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ebay and paypal fraud

post #1 of 16
6/21/07 at 7:03pm
Thread Starter 
OK this is the most serious message I have and hope to post!
No real need to reply just maybe sticky to help others out.

Over the last few days I have been scammed out of £1090 for a laptop on eBay,

I DONT WANT OTHERS TO MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE!

NEVER EVER BELIEVE ANYTHING YOU READ ABOUT PAYPAL BEING SAFE

ITS NOT!!!

OK, when it comes to PCs and Internet most of you know I am very knowledgeable, if you don't then I am

but even the best can be had by a good con-artist.


I had sold a laptop, like my other 120 transactions on eBay no problems, I've spotted the past scams and not been caught, I don't have any dead relatives that have left millions, although the amount of emails saying I have a dead relative there's no one left in my family and I am a multi-billionaire!

OK on with the scam!!

I received an email from paypal saying I had received £1090 for the eBay item, I checked it out, check paypal and yes it was legit and there it was!
OK I should have been cautions when the person was asking for next day delivery, but hey the moneys there in paypal, its all confirmed and there..

I looked at the shipping address and it was US, OK the guy could be over here or moved here, I contacted him and said the address was no verified and I would not ship, I then received an email from paypal saying he had a new confirmed address and safe shipping was now possible, great all looks good, I have the money, I have a confirmed address. WRONG


The confirmation email was fake, but my god a dam good fake, all the URLs were real paypal links, it had the correct transaction numbers, EVERYTHING looked genuine, I looked at the message source and all was OK, no links with aliases to some fake server to steal info, The give away is in the Internet headers which does not show unless you look at the properties of the email in a program like Outlook or Mozilla, with some web based email services you may not be able to check this, the headers came from a company that hire out server space and virtual servers

So I have shipped to an unconfirmed address and he has contacted his bank and pulled the money back!!
The email said it was confirmed, but after speaking to paypal they say they don't send emails like that, scammers are inventive, and I guess paypal cant make people aware of every email they are likely to send


OK my advice to people for what its worth!

Be safe with large amounts/Expensive Items, or small!
Check the email, and double check it
Check the money is in paypal don't trust an email saying it is
PAYPAL DO NOT SEND EMAILS SAYING NEW ADDRESS CONFIRMED!

I would say to the person, you will only ship once the money is transferred from your paypal to bank, but even this is not safe paypal can just pull the money back after from your account!

just have a read of http://www.paypalsucks.com/


I guess the only safe was is cash and check its real then!!

I'm now contacting eBay, paypal and the police, even trying the company that the spoof email came from as its a hosting server to find out the IP and get the ip traced to an address that it was logged in to from.
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post #2 of 16
6/21/07 at 8:23pm
Needs a sticky

My rule of thumb is If it looks to good to be true it probably is
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post #3 of 16
6/21/07 at 8:25pm
Thread Starter 
yep, some one has a free Dell M1710 now, I dont know if I can contact dell and do anything online with the serial number or windows key?
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post #4 of 16
6/21/07 at 8:28pm
See if you can disable the bios through Dell.

Oh, and since you clicked on the emails etc, make sure to change your passwords etc.
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post #5 of 16
6/21/07 at 8:30pm
probably not

best thing to do is just avoid it. otherwise dell may try and investigate you also.

sad part is ebay lets it stay up because they make money off it with ads.
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post #6 of 16
6/21/07 at 9:17pm
Thread Starter 
may see if I can find the picture of the coa and contact microsoft
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post #7 of 16
6/22/07 at 11:27am
Dang, I'm sorry to hear that happened to you

My rule of thumb is that I wait until the money is secure in my bank account -- forget what PayPal says. No reasonable buyer would refuse you that peace of mind.
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post #8 of 16
6/22/07 at 2:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jamminjp View Post
may see if I can find the picture of the coa and contact microsoft
Unfortunately all dells are activated with the same OEM key regardless what the number says on the COA. I don't think you'll get far with this. Sorry to hear this has happened to you, it scares the heck out of me to sell anything pricey on ebay nowadays.
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post #9 of 16
6/22/07 at 3:27pm
Ok so lemmie get this straight:

You receive a message from paypal that you got money, which turned out to be fake. I can see that, but how does the money actually get in your paypal w/o paypal itself sending you a real message?

Also, you said that he did add a "confirmed address". Then why did you say at the end of your post that you shipped to an unconfirmed address and then the guy pulled the money back? Did you actually send it to the cofirmed address or not? Doesn't paypal have some sort of insurance when dealing with confirmed addresses?

And you said that you saw the money in your paypal and decided you're ok. WRONG. When dealing with large sums of money, you don't trust paypal. You first make sure that the funds are in your bank account before sending money out. Even if they request the money back then, at least you have your bank to go thru and try to solve this, by providing proof of shipment and delivery to his confirmed address.

While I see that you did try and do this correctly, you apparently made some wrong moves by not being 100% cautious. Idk why you sent the item (w/o a tracking # and delivery confirmation)to an unconfirmed address (when you had a confirmed address to send to) and not wait till the funds cleared in your bank account.

Either way, sorry for your loss, but there were more ways to ensure everything was ok in this transaction.
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post #10 of 16
6/22/07 at 7:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by adinu View Post
Ok so lemmie get this straight:

You receive a message from paypal that you got money, which turned out to be fake. I can see that, but how does the money actually get in your paypal w/o paypal itself sending you a real message?

Also, you said that he did add a "confirmed address". Then why did you say at the end of your post that you shipped to an unconfirmed address and then the guy pulled the money back? Did you actually send it to the cofirmed address or not? Doesn't paypal have some sort of insurance when dealing with confirmed addresses?

And you said that you saw the money in your paypal and decided you're ok. WRONG. When dealing with large sums of money, you don't trust paypal. You first make sure that the funds are in your bank account before sending money out. Even if they request the money back then, at least you have your bank to go thru and try to solve this, by providing proof of shipment and delivery to his confirmed address.

While I see that you did try and do this correctly, you apparently made some wrong moves by not being 100% cautious. Idk why you sent the item (w/o a tracking # and delivery confirmation)to an unconfirmed address (when you had a confirmed address to send to) and not wait till the funds cleared in your bank account.

Either way, sorry for your loss, but there were more ways to ensure everything was ok in this transaction.



If you read it right, the buyer actually paid for the item, but had an unconfirmed address. The seller did not want to send the iem to an unconfirmed address, so the buyer forged an email saying that the address was now confirmed. Once the seller sent the item, the buyer pulled his money back from the bank (kinda like cancelling a cheque). Because of this, Paypal took the money out of the sellers account to pay back the buyers bank. Now the scumbag buyer still has his money, and the item.

Get it now? Clear as mud? ;\\)
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post #11 of 16
6/22/07 at 9:03pm
Thread Starter 
Thats it Kilroy, thats what happened.
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post #12 of 16
6/26/07 at 12:40am
well I had my fair share of Ebay / PayPal / bidpay nightmares.

and laptops are the most sought out item for the scammers.

You maybe able to contact the Police in the state / City you shipped to and see if the address checks out.

I always login to my PayPal account to verify the money and correct shipping info is there.

and as we have all learned, there is no PayPal protection when you ship to an unconfirmed address.

Ebay covers upto $200.00 but thats a long way from 1000 UK $.

I also learned that using a Buy It Now Auction for a laptop is a bad bad ideal. Too many Nigerian - I want to send a gift to my Daughter scams.

Good luck, and I hope you can at least recoup some if not all the funds.
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post #13 of 16
6/26/07 at 2:12am
It's starting to be a huge hassle to sell anything online... Kudos to ebay for making a fun place to buy and sell cool stuff. Kudos to paypal for making a fast and easy way to pay for things without mailing money orders. Kudos to humanity for ruining it...

I feel for you man, I check absolutely everything that I get in email form. If it says something, I log in to paypal and check. If that payment in paypal says "Seller Protection: Unavailable" I refund it IMMEDIATELY. I was trying to sell a laptop to a guy in Bulgaria, and he paid fairly quickly but I refunded it. He asked why, I told him, and now he won't answer my emails so I always wondered what was up... I mean, he paid me once, he must be legit I thought. After seeing this, I think I know what happened...
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post #14 of 16
6/26/07 at 12:22pm
Exactly why I only deal with local deals via craigslist. Kind of funny to see guys with $2k in 20 bills lol.
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post #15 of 16
6/27/07 at 7:18pm
God damn, I was so worried about this when I sold my macbook pro.. I don't trust paypal for shit, but I had to. I saw the money in my account.. But THEY LOCKED MY ACCOUNT! I couldn't withdraw the money or anything. I was on the phone with them many times and told them I didn't want to ship because the money wasn't in my bank account.. But they said they needed confirmed delivery before unlocking the account. I was weary, but went ahead and did it - after all.. They couldn't fake the phone calls I made to Paypal. Long story short, I finally shipped and everything went well - Except it took paypal like 3 days and 2 phone calls to unlock my account. The money just hit my account today.. The laptop sold the 14th. -_-

Anyway, seems paypal is actually trying to cut down on fraud by freezing 'suspicious' accounts.. About time.
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post #16 of 16
6/27/07 at 9:27pm
Yeah. Ebay used to require a credit card to sign up for an account. Greedy corporate executives --> fewer rules on getting new people signed up --> unsafe for everyone. Not that a credit card is impossible to get, but I think having that rule back in place would cut fraud at least in half.
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