Ebay/Paypal Scam

[Metr01973]

Just thought I'd let ppl know of a scam that nearly happened to my Dad. He was selling a gold braclet on Ebay and in the last few minutes of the auction someone bid and won it. The buyer turned out to have 0 feedback so my Dad decided to e-mail the person in question and say that he would have to wait till he had confirmation of payment before he sent anything out (we're talking a few hundred pounds (GBP)). But before he could send an e-mail, the buyer e-mailed him. She said that she lived in L.A but was on "official assignment" in Bangladesh and the braclet was for her son who was at university in Nigeria and she would pay £50.00(GBP) P&P for my Dad to post it to her son in Nigeria and she expected (that's the exact word used) my Dad to enclose a birthday card aswell! Now the e-mail sent the alarm bells ringing and Dad decided to hold out for another day or so and see if the payment was paid. The following day he received this supposed e-mail from Paypal (don't worry I deleted all the links and then took a screenshot of it and saved it as a .jpg so it is totally safe)

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c39/Metr01973/fakee-mail.jpg

As you can see it looks totally real apart from the fact that Paypal would never ask for shipping details before payment and luckily my Dad realized this and sent it to Paypal. This was confirmed by Paypal to be a fraudulent e-mail and E-bay have now confirmed that the buyer is most probably fake aswell and is being investigated. If you take a look at the "from" address it says service*pay-pal.co.uk and it's even got an ID number at the bottom. I can honestly say that it nearly fooled me, I hope that no-one can be fooled by this now and hopefully Ebay and Paypal have now closed down the accounts. If you want to know anything else about this please feel free to post in this thread or PM me.

[Vercades]

This isn't the first time people have been scamming on Ebay. Spider had a little video he made of how a fake email was sent to him, he found this out by placing the notepad window over the address bar. It shows whether someone trys to hide the original address bar.

http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=86168&highlight=scam

Was an interesting read awhile back. (Note: Most of the links in there are dead now)

[renegade600]

dont you just love scammers...:dizzy:

[The Dude]

Scammers suck!!!!!!!

Dont they have anything productive to do??

[Snurfen]

Scammers suck!!!!!!!

Dont they have anything productive to do??

errr yeah, get money from gullible people is the answer there. Very very productive if you can pull it off.


Thanks Metr0, I'll warn all the avid e-bay junkies in my house :thumbsup:

[Metr01973]

My poor old dad has now had to change all his passwords etc on paypal even though he didn't click on anything. He's relisted his braclet but he's got to wait 7 days before he can get a refund on the first auction. I'm just glad that my Dad is clued up on computers and scams etc if it had been some of my other friends that e-mail looks genuine and they would of thought it OK to post. Shame we can't track these guys/girls down and prosecute them. But what could they be prosecuted for, impersonating Paypal?

[Vercades]

They can be accused of fraud metro, that is if you can find their IP address and ISP. It is a felony in the U.S.

[degsy]

Paypal user their own mail server, so if you are dubious take a look at the message source. Even though the email address will be spoofed the mail server will probably not be. If it is not paypal.com then it is probably fake.

e.g
HELO xxx.paypal.com (123.456.12.123)