

Purple_Bobbin wrote: »

But surely you'd check your PayPal account before sending any goods at all?

Or in your PayPal account does it look like the money is there?

Exactly, crazy how people don't double check these things. Christ knows how many millions these guys make from doing things like this! I think I'll just send a few emails back and forth to p*ss them off and then tell them it's been sold to someone else, mwah hahahaha...

jor el

Purple_Bobbin wrote: »

But surely you'd check your PayPal account before sending any goods at all?

So many don't, which is why the scam works and why it's sop popular.

From a scammers point of view, they'll do this to dozens if not hundreds of sellers a day. If even 10% of them don't check, the scammer makes a tidy amount.

rubadub

Just cut an paste some unusual wording from the email and put it into google using "quotes". This means google searches for the exact phrase.

Also you can cut & paste the email to here so when other people search they will find this thread and see it for the scam it is.

It is best to pick a phrase with poor english/grammar. They often change the wording just a little bit. Using quotes makes google search for the exact phrase. e.g.

"Can I know the condition of the item?"
gets a few
http://www.google.ie/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=%22Can+I+know+the+condition+of+the+item%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=3692ee7604fbe32


"And I will pay the postage and packing cost for the item"
This gets a few reports on gumtree
http://www.google.ie/#hl=en&expIds=17259,27702,28272,28280&xhr=t&q=%22And+I+will+pay+the+postage+and+packing+cost+for+the+item%22&cp=57&pf=p&sclient=psy&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=%22And+I+will+pay+the+postage+and+packing+cost+for+the+item%22&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=3692ee7604fbe32

theT

Agree to the sale, tell him to send the money and go along with whatever he says only rather than sending the camera send a pair of diahorea stained jocks......

See what kind of reaction you get to that...

crushproof

I've been playing him all morning, he sent out the first Paypal email which looked terrible, how on earth people fall for it is beyond me.
I've raised the price of postage 3 times so far and he keeps on agreeing and sending further paypal emails. I like how the emails subject is "Payment Confirmed - Ship NOW"

jor el

Ask for a scan of his passport so you can verify his identity. Then tell him you'll ship it as soon as you finish burying your cat which has just died. Then make up some excuse about not being able to go to the post office because your wife has galloping consumption, or something like that.

See how ridiculous you can become before he accuses you of being a scammer and cheating him.

theT

and then share all the aemails and his email address with like minded people so we can all spam the **** out of him.

patwicklow

what ever you do dont let them know your real e=mail as they now have ways of cracking into other accounts with it and they also sell on your e-mail for more of the scum to try and con gumtree got to be the worst site to sell anything any way

Jesus Shaves

jor el wrote: »

Another classic scam method is to send you a spoofed Paypal mail saying you received a payment. It looks genuine, and unless you actually check your Paypal account you may believe it is real. You then send on the goods, but you haven't even been paid at all.

This is one of the most common and easiest Paypal scams to run, as you need no stolen cards or hacked accounts. You don't even need an actual Paypal account, as it can all be done from an anonymous email account.

Yep, this has happened to me a few times now, The mail looks genuine but that's where it ends, the links don't link to paypal

crushproof

This guy is such a trier, I've came up with a billion excuses for being delayed and kept asking for a copy of his ID. He says he'll pass me on his international passport. This arrived in my inbox this morning, LOL!




What a hero

Beano

i assume it was you that did the obvious photoshop job?

crushproof

Beano wrote: »

i assume it was you that did the obvious photoshop job?

Hahaha that's the hilarious thing, nope....it was "David Mark" himself.
But wait, what photoshop job? :P

rubadub

LOL, thats classic. Theres a site where people scam the scammers.

http://www.419eater.com/index.php

they get them to do ridiculous tasks, one scammer was fooled into handwriting a full Harry Potter book. Others are got to dress up and pose.