Attempted Fraud Using Ebay and PayPal names
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Scam Packing slip
05 April 2012
Monday I listed some camera gear for sale on Ebay. Starting bid was $7,000, but for $7,700 a buyer could take everything immediately. Soon after came a closing sale from the United Kingdom.
The "sale" "went through" immediately for $7,700, and the buyer took it upon himself or herself to tack on another $170 for immediate shipment to Lagos, Nigeria.
The supposed buyer messaged:
But checking with Ebay, no funds arrived. We alerted Ebay.
Subsequent the sham packing slip above, came the fraudulent email below:
A glance at the email address reveals that the message had not come from PayPal. There were no pending payments in my account. We alerted PayPal.
Maybe this was an honest fraud attempt from Nigeria, or it was a dishonest fraud attempt where someone tried to trick us into shipping camera gear to Nigeria. (Milkooks sometimes hit me with frauds. One even posed as a dead Soldier.)
In any case, it did not work, and the gear is still for sale.
Reader support is crucial to this mission. Weekly or monthly recurring ‘subscription’ based support is the best, though all are greatly appreciated. Recurring and one-time donations are available through PayPal or Authorize.net.
To send a check or money order:
Michael Yon
P O Box 5553
Winter Haven, FL 33880-5553
I will continue to do my part in telling the stories that are not being told. Readers must also do their part by keeping the cash flowing. Cash is essential .
Thank you!
Michael
Comments
Semper Fidelis
Scarface
1) Write to the Federal Trade Commission: spam
2) Forward the email to the US Secret Service at 419.fcd
I deplore statements like those above, saying your not going to shop on eBay because scammers exist is like saying you're not going outside ever, because you might get struck by lightning!
Due diligence and education is the best way to survive in this treacherous world as Mike has shown many times over and over
That is WHY one doing business on the web only accepts payments from VERIFIED buyers on PayPal, YO
The port authority, the customs bureau and lord knows how many other government bureaucracies were thinly veiled extortion gangs. Unless and until adequate bribes (service payments) were made, nothing was getting off those ships. "Don't worry - everybody pays these fees." he was told.
Good ol' dad was a little leery of such assurances - especially after he was arrested one day after being arrested as a CIA spy (!) for taking a photo of the outside of the soccer stadium. The embassy staff jumped to action and he was released after a harrowing day in a Lagos holding cell. He later learned that the stadium was where political prisoners were taken to be tortured and killed.
My Dad's employer refused to pay bribes and it was w-a-a-y beyond my father's willingness to "go the extra mile" for his employer. So, after weeks of fruitless "negotiating", my father returned to the US.
The two ships had been sitting in the tropical humidity for a few months and the dampness wound up ruining the cargo - bulk concrete mix. I'm not sure if the freighters were eventually sunk as a new breakwall or if the shipping companies paid someone to come in with jackhammers, but the company never paid to get that cargo unloaded.
"We confirmed item was mail by recognized courier" (failed his ESL course)
They try to instill a level of comfort with :
"You are safe and secure to ship the item."
(Think PayPal would really say that?)
The Routing Code is "C840" and eMail address "deborahbenjami n840" -- that's so they can tie any email to the fraudulent order - something one would do if needing to keep track of dozens/hundreds of fraudulent orders.
And in the "You've got new funds"
"This Email confirm ..." instead of "confirms"
They say to send an email to PayPal at enquiry_invoice
Does that look like a PayPal domain name? They don't care about the email - as long as you shipp the goods so that you can get a number to email into a black hole address.
Caveat Emptor !
BTW - none of this has anything to do with failure of Ebay's or PayPal's procedures.
Note that PayPal and EBay do not tend to send emails from Russia, Croatia, or even Cox Cable addresses.
Nor, if you read the bare body of the message, tend to send you off to PayPal pages in Argentina. It is easy to misuse the "href" HTML tag to misguide users about the true link destinations.
Another simple thing is to simply declare you do not accept sales to countries with bad reputations. TB mentioned another very good technique. A third is to hand type EBay.com and paypal.com to log into your accounts and check veracity of statements received in email. Do NOT EVER click on links in the email.
{^_^}
The scammers are getting more and more sophisticated in their methods; luckily, their grammar and spelling remain poor. Hopefully that won't change.
There are scammers for everything. I haven't seen too many fake bank e-mails recently, but there's an online game I play and I get lots of phishing e-mails about that. Sometimes the grammar is a giveaway, but sometimes the fakes are pretty good.
Recently I've seen a bunch of spoof e-mail that claim to be from YouTube, my guess is that it's because Google recently changed their policies to more closely align gmail accounts with YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, etc. accounts, so you have to log in to YouTube with your Gmail account now. So a spoofed Youtube e-mail might trick someone into giving up their Gmail login info.
Most don't have much of choice. Employment is usually based upon being a member of the tribe in power. Not always, and I met a lot of good people in the ten or so countries I worked in and visited. Most Americans are simply unaware of what the place is really like. I have seen more death and destrouction scattered there and know of much more than any place I've ever been. Tribalism is Africa's curse. Americans simply know nothing about it and uswually consider all "Africans" to be ordinary black people. There is a pecking order in African countries similar to the Indian caste system. A prime example of when things go really wrong is the Rwandan genocide. One may also look to the huge war that was fought after the genocide in the DRC. It is estimated that as many as five million died, with seven countries directly involved, and little was heard about it in the west. Africa is a study in contrasts. It is often horrific on one hand, and incredibly exciting and fascinating on the other. I have a lifelong love/hate relationship with the place that I will carry to my grave.
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