I think I've been scammed

swingking

I sold a camera to a buyer in the UK and everything seemed hunky dory. I recevied a note from paypal saying they won't put the money in my account until I send the tracking number which I then got an email from Paypal to say that the money will be in my account

Today I get an email from @paypal.co.uk

Congratulation!!! Your payment has been posted to your PayPal account which will be received in your account within the next few hours.

Unfortunately, there was a slight error encountered, our account crediting system generated an error in your payment and credited a total sum of €967.00 EUR into your account instead of €480.00 EUR.

The deduction of the over paid sum of €487.00 EUR has reflected on Brenda S. account, you are advised to contact the buyer to resolve this issue by refunding the over paid sum of €487.00 EUR before the delivery of the payment in your account.

We regret to inform you that the payment may not be available in your PayPal account until this dispute is resolved with your buyer and the refund is completely made.

We are highly sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
Thanks for your understanding.

———

Then I got another email from paypal (@paypal.co.uk) saying this


our payment has been held temporary.

The Payment will be released to your account on or before the next 24hrs, That is, you have less than 24hrs to refund the balance to the buyer to enable us release the sum of €967.00 EUR to your PayPal account.
The buyer has been contacted by PayPal authority to select the preferred method of payment in which he want to receive the refund.
The buyer confirmed that you should send the refund of €487.00 EUR via Money Gram Money Transfer for undisclosed reasons.

Below is the Confirmed and Verified Receiver's Details as provided by the buyer.

Brenda S
,Liverpool Merseyside.
United Kingdom.

Note: The sum of €967.00 EUR will not be release to your account until you have transferred the refund of €487.00 EUR to the buyer's given information above via Money Gram Money Transfer (www.moneygram.com) before the next 24hrs.

———

Obviously I 'm not going to send this money but the camera has gone in the post. I need to intercept it or I 'm going to lose out.

Can anyone help me here ?

Thanks

MOD: I removed the name and address from post

alb

Are you sure those emails are really from paypal? It's seems unlikely paypal would be telling you send money to someone via moneygram. Have you logged into your paypal account to check the status?

Spocker

Have you received any money to your PayPal account at all? I'm assuming you still have the camera, right? Get in touch with eBay and let them know first of all

James Bond Junior

Have you actually received payment in YOUR PayPal account?

Tzardine

Did you really post a camera to somebody before they paid you ?

K.Flyer

Log into your paypal account, but not through any links on those emails.
Not sure if you can, but look into stopping the camera being delivered.
Reading the paypal message you posted, I think you will find that you are most likely the victim of a scam.
Some bad grammer in there and the suggestion of making a refund through MoneyGram rings alarm bells.

swingking

No payment received

I'm very sure that's a genuine PayPal email

Do you know how I will go about intercepting the camera

nsa0bupkd3948x

emails are not from PayPal. You would need to get in touch with An Post but very very unlikely they'll intercept the parcel.

alb

swingking wrote: »

No payment received

I'm very sure that's a genuine PayPal email

What makes you sure? because it really seems like they're not and that this is a common scam. I googled for "paypal moneygram refund" and you just get results like this describing the scam and saying the emails are fake:

https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/About-Payments/Does-Paypal-ask-me-to-send-money-via-Moneygram-before-I-receive/td-p/986917

Tzardine

swingking wrote: »

I'm very sure that's a genuine PayPal email

It is as fake as an €11 note. Do not under any circumstances reply, or open any links in it.

Do not send them any money. You have unfortunately been scammed. If you send them money you have been scammed again.

punisher5112

Op seriously this is a scam going on for years.

They do it with cars, bikes and basically anything.


They will overpay and you pay the difference.

Even alarm bells should ring if they agree to pay full price right away without any haggling.

If the camera is sent its gone.

You are out of cost of camera and as mentioned above do not return any monies which you have and will not receive.

They may though enter money from a stolen account in some cases which means its all taken back anyway.

swingking

Thanks

I won't be sending any money

Do you know if I can intercept the camera ? I have the tracking number

swingking

How did they get a @paypal email address ?

nsa0bupkd3948x

swingking wrote: »

Thanks

I won't be sending any money

Do you know if I can intercept the camera ? I have the tracking number

I would say very very unlikely. I'd guess your best bet would be ringing the sorting office that will be delivering the parcel and request they return to sender if your address is on it. But you'd be relying on an employee bending the rules.

swingking wrote: »

How did they get a @paypal email address ?

It's very easy to spoof from addresses by email.

Ludo

There are loads of spelling and grammar mistakes in the email. It is most definitely NOT from PayPal.

fmpisces

Did you copy and paste those emails directly to here?
If you did, it's definitely a scam, there's no way PayPal would make those grammatical errors (and there's a lot of them). I hope you either get your camera back or payment for it.

Collie D

How did you send the camera? A courier service like DHL or TNT, etc. will be able to reroute the package. Not sure about An Post but worth getting on to them ASAP.

You've definitely been scammed. Get off Boards and on to your delivery agent.

nava

As Collie D said you need to contact your courier to try to get them to return parcel to you. If you posted with An Post contact them, I would try email, phone and Twitter, also contact Royal Mail and Parcel Force, explain the situation, they might be able to pull it off their system, maybe also send a picture of your An post receipt to show you are the sender, but do contact them now maybe google a sorting offices for Liverpool and contact them if their number is listed.

amtc

It's illegal to intercept anything in the post apart from a court order under the Postal Services Act 2011

Wexfordboy89

When did u post it off?if u posted it thursday they will probably get the camera on monday.id say if you even posted it on Friday its probably too late u get the camera back.

Sam Quentin

But surely that's theft, contact the nearest Police Station to that address... They might be more than willing and enthusiastic to help.......

TopTec

I would ring or mail Merseyside Police, either their HQ or the local station.

http://https://www.merseyside.police.uk/contact-us/report-crime-online/

Make a complaint of theft/criminal deception. You can get the details online. You are still the owner of the item until paid for. The address will, in all likely-hood, be already known to the Police there.

If you are lucky they may visit the address but it won't be a high priority. I would try every avenue before writing it off.

TT

rubadub

swingking wrote: »

I'm very sure that's a genuine PayPal email

Why?, others have asked, you have not given a reason and its very important to understand what people are falling for, so others can be warned. And also help you look out yourself in future.

swingking wrote: »

How did they get a @paypal email address ?

If you are using gmail then go the the message, at the top there is a sort of arrow logo for "reply", beside this is a triangle pointing down, which says "more", click on this and it will have "show original" -this can show who really sent the email.

swingking wrote: »

Today I get an email from @paypal.co.uk

Congratulation!!!

the very first word screamed scam, the 3 exclamation marks, and the lack of an "s", I remember an old radio add with horrible "Chingrish" that started off like that, "congratulation, you now proud owner", the use of EUR after using the euro symbol was also very odd, as though there might be canadian euros they want to distinguish between.

I picked a random bit of your post and put it in google with quotes, which forces to searh for that exact phrase.

"you are advised to contact the buyer to resolve this issue by refunding the over paid" gets 4 hits, including this page.

CruelCoin

swingking wrote: »

I sold a camera to a buyer in the UK and everything seemed hunky dory. I recevied a note from paypal saying they won't put the money in my account until I send the tracking number which I then got an email from Paypal to say that the money will be in my account

Yikes. Unless you've done a credit check, never ever send goods sans payment in advance....

Hope you get the camera back.

CruelCoin

1 - Chinglish all over it.
2 - Paypal, a company built around making payments entertaining a buyer insisting on money gram?
3 - Paypal insisting you manually correct an issue made by them.
4 - There is no such thing as paypal.co.uk. Everything comes from paypal.com. Everything.
5 - "Brenda S, Liverpool Merseyside, United Kingdom." This address is wonky.

Scammed hard. Don't feel too bad about it, I spent my life helping my parents avoid this stuff. I finally have a healthy sense of paranoia beaten into them. Only took 10 years.

p.s: The link to your website in your signature doesn't work.

Muppet Man

Scam. It's a Good real life example and a lesson for us all. Thanks for sharing and sorry for your loss.

By the way paypal have a very effective payment claims resolution process and would tell you very quickly it was a scam too.

Suckit

OP, if you have sent the camera already, why not ring the cops and ask them to wait at the address?

I know that they have better things to be doing, but it may be worth asking.

Also, if you have tracking, may be able to delay it, I am not sure if you can reverse it though.

Effects

Suckit wrote: »

I know that they have better things to be doing, but it may be worth asking.

Not necessarily. If the camera is being sent to an actual address, and they plan to resell it, there's probably more stolen property at that address. Police would be very interested in it.

shaunr68

I'd be surprised if the address is genuine, or if it is, that the address is actually connected to the fraudster. These scammers are after your money in the form of untraceable and irreversible online transfers, surely they won't be dumb enough to make a connection between online fraud and a genuine address somewhere so close, and closely connected to the seller's country, as Liverpool. I suspect that the address is just one of convenience, somewhere to get you to send the goods off to, with no connection to the fraudulent buyer. The scam is in the money transfers.

To the OP, without posting the address have you checked on Google Street View to see if it actually exists? Also might be worth doing a web search on the address to see whether it's linked to any other scams in discussions such as this one.

Good luck.

K.Flyer

Sometimes what they do is use an address in an apartment block with a wall of letterboxes to which they have access and hang around waiting for the postman to arrive.
If asked for id, they will produce a bank card, usually stolen, and the postman will think its all in order and hand over the goods.

Edit;
@o.p.
Look at this link, Mersyside Police may be worth a call.

Merseyside Police report crime online / fraud

CeilingFly

amtc wrote: »

It's illegal to intercept anything in the post apart from a court order under the Postal Services Act 2011

That applies to letterpost. I think its different for parcels.

Police station where the "crime" was committed is only option - that would be Mersyside, but there's probably very little they can do.

Best hope is to try and get an post to intercept it, but with Royal Mail handling 100 million+ of items everyday in the UK, that will be nigh on impossible.

TopTec

CeilingFly wrote: »

Police station where the "crime" was committed is only option - that would be Mersyside, but there's probably very little they can do.

Not quite right. The victim can report a crime to any law enforcement agency. In the case of on-line crime that can be where the victim lives. Fluid crimes that can't be pinned to a location can be investigated by any interested Police Force. It is common for one force in the UK to investigate National and International crime and co-ordinate investigations.

A good example of that is the recent on-line blackmail cases investigated by the Garda. Offences took place in the Ivory Coast and Belgium I think it was.

In this case the offence was committed on-line, could be any where in the world. However, as a starting point Merseyside is the best option if you can't get your local Police interested.

TT