About to get scammed through Paypal

[Twoyboy]

I'm selling a car on Carsguide.com.au and today I received a simple message that said "Hello,is this car still for sale?". I replied that is was (duh) and within about 1/2 hour the guy replied back and said,

Thanks for the mail,i will like to know the present condition of the car and how much you are willing to sell it to me cos i am buying the car as a birthday gift for the general overseer of my church and i am out of town at the moment on missionary work as i am an evangelist and i really want the car to be a surprise for him,so i wont let him know anything about it until it gets delivered to him ,i am sure he will be very happy with it.I will pay you with my paypal account because i don't have access to my bank account as i don't have internet banking where i am here,i will need you to give me your paypal email address so i can make the payments asap for the car and pls if you don't have paypal account yet, it is very easy to set up, go to http://www.paypal.com.au and get it set up , after you have set it up i will only
need the e-mail address you use for registration with paypal so as to put the money through.I have a pick up agent that will come and pick the car up after i have made the payment.

Thanks and God Bless.

Ok, so I thought that's kinda dodgy, so I was tentative. I replied that I could drop the price of the car a little, told him more about the condition and that I already had a Paypal account under my email address. Then I said because he was overseas (read: because I think you're lying) I'd have to confirm payment in Paypal before he could take ownership of the car.

So then I did some googling... and it turns out I'm not the only one... http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums ... &p=4743784 Scroll down about half way and you'll see a familiar email.

So I thought the guy would never reply, since I had insisted on confirmation of payment, but lo and behold about 8 hours later...

Hello Troy,i am ok with condition of the car and i am ready to effect the payment to you..My agent will come for the pick up as soon as i am through with the payment and the money hits your account..

Get back to me asap..

Kind Regards.

Followed 2 minutes later by "i will effect the payment to you shortly.."

How is this guy going to try and scam me? And what's the best (and safest) course of action I can take? Bonus points if it involves humiliating the guy.

[General Zod]

Frankly I would have deleted this after the first response. Generally when someone wants to "buy" something from overseas they can have whoever pick it up, and then file a "no receipt" claim through Paypal to get their money back, screwing you out of both cash and the item. (Someone asking whether something is still for sale is somewhat fishy, but not enough to auto-delete).

[Twoyboy]

Frankly I would have deleted this after the first response. Generally when someone wants to "buy" something from overseas they can have whoever pick it up, and then file a "no receipt" claim through Paypal to get their money back, screwing you out of both cash and the item. (Someone asking whether something is still for sale is somewhat fishy, but not enough to auto-delete).

Yeah, I wish I had have done more research before I responded, but now I'm not sure what to do, as I'm not sure what his game is. If I wait until the money is ready, transfer it from Paypal to my account, meet the guy at another location and give him the car, can he still claim the money back? After all, I have an email trail saying how he's going to get someone else to pick up the car. Still, I doubt it will be that simple given that I've already established that it's a scam of some sort.

[General Zod]

Frankly I would have deleted this after the first response. Generally when someone wants to "buy" something from overseas they can have whoever pick it up, and then file a "no receipt" claim through Paypal to get their money back, screwing you out of both cash and the item. (Someone asking whether something is still for sale is somewhat fishy, but not enough to auto-delete).

Yeah, I wish I had have done more research before I responded, but now I'm not sure what to do, as I'm not sure what his game is. If I wait until the money is ready, transfer it from Paypal to my account, meet the guy at another location and give him the car, can he still claim the money back? After all, I have an email trail saying how he's going to get someone else to pick up the car. Still, I doubt it will be that simple given that I've already established that it's a scam of some sort.

Can't you just call it off? If no money has been exchanged it's not like you're under any obligation to sell to him.

[Twoyboy]

Can't you just call it off? If no money has been exchanged it's not like you're under any obligation to sell to him.

I was so worried about what would happen I didn't think of this. Not sure if it will stop him, but I emailed him and told him, effectively, to fuck off. Also emailed Paypal. Couldn't email Carsguide.com.au because their website is a piece of shit that can't do anything you actually want to do...

[Ted C]

Followed 2 minutes later by "i will effect the payment to you shortly.."

How is this guy going to try and scam me? And what's the best (and safest) course of action I can take? Bonus points if it involves humiliating the guy.

Processing delay is the first thing that comes to mind. He can empty the account from which he's supposedly paying you (or make the deposit to it with a bad check), but the payment to you won't bounce until after you've given up the car. You can probably check with your bank, police department, or PayPal customer service on what to do.

[Ted C]

I can't find my references, but I recall descriptions of scams that actually count on the transaction being cancelled at some point. You then refund the money, only to find out that the initial payment to you was drawn against an empty account. You therefore end up refunding money that you never actually received, and the scammer gets the cash.

Again, check with PayPal customer service and your bank.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

This is how he's going to (try to) scam you:

The "agent" shows up with a legitimate looking official check for more than the agreed upon amount. It may have the hologram and all the pretty security features you would expect an official check to have. It will probably not, however, look the same as an actual official check from that bank. You deposit this check into your bank. Since it was accepted by the teller, it "clears" after a few days and the money becomes available in your account. Because the check was more for than the sale, you wire some of the money back. A couple of weeks later (the amount of time it takes for a check to actually clear) the check comes back unpaid and the money comes back out of your account, overdrawing it and leaving you out a vehicle and on the hook for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

I used to be a teller.

[Coalition]

Hook him up with those bank fishing emails. Let im enter his bank information on that page, and let one scammer screw another.

I'm not this creative, the actual idea came from userfriendly.org.

[Twoyboy]

Cheers guys. Paypal did respond and told me that if the money arrived I could refund it to him without accepting it, thus essentially reversing the transaction. However, as I haven't seen the money yet, he's probably given up.

In a surprise twist, there was an email before this one, which asked for photos and my lowest price. It though this guy was just fishing, hoping someone desperate would reduce the price on the car without so much as a negotiation. However, he replied today...

Thanks for your mail, i will like to inform you that i will be presenting this car to my father for his forth coming birthday as a gift and also as surprise.

I am ready to offer you $3,500.00 for the quick sale of the Car ok,i am a marine engineer and right now on the sea,so due to that fact i can only make the payments through paypal.I have a pick up agent that will come for pick up after i have made the payment.

For the payment processes, I will be paying you via PayPal payment.Just go to http://www.paypal.com.au and sign up with them to receive the payment.PayPal is 100% safe, secure and reliable.PayPal is a method of payment whereby sellers and buyers make and receive payments on auctions and classifieds sites, check there website for details http://www.paypal.com.au will more than appreciate if i hear from you I will be awaiting your swift response. Cheers

What the fuck? I replied asking him if he was a regular scammer or if him and the last guy were just running spam mails for Paypal. Interestingly enough, I found this one too whilst Googling for the other. Apparently there's some sort of spammer's template creating service...

[KroLazuxy_87]

What are the odds of you being being hit with the same scam tactic twice so close together?

Let us know how that turns out.

[General Zod]

What are the odds of you being being hit with the same scam tactic twice so close together?

Let us know how that turns out.

Pretty good actually. Idiot scammers like these are unfortunately very prolific.

[frogcurry]

It doesn't cost anything to try and scam someone like this, and if you sit all day in your living room on a laptop you'll be able to make literally 100's of attempts a day. Even if only one a week pays out its still worth it.

Most cars listed in the UK for sale these days in major places tend to get at least one dubious contact from fake sales agents and fake purchasers like this too. Autotrader make a nice bit on the side selling a special service when you list with them for a few quid extra, whereby all queries go via them first so that they can scrub out a lot of the crap ones, plus your personal contact details are never passed to the prospective purchaser until you choose to (the phone number listed is an autotrader one which re-routes automatically to your phone disguising the number). Its annoying that you are forced to pay this just to sell your car hassle free these days.

[PeZook]

Its annoying that you are forced to pay this just to sell your car hassle free these days.

"These days"? How do you think trading looked before?

Scamming is as old as trade itself. It was arguably much worse in times where you couldn't just google an e-mail and see if it shows up on a scam-listing website: an ancient trader who didn't keep his wits could easily lose his entire livelihood in minutes.

Then again, in the old days, bloody vengeance for such scams was the standard. Maybe we should reinstate this tradition for spam kings?