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Common
Scams
eBay itself has a good section on
how to avoid the conmen. You can view it HERE
Let me briefly outline some of the most
common international fraud methods.
These are usually aimed at new sellers in the hope of catching them with
their innocence intact. Do not fall for these scams. People do fall for
them otherwise the scammers would not bother.
First of all, anything involving Nigeria or Romania is overwhelmingly likely to be
fraudulent. It may sound harsh to say this about a whole country but the
facts speak for themselves.
1 - The Western Union Bidpay scam
The fraudster hopes that the seller will send the item before the money
order payment arrives after the seller receives a fake announcement from
Bidpay that the order is approved.
The initial approach is usually a request to send to a
relative/associate in Nigeria.
This works because people, including myself, routinely send the item on
confirmation from Bidpay. Remember the scammers' e-mails always say
'send the item' the real ones say you can send the item if you want, and
are usually free from grammatical errors and miss-spellings.
It is easily guarded against by checking your Bidpay account before
shipping.
2 - The overpaid cheque scam
This is a forged cheque/check, (money order, cashiers cheque, bank
draft) usually drawn on London by an overseas bank so it will clear in
the UK. When it gets back to the issuing bank they spot the forgery, and
the money is reclaimed.
As far as you know at first, the cheque has cleared, and few know that
cleared cheques can still 'bounce' later. Any of this 'surplus' that you
have sent to the scammer in the meantime is lost. As are any goods sent,
but the goal of the scam is the cash 'overpayment' not the goods, which
may be directed to a nonexistent address. The money can be collected
from any WU office in the world, and in many parts of the world the ID
checks are a laugh, 5 Wongas to the clerk and he is anybody's.
3 - The routine non-existent article scam.
Often free shipping is offered, why not, there is nothing to ship.
The payment is requested by Western Union cash transfer, a very
different animal from Western Union Bidpay, and this form of transfer
can be claimed from anywhere, with nothing but the 10 digit code, in
places like Romania.
Typically the seller has zero
feedback and is registered in a different
country from the one they claim to be selling from, and a completed item
search may throw up the real sale they have copied and pasted to make
their advert. If the seller does have what appears to be good feedback, on
inspection it is from some totally unrelated sales or purchases from a
different location, as the account could possibly be a hijacked one.
Take a look at
this
page for a good example.
If it seems too good to be true it almost certainly is.
A refinement on both the fake buying and the fake selling scams is the
use of a fake 'Escrow' site.
4 - Poisoned Paypal Purchase Scam
This one uses a stolen or cloned credit card to fund a purchase by
PayPal, often with a hijacked PayPal account. The warning signs here are
a request to send the item to some Eastern European or African location
as a 'present' or whatever, and a mismatch of names/CC account
names/PayPal account names/etc, explained by various excuses. A simpler
but more risky approach is to simply fund a PayPal purchase with a
stolen CC, but to have the item sent to the 'buyers' address. This will
be a mail drop somewhere, an accommodation address, but there is a
certain amount of risk to this as someone will have to pick up the item,
and a policeman could be waiting for them (don't laugh, it could
happen).
I would be inclined to
delay sending out any expensive PayPal purchase to a new eBayer for a few days. An email explaining this
should placate genuine buyers, a note in your listing to this effect may
in fact deter the fraudster from targeting you in the first place.
5 - The Indonesian Chargeback Scam
This one is less common nowadays, and was always more common on
eBay.com. If you are selling an expensive item you will get an offer to
buy it at a ridiculously high price to be paid by credit card. Shipping
by FedEx or UPS, as fast as possible (naturally). The card may be stolen
or cloned, but the real Indonesian twist was that the card could be
quite legitimate, but the 'buyer' would claim non-delivery and charge
back the amount through their card issuer. This worked because the local
banks simply did not do any investigation of chargeback’s but granted
all of them automatically!
6 - The Nigerian Scam
If you receive a message
similar to the one below, report the buyer to eBay immediately and do
not continue with the transaction. Notice the poor spelling and grammar.
Even worse than mine.
Hello seller,
Thanks for the advert and i will first want to know if this item is in
good condition and if yes i will want to send it to my friend in Nigeria
that was attacked by armed robbers on her way to work,she called me to
tell me that she was robbed of her gold wrist watch,chain,money and
phone and was beaten up and now she is in the hospital but i told her
not to worry that i will send a phone to her soon because that is how we
could communicate and she is a very good friend of mine,i want you to
know that i will be paying GBP250 for the total cost which will include
the shipping and insurance cost to Nigeria so that she can get the phone
fast as she is not very happy now and am not also happy because of her
state,so i will want you to please do this big favour forme and i will
be very grateful.I hope you understand and i will need your full
infomation so that i can make the payment via Postal Order or bank
transfer immediately cos i want the phone to get to her very fast.i hope
to hear from you soon.God bless you and your family.
Thanks.
In summary, follow these simple rules to reduce being caught
out:
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Never send cash. No seller can request cash only payments
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Never send money via Western Union.
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If you feel something is a miss delay sending payment or items for a few
days. Then check their feedback again.
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Use your cowman sense
and if you do feel that something is a miss take up you concerns
with eBay before sending payment.
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