Gave my email to a paypal scammer! Help?
Someone wanted to buy an item from an online local listing site. He sent me a text message telling me to send him an email with my "final price and condition of item" as he was interested. He was fine with everything and told me to give him my paypal to send me the money for the time and for the shipping agent that I have to pay. I was hesitant, but eventually sent him my paypal email. I was still skeptical and realized its a method of scam.He sent me an email telling me the money is on its way into my paypal and gave me his address located in UK, but the area code of his text message is somewhere in canada/us. The name of the email is different than the shipping name. So I sent him an email saying Its sold already, you can refund your money...Then he replies instantly saying "he can't refund or cancel his transaction due to paypal security measures".... WHAT DO I DO!? Im getting confused...Hes definitely a fake, but I don't know how this system works...Please help asap. Thank u
Comments
100% scam.
There is no buyer, no money, no emails from paypal and nothing legit in those text messages. The claim of "can't refund or cancel his transaction due to paypal security measures" is funny since there NEVER was any money sent so, yeah, he can't cancel something that was never sent in the first place.
Notice how the scammer doesn't call what you are selling by name? He uses the generic word "item", that is because he sends the same stock copy/paste email to anyone selling everything that he can find and he has no idea what you are selling and doesn't care.
There is only a scammer trying to steal your possession, your electronic item, name brand clothing or jewelry.
The scammer isn't interested in your identity or bank account only in convincing you to ship your possession to him without him sending you a penny.
The next email will be from another of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses pretending to be "Paypal" saying "kindly send the tracking number and we will release the funds".
Paypal does NOT send such emails, ever. Paypal does NOT have escrow or money holding services like that scammer describes. Paypal does NOT demand you send a tracking number before money is sent. EVER. No exceptions.
Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of being the perfect buyer, great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram.
You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information.
Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash.
Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.
If you google "cragislist buyer scam", "fake paypal email scam", "ebay escrow fraud" or something similar you will find hundreds of posts from victims and near victims of this type of scam.
Check out the one and only official paypal website, read up on what paypal does and how it really works.
You forward any supposed "paypal" emails to [email protected] and cut off ALL contact with this criminal. You NEVER refund anyone's money - if they really paid THEY would contact Paypal and file a chargeback. You are not involved in it at all. He is full of crap he can't refund or cancel - the buyer can always cancel.
This is one of the most common scams out there
Paypal would not be this type of success if it replaced into somewhat undemanding to hack its account. The momentary transaction is the likely skill wherein the scammer is attempting. i'm guessing paypal might have extra skill to guard its login and so on. possibly she is genuine?