HORRIBLE New SCAM on eBay?

jeshika

jeshika

I want this one! <3
O.G.
Jul 18, 2006
7,947
25
#1
so i sold an item on eBay the other day and i suddenly receive a very strange message from the highest bidder...

hey,

i thought that the item was from your personal collection as advertised and not a sales company in Madrid. this makes your product sound very fishy and i am very confused by all this and usually I use paypal because in my country we do not get protection from Western Union.

my first instinct is that the buyer is hearing voices because i've never mentioned anything about Madrid and i've never even brought up western union. so i tell her that i don't want to complete the transaction because i'm afraid it's a scam and issue a request not to complete the transaction...

soon thereafter, i receive a message from the buyer again saying:

well i'm getting emails saying that i should not pay through paypal and i should send the money to this account in madrid through western union because the paypal account is down and will not be available for the next ten days...

that's why i'm so confused. i am going to send u a copy of the email that was sent to me.

and then she forwards me a copy of the email:

From: (NOT MY NAME) - (MY eB@y ID) <[email protected]>
To:(Buyer's eB@y ID) Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 6:02:51 PM
Subject: Read This ASAP! Then reply and confirm the payment - Item: 250371xxxx4
Hi (buyer's ID), My name is (NOT MY NAME), I am the seller of the Item#: 250371xxxx4, MINT Rebecca Minkoff Cheri Tote Black Stripe Patent Bag. I am responsible to confirm some details immediately. I have to congratulate you for your winning bid of US (WINNING BID) Unfortunately, immediately after the listing closed I got a Notification from eBay and I must warn you that my account is unavailable and you cannot pay for the item through Paypal as usual, because the payment will be repealable. For your protection, in case you have already made the payment through Paypal your account will be credited back automatically when my paypal account is re-established, as well you will not be charged twice.
Due the occurence we can still complete the transaction immediately because this transaction is supervised by eBay, I am sure you got the email from eBay that is confirming the transaction is legitimate and the method of payment approved by eBay ONLY for this transaction is Western Union Money Transfer. For More details please visit: www.WesternUnion.com.

=== YOU WILL FIND MY INFORMATION (PAYMENT ADDRESS) LISTED BELLOW:
------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-​
Full name: ( NOT MY NAME)
-​
Address: C/Esteban Mora 30 7ºA

-​
City / Zip: Madrid, 28027
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Country: Spain
Note: Western Union apply additional fees to send a wire transfer, you will deduct them from the total amount of US $265.00 and you will send the remaining amount, complete the payment for your eBay purchase so i can mark this item as payment sent and leave feedback.
------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
=== I'LL WAIT YOUR CONFIRMATION WITH PAYMENT DETAILS AS FOLLOWS:
------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-​
MTCN# - 10 digit numbers from the payment receipt (Money Transfer Control Number)
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Your full Name on file with Western Union;

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Confirm Your shipping contact info.
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Exact amount sent.

=== Review Item Information:
------------------------------ ----------------
eBay Item #: 250371xxxx4
eBay Item Headline:MINT Rebecca Minkoff Cheri Tote Black Stripe Patent Bag
eBay Item Unit Value: US $265.00
Item Location: New York, New York, United States. (Very Important: The item is being shipped/picked up from location, the Address from Spain is my actual

PAYMENT ADDRESS - I am located in Spain because I am the owner of a company in with a professional license. This is not mentioned in the ad because I have no idea why my paypal account is temporally unavailable
PS: When the payment has been made you must provide the details of payment without missing letters or numbers, if possible, send the scanned paper of the wire transfer. I would appreciate that you reply promptly. Thank you again for your purchase! (not my name).

I AM HORRIFIED at this scam! I did NOT send those emails to my buyer and it's so scary that they pulled all this information off my auction! How did they get my buyer's email address?!?!?! Is this a common scam? This is the first time that I've heard of it...​
​
 
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#2
and she also sends me this message that she *supposedly* received from eB@y protection service:

NOTICE: eBay Payment Instructions, eBay Item#: 250371xxxxx4





Dear (Buyer ID),
My name is Kevin from eBay Purchase Protection Program,

I will be glad to assist you with this matter and for your knowledge, I have included some information below. Our records indicate that you have a transaction with the seller (My seller ID)[email protected] for eBay Item#: 250371xxxx4 (MINT Rebecca Minkoff Cheri Tote Black Stripe Patent Bag ). You are the wining buyer for US $265.00 and you must complete the payment through Western Union Money Transfer because seller's account is temporally closed. Safety and convenience is eBay Purchase Protection Program. This program is designed to promote safe online shopping, and to encourage online payment methods that are safe, easy to use, reliable, and offer high levels of protection for users.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Seller's full name and address:
------------------
 
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#3
"You are the wining buyer for US $265.00 and you must complete the payment through Western Union Money Transfer because seller's account is temporally closed. Safety and convenience is eBay Purchase Protection Program. This program is designed to promote safe online shopping, and to encourage online payment methods that are safe, easy to use, reliable, and offer high levels of protection for users." (I added bold to show the errors)

---
This misspelling and funky grammar is very common in scam emails.

[you might want to edit your last post to remove your Ebay name and the transaction ID]
 
#5
:wtf: Haven't seen this one yet!! So the winning bidder has received emails from a 3rd party pretending to be you to intercept your payment?! I'm sure you have reported to ebay? Please let us know if you get any other info. on this one...
 
#7
Happened to me recently too. My buyer emailed me instantly and sent me a copy of the email as well? Was your buyer a relative newbie? Mine was. I forwarded to email to ebay and she paid me via paypal and I shipped her and it went well. She was smart to read the signals and not get duped. I wonder if they are going after new bidders/winners?
 
#8
Hi Jeshika; sorry this happened during your sale. Unfortunately, this is not a new scam. It happened to me several months ago (I was on the buying end) when I was contacted by a random guy pretending to be the seller of a Marc Jacobs bag I won at auction. This guy (who incidentally had an IP address from Nigeria) attempted to persuade me to pay through Western Union. The whole thing was so weird; I'm not even sure how he got my personal email address.

Anyway, I agree with yvalenz' advice about forwarding the emails to spoof@ebay. I'm not sure they can really do anything about it other than confirm that it is a phishing scam. It's a good thing you were smart enough to catch this!!
 
#9
kalodie1 said:
Happened to me recently too. My buyer emailed me instantly and sent me a copy of the email as well? Was your buyer a relative newbie? Mine was. I forwarded to email to ebay and she paid me via paypal and I shipped her and it went well. She was smart to read the signals and not get duped. I wonder if they are going after new bidders/winners?
Click to expand...

yeah she had 2 feedback. I'm just shocked that someone put in so much time and effort into this scheme. thank goodness my buyer checked with me first! you know i feel like telling these people, they spend so much time and effort coming up with these elaborate scams, isn't it easier for them to just GET A JOB!?!?!?!
 
#11
I had the same thing happen to me about 5 months ago on *bay (mine was also from Madrid and worded VERY similarly. The item was a discontinued LV handbag. Do not panic, your account has probably not been compromised but you should change your password to some letter/number scramble just in case. Forward the emails to Trust and Safety and call *bay and report the incident to them as well.

As to my poor confused and frightened buyer, I sent her an email telling her not to click on any links. The email also detailed my conversation with *bay, explained the actions that I had taken, and then I offered to cancel the transaction if she was still uncomfortable.

I was very lucky that my buyer trusted that I was not the sender of the emails (or in anyway involved) and she went through with the transaction. A geek friend of mine said that scammers use bots or spiders to crawl thru unsecured info on *bay's website so that they can use it for scams. He said that they should not have actual account info (passwords, credit cards, addresses, etc) because that data should be protected.

Sorry you had to go through this drama! Just stay calm and be very supportive of your buyers concerns. I hope it all works out for you.
 
#12
jeshika said:
yeah she had 2 feedback. I'm just shocked that someone put in so much time and effort into this scheme. thank goodness my buyer checked with me first! you know i feel like telling these people, they spend so much time and effort coming up with these elaborate scams, isn't it easier for them to just GET A JOB!?!?!?!
Click to expand...

I agree, it is totally ridiculous. Get a life, people! What's sad is that there are probably people who fall for these scams. Fortunately, we know better.

My apologies....I'm not trying to hijack this thread, but here's the post I made when a similar thing happened to me last year:

http://forum.purseblog.com/ebay-forum/scammers-on-ebay-are-getting-really-sloppy-332625.html

When I posted the thread, I made the mistake of putting the scammer's email addy and alias. One of the mods promptly covered them up with X's, but I received a message from the scammer asking why I posted his email on this website. Then he called me a Bi@*#. At least he figured out I wasn't stupid enough to fall for his scam!
 
#14
Forms of this have been going on for a few years now.

I purchased a car from e*bay in January 2006 and needless to say it was a high ticket item. I spoke on the phone with the seller a few times during and immediately after the auction closed, then I received an email from someone claiming to be the seller, but with a different *bay ID. The con-artist seller had a link already made for the auction with his name as the seller ID. All the other information was exactly the same as on the actual auction page.

In the email, I was instructed to either send a money order or wire the money to a bank account. The funny thing is that when I received the email, I was on the phone with the seller and asked her what was going on. Honestly, if I didn't know the seller, I might have thought it was legit.
 
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