Ahhh great, fell for a Nigerian scam on Ebay....

[DanLights]

I know, I'm a fucking moron, but I was all cool because I received an email from paypal saying I've been paid but that the money would be released when they received the tracking number. But of course then after I sent the phone I googled for Nigerian scam stuff and that's when I checked and realized it was a fake address, not the real paypal. The "name" is service@paypal.com but the real address is a lame address from a crappy free email provider. The fact that the level of Spanish grammar on it was terrible didn't ring alarm bells with me, specially knowing that paypal in Spanish has perfect grammar. And the fact that it was bought by someone with a new account (1 day old), living in Madrid, but who contacted me all in English didn't seem suspicious to me. The address on paypal is in Madrid, but when she sent me an email saying she wanted me to send it to her son in Nigeria because it's his birthday I got a bit worried, but I was cool because I got that stupid fucking email from fake paypal.

I'm such a fucking idiot, I know, it's not like I was born 60 years ago, I'm a 25 year old, computer literate young man who has always kept an eye open in case of internet scams and other suspicious stuff, but this one caught me completely off guard, so remember young boys NEVER TRUST ANYONE WHO TELLS YOU TO SEND STUFF TO NIGERIA. NEVER LET YOUR GUARD DOWN.

So now I lost a 100€ worth phone and 25€ of the postage, I was gonna use that money to buy some cool band T-shirts and hoodies for our "self gifts" for Valentine's day. I don't need the money, I can still buy the stuff, I'm not rich but I'm not gonna lose my apartment over that phone, but it still fucking hurts to know you've been scammed out of 125€ that could've been put to so many cool uses.

Anyobody with Ebay experience think I stand a chance at getting the money back in any way? I guess not cause I already fell for it like a moron, but just in case...

 

[LeSedna]

Boy the simple mention of "please send it to X instead" or "<insert random country name here>" is enough for me to be suspicious ! Also, I'm very careful with official mails from paypal, my bank, etc, I always try to crosscheck with a previous mail I received from them if the layout and mail name looks legit, I always check if the adress bars mentions https instead of http.

I'm sorry for you, but I'm sure there should be a way to get the money back, the illegal use of fake mails for scam should be enough... Although, I didn't get it in the end, through which website did your money go ? Through a legit paypal or ebay, or through a fake site where you add your credit card info for a payment ? By the way, be careful they didn't fish your credit card info at the same time if it is the case, they might have gotten your 125e, but could plan on buying stupid stuff with your card number.

EDIT : read again, so you simply sent a phone to a nigerian adress right ? I just finally understand the operation the scammer did. I am not sure ebay could easily pay anything to you back, the only thing you can do is tell them someone used the interface of their own site to create a scam, although the chances of you getting paid back are slim since no money actually transited through their service :/

 

[Melb_shredder]

Unless the money went directly through PayPal (who hve measures for this reason) then I'd say sadly not! I know the feel mate... Someone hacked my eBay once... Bought nearly $1000 worth of world of Warcraft accounts :/

 

[DanLights]

Yeah Mat, I was selling a phone, they "sent me the money" (received an email from what I later confirmed to be a fake paypal) and I went prancing like a fucking idiot to the post office to send the phone hoping it would make it in time for the kid's birthday. I'm never ashamed of being a nice, trusting person, but I hate when people take advantage of me. So no Chris, in the end paypal was not involved at all, it was all fake, no money received anywhere.

Good news though, I called the post office and they told me as long as it hasn't arrived to its destination I can always cancel and get the phone back, so I'm heading out right now to an open post office to cancel it, which means I'll probably just lose the 24&#8364; of the postage because I doubt they'd give me the money back for cancelling, but I get to keep the phone!

I sent the buyer an email:
I'm an idiot. Fortunately, I realised on time what an idiot I am and now you're not getting the phone, I'm going right now to cancel the postage, I called the post office and I have time to do it. Thank you for your contribution to making the world a worse place, I hope your grandchildren never even remember your name and feel embarrassed if they ever know that you cheated honest people for a dishonest living. I'm very sorry you people have made the name of Nigeria an alarm ringer, a country does not deserved to be labelled as a scam because some people from it (or at least working from there) are constantly scamming people on the internet,

May the worms feed upon you gracefully,
-Dan

 

[LeSedna]

Ah yeah right, I never thought about the possibility to contact the post company and tell them to not deliver ! You'll probably lose your postage fee since at the end of the day they had to deal with the parcel, but still good news.

Buying $1000 of WOW account... what a stupid way to spend illegal money. What a very good way to be tracked back !

 

[Belac]

Hope you got to the post office on time. Thieves piss me off, to me it's one of the lowest kinds of people. I got scammed once too but I was able to get a refund.

 

[Nimvi]

That sucks man. I know that feeling when you realize how stupid you have just been. You feel like the most gullible fuck in the world, and the other guy is probably laughing his ass off.

Happened to me last year with some deal on an effects pedal. Everything about it seemed legit. Pictures included were originals; they weren't to be found anywhere else on the internet. Price was normal, product had some slight traces of use...you know, just a regular second hand deal. The only alarm bell about it was that the person didn't use paypal, but pretty much no one around here does, so it's almost to be expected.
So I sent the bank payment, and minutes after, I get a message from the website, saying that the person I'm currently dealing with has been banned because there were several complaints about fraud earlier that day... great. Filed a police report and wrote a letter to both banks right away, but of course I never heard of it again.

I now see those 100 euros as a payment for the "don't trust ANYONE on the internet, you retard"-course.

 

[AntonioPetrole]

Happens to the best of us. I can spot even a very well done scam a mile away but one time I received an email from my bank saying that my account had been frozen and I needed to provide personal information to unfreeze it. I panicked and complied until I saw that the email was from service@tddank.com, not tdbank.com

Lets hope no one steaks my identity, but that was a few years ago

 

[kev]

Bad luck dude. And you are even more wily than me when it came to this sort of stuff! It gets the best of us. As you know yourself anything involving Nigerians is a disaster. As long as you didn't accept the money as a gift paypal will cover you in my experience Dan.

 

[updog]

i've been sent some fake fedex messages saying they couldn't deliver a package to me. they had some sort of hidden bible text within them. they were sort of creepy.

sorry to hear you got scammed man.

 

[drew_drummer]

Go out and shoot some random Nigerian as penance - make sure you confirm their nationality first though!

 

[Nimvi]

Go out and shoot some random Nigerian as penance - make sure you confirm their nationality first though!

A bit like this?

 

[LeSedna]

Just in case it can avoid people going into one of those scams, here is how I deal with any sensitive mail I receive :

- no bank or selling company will ever send a message asking you to confirm your personal information, especially not with credit card numbers. Why would they even do that ? Only exception would be if you changed credit card number and obviously websites like paypal or ebay will tell you you need to update your info because they cannot send you the money they own you anymore.
- In any case, it would be by going yourself to your own account on the original website, don't clic on the link provided in the mail that links to the specific page.
- Always check for httpS whenever it deals with credit card/bank accounts.
- Like roflsaurusrex mentionned, always check as a first check if the website domain after the "@" is the legit one. @b0oking.com is not @booking.com, tdb is not tdd. I think it's possible to hide an adress behind a fake one though, I'm no expert, but it's a good precheck. It's become a reflex over time for me, for every single mail I receive from a bank or commercial website, the first thing I do is check the mail adress it comes from. I am used to some specific adresses like noreply@website.com and any complicated mail like security.support@website.com will be suspicious for me right away.
- I am highly suspicious with anything related to an account or "confirmation needed" operation not trigger by me or by something I know for a fact is legit and expected like a big facebook update maybe, except when I am creating an account of course. There is absolutely no reason why a website would ask you to update or check some information at a random time.
- there is always somewhere something wrong in the email or the email layout, like the usual one being the advertisement pictures on a fake mail not working like it should (if you see the advert picture of Opodo doesn't link you to Opodo.com, nor has any link with a complicated url like it is usually the case, it's 100% sure this is not a legit mail). It's just common sense but it works in my case. And I shouldn't see it since I'm using an adblocker !
- If you ever have any problem with your bank account, most probably you will get a phone call in the very first place ! My bank even called me when I bought 3 vst plugins through a website that didn't allows me to buy them alltogether, and 3 instances of payment to the USA from my credit card at the same time of similar values triggered an alarm in their system, and the first thing they did was calling me to check if I was aware of that, so chances are that if I ever have a definite problem they will call me and not send a mail that would not direct me to the original website.
- I never ever deal EVER with someone who is asking me to bypass the system from the website we got in touch with. If I contact someone over ebay, and he asks me to deal out of the ebay system, he can fuck off
- I am very suspicious to anyone being a completely new user. Now, we have all been new to a website, but I really prefer if the transaction is being made through something with some sort of guarantee involved, like paypal. Legally you have some general laws against being scammed, but they usually only efficiently protect you if you are dealing with someone from the same country as you. If you're sending money to someone in Nigeria, in case of a problem you are fucked, while passing through paypal ensures some sort of procedure, although I am no expert it seems like it should be working considering on this very forum there has been a few cases where people got their money back through paypal after being scammed.
- last time I bought a guitar, it was through a bank transfer, and before doing it I checked the origin of the seller's email account, I could trace it back to 2006 in an old forum archive, where the guy was talking about buying a LesPaul. He was a metalhead, and I could tell it was logical, between his nickname, his email nickname, the guitars. There is little chance someone is using the same email adress to scam people since 7 years ago ! Be careful though with people intelligent enough to create a fake background, try being extensive for at least 10mn in your google search.

With those general rules I have never been scammed in over 10 years of internet transactions ! Only cases of fraud I had was through illegal use of my credit card number, and now I'm using a service provided by my bank which creates a one-time temporary credit card number for every single one of my transactions if ever I want one, hoping it would avoid this as well in the future

 

[DanLights]

Very sensible list of pointers Mat, I don't think anyone can disagree with that. What fooled me in my case was the fake email address, I know I will never be fooled like that again.

I went to the only two post offices open in the city on a Saturday afternoon, it was 2pm which means no one was anywhere, no one picking up phones at other offices so it wasn't as simple as I thought, but when we sat down at our favorite Indian restaurant to eat feeling like a pair of idiots, I got a call from the post office saying they managed to speak to the office at the airport and they're sending the package back. So literally I managed to send it back right before it was thrown on the plane to Nigeria hahaha. Our lunch was much more enjoyable thanks to that. So yeah, in the end I lost the money from the postage, but at least nothing got to THEM! And I get to keep the phone which I will now sell to Venezuelan people, the currency is being de-valuated again so people who want a Blackberry can get a really cheap one cause I've got a friend coming to visit in two weeks.

Mat, I didn't think about contacting the post office either, it was my brilliant wife's idea, she saved us, I was already resigned to have lost it hahaha

 

[drew_drummer]

A bit like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gtEWQVov6o

 

[Belac]

You also have to watch out for clever wording in cases of semi-legit websites. I tried to sign up to get a quick cheap credit report from a site that in the end never gave me my credit rating. I thought "well that was a waste of $4. Three months later I that same company had been drawing $30 twice a month ($180 total by this time) for nothing. Turned out there was a single short line in tge signup that said sighning up for the crefit report would create a permenant account for basically no services. It was a complete money grab, they were basically operating on the assumption that most people would simply cancel subscriptions and they get to keep the money. By taking 2 withdrawals per month they could skim more before anyone sees the bill thus doubling the chance to keep at least $30 of it. I fought them for almost a week before getting a full regund, amd that only worked because I never recieved the service I signed up for to begin with (the credit score). Technically it was "legal"

 

[LeSedna]

We can do all the macho jokes we want about our gfs but sometimes they make us feel like total idiots !

^ That's a classic ! We even talked about it with my mother this morning... I never trust any single "too good to be true" offer, after all why would someone with a brilliant product sell it to you for a few bucks ? When the price is abnormally good, it means there is a line which means you are agreeing on subscribing a monthly service for a stupid high price. I like to find that line and point it out to people who never read the CGU, because sometimes it's actually worth it ! Usually the only part I check, and it takes a mn or 2, is the part that talks about registration, service, or whatever. You can usually find it with a clever search with a few keywords.

It's technically "legal" but most of the time they are suable for not displaying the information correctly and there is a grey line where courts decide even though everything was legal the product or service should specify a clearer way this is not a one time fee but a monthly one, and a higher one. Recently in France there were many cases of websites trying to sell you those now mandatory alcootests, for a euro or two, while in fact you were de facto subscribing for a monthly pack of a few of them for 20e a month or something ridiculous like that. All you had to do is scroll the page down and read the lines, but a lot of people didn't.

 

[Lasse Lammert]

Easy rule, never click on any link in a mail.
Even if it looks like it's from PayPal (or even if it actually is a legit mail), I'd always just go to the actual site and log in from there.

 

[DanLights]

well, the "kid's mom" answered, I answered back and then blocked the email address: (I didn't censor the pic for the email, that's for here)

 

[DanLights]

Easy rule, never click on any link in a mail.
Even if it looks like it's from PayPal (or even if it actually is a legit mail), I'd always just go to the actual site and log in from there.

In my case there was no link in the email, I was supposed to respond to it with the tracking number (Paypal asking you to respond with a tracking to the "service" email address? how I didn't see it immediately is beyond me)