I recently posted an item for sale on Craigslist and the buyer wants to use Pay Pal. I spoke with the guy (gal) on the phone and it all seems legit. They want to use the real Pay Pal to pay for the merchandise, so it must be OK right? Pay Pal will protect me from fraud right?
Think again. Pay Pal (the real one) will only protect you (maybe) if your transaction goes bad on Ebay, NOT any place else.
So how can they possibly defraud you and Pay Pal once the money is in your account?
Here are a few quick ways, and there are probably many more! (feel free to leave me comments if you have seen or heard of any other ways you can be defrauded on Pay Pal)
1- They (the scammer) will send you a phony (but legitimate looking) email from Pay Pal indicating that the money has been sent but won’t be credited to your account until you email back the tracking number. This is complete BS because Pay Pal will NEVER asks for a tracking number before crediting you the money. If you log in to your real Pay Pal account (not some link in an email) and there is no money present and no copy of that email, then it’s obvious that there is no transaction, but how many people will go through this extra trouble?
2 – They send you an email from Pay Pal (again phony) saying that the money has been sent but you must click on the enclosed link to confirm the transaction. The link then takes you to a very real looking Pay Pal site where you enter your log in details and BAM, you just fell for an old fashioned phishing scam where the Craigslist scammer hacks your account and takes your money!
3 - The scammer pays you with a hacked Pay Pal account, (like from #2 above) the money goes in to your account, then once you send the item the real account holder reports the theft and Pay Pal
debits the money from your account. Now you have NO money and NO merchandise.
4 - The Craigslist scammer pays you with a real Pay Pal account and ask you to ship the merchandise to a different address. Once you do so and they have the merchandise in hand, they turn around and file a charge-back saying that they never received the item. It doesn’t matter if you have a copy of the delivery confirmation or an email from them asking you to send the merchandise to a different address. You have NO protection from Pay Pal if you ship anywhere other than the verified Pay Pal address – (scammers know this and are hoping you wont).
5 - The oldest scam in the book is where the scammer sends you MORE money than you asked for. They will then apologize and say that they made a mistake but if you could please just wire the balance to their “shipping agent” through Western Union they will arrange a pickup. You do this, then the scammer files a charge-back with Pay Pal saying their account has been hacked, and that they never intended to send you any money. Pay Pal then turns around and debits the money from your account. This one really puts the SUCKER stamp one your forehead because now what happened is that you just sent the merchandise PLUS your own money to the scammer using another fake name through Western Union. How will you EVER live that down? Oh, wait…fortunately you read this article and you wont get stung! You are now SMART instead of STUNG!