I’m selling an item, lets say its a trailer. The buyer wants to buy via Paypal and have a flatbed sent to pick it up. I’ll just make up a bill of sale, sign it and give to the truck driver. Once I see the money has transferred into my Paypal account am I good to let the trailer go or is there a hold during which the buyer can cancel the payment once the truck departs with the trailer? Paypal says if his payment is made with a credit or debit card the transfer is instant and I can access the money right away. I am talking close to $10,000 and have never met the buyer - only e mails and a few phone calls. He is on the west coast and I’m on the east so a personal inspection is cost prohibitive. I’ve sent him many photos and various documentation. I THINK everything is on the up and up but I have a lingering doubt. I searched his phone number and it comes back to his name.
I don’t think he can cancel it with PayPal, but he can always cancel it with the bank that issues the card. However, I know from having to cancel a fraudulent charge of $2,000 made at a Post Office to my debit card, that there is an investigation by the bank. He can’t just cancel and go on his merry way. During the investigation, surely the bank would contact you.
You always have to worry about potential scammers when you sell high-end things on eBay, but I don’t see any particular red flags here.
Is there any particular reason he would need to buy this item from across the country and pay expensive transport fees? If it’s a rare car, I can understand why. But if it really is something common like a trailer, why doesn’t he just find one closer to him? It seems like he’s opening himself up to scammers as well.
When selling something on Craigslist I was contacted by a scammer who wanted to pay extra through paypal and have it shipped across the country. I declined.
If you google “craigslist scam paypal” there are bunch of websites about it.
I suggest you (Mr. OP) read these sites carefully:
https://myria.com/how-to-avoid-some-common-craigslist-paypal-scams
Your scenario raises some red flags to me. I’n not saying its illegitimate, but you might want to suggest an alternate method of payment. Watch how fast your buyer evaporates; if he actually does have the money – in Paypal or otherwise – he certainly can pay other ways.
That right there is a huge red flag for me. I echo filmore’s question, is there a compelling reason for the buyer to reach across the country for this item? In my observation that’s a tell-tale indication of a scam.
What about if it’s a bank transfer instead? I wouldn’t think he’d use a CC for such a large amount. Doesn’t PayPal tack on a CC transaction fee of a few percent? I would think he would do a bank transfer to save the 3% or so.
PayPal tacks on a 3% transaction fee for the person receiving the money, not the person sending the money, so it’s all the same to the buyer.
I’d be very leery of this transaction as well; with this amount of money at stake, I’d have no problem at least being up front and asking them why they’re buying a trailer on the other side of the country instead of one in their state.
Well, its not a trailer but sailplane and a pretty good deal as these things go. The target audience is pretty limited, especially in light of the low payload of this particular aircraft. Buying these on opposite sides of the country isn’t that rare. I’m in NJ and my current glider was purchased from Boulder, CO. He did seem to ask the right questions about the technical particulars (including investigation the cost to have it trucked out and limits imposed by the shipper), unlike some other obvious scammers. I searched his phone number and it is registered to him (or the name he is using) and has been for a few years. What is unusual is the fact that he didn’t want to physically inspect it himself (or have a neutral mechanic do it). I did supply many photos and copies of log books. So, while odd, it isn’t completely bizarre. If I could get him to agree that the glider doesn’t move until my bank has cleared the money, what else could go wrong? He did suggest a credit card initially in two installments due to limits on each card(?) Of course, I don’t take them. He then asked if my flying club took them and he could make payment to them. The club does not. I suggested PayPal and he agreed. Until it gets to the point where I’m asked to put up some money, I don’t see the scam. Especially if a legitimate shipping company shows up to haul it away. That’s pretty trackable. Its not like there’s a black market for 40 year old gliders and without a bill of sale signed by me he couldn’t re-sell it anyway. I’m waiting to hear back from him and have more questions when I do. I’ll now read the links posted by Musicat.
Does any part of this deal involve you paying the freight or trucking company that will be picking up the item? Like you pay the transfer company a small amount, that of course will included in the PayPal payment from the buyer? If so, that is the scam. Buyer is buying a $10,000 item but you need to pay the pickup people $500. And the buyer will remit to you $10,500.
People get distracted by the sale of the larger value item and the shipping fee seems like a small part of no consequence when the reality is that the shipping fee is the whole scam and they do not even want the item being supposedly bought.
Please tell us if anything in those sites strikes a bell.
Regardless of the method of payment, anything involving the banking system can be reversed for quite a while in cases of fraud. Quite a while in this case means weeks.
Think of it this way: If someone impersonated you and stole money from your bank account to transfer to someone else, you’d want that to be cancellable, right? And it is.
Did you call him? It’s relatively easy to fake caller id inbound. Harder to go the other way.
Can you find his employer independently and try to call and speak to him there?
One thing that makes this more likely to be legit is if he really only pays for the thing purchased, and really has a truck come haul it away (that he pays for). If he’s scamming you, he’s only scamming you out of your physical goods. Which could happen, but is a lot less likely.
Most online scams are of the sort where they pay you $Lots (from some fraudulent account), you pay some fraction of that somewhere else, then when the fraud is revealed, the $Lots payment is reversed and you’re out whatever you paid somewhere else (and whatever you sold, but they probably don’t care much about that).
I think everything is a scam… which is why I’m still alive. 
A bank can only hold up a payment so long unless there is something suspicious about it. Then they need to release the funds. This is an attempt to keep the bank from holding your money and making interest off of it.
But while your bank may hold the payment for only a few days before releasing the funds, that doesn’t mean that the whole transaction is complete. Scammers use this lag time to get money from you.
The bank will let you start spending your new deposit in about 3 days. It may take longer to verify the actual money. If it isn’t really there, the bank can come back at you for the money you have spent.
He hasn’t asked for me to get involved with the shipping, as of yet. I have called him at the number and he answered and we talked about the glider. The flags so far are: Distant location, unusual payment method, lack of inspection of the item, a rush to do it - as in, can I have it ready to ship this weekend? (when banks are closed), paying asking price without haggling, the buyer is not known at the main gliderport in the area where he say’s its going, his name does not appear in the FAA database of certified pilots nor is he listed as a member of the Soaring Society of America (not that uncommon). On the flip side he seemed to know what he was talking about, at least to a limited extent, when it comes to gliders and this specific model. The scammers I’ve heard from before were obvious right from the start. He could be a student pilot. I don’t know if students appear in the FAA database. I’ve emailed him some questions that will pretty well determine if he is legit or not.
right… well test him out on his glider knowledge ? and why paypal ?? Why not just get him to send you a better form of pament… Bank check, direct deposit into your bank account, that sort of of thing.
Avoid paypal, because even if you withdraw the payment as cash, paypal will say that you agreed that they have the right to make the decision about returning the funds to a third party… So they say that paypal said the funds were stolen and have to go back to Pierre Elon Zuckerburg ( not the real person.)
There are ways that a PayPal payment can be reversed - including:
If it’s an eBay transaction (not sure otherwise), the buyer can claim non-delivery of item - if it’s something you are shipping to them, and you put the tracking ID in the transaction, this would usually prove to PayPal that the item was delivered, but PayPal is pretty patchy at accepting proof of handover for items where the buyer collects.
If it’s not an eBay transaction, PayPal will still reverse the fund transfer if it later turns out that the paying PayPal account was stolen/hacked, or the payment was funded by a stolen credit card, etc.
I would ask for payment by electronic transfer and then wait until my bank confirmed that the funds were ‘clear’, which can take a week.
This is really interesting- can you please keep us informed of the outcome? I see a few warning lights but also some positives- in other words, I don’t have a clue.
I had that exact one happen. Someone called my store via TTY (TDD?). That is, they typed, an operator read what they wrote, then I responded and she typed (word for word, no paraphrasing) what I said. It made the entire conversation very tedious.
So, he calls my store and orders something like 80 gift boxes. No big deal, we can do it, but it’s still a large order. I tell him it’s going to be $400 and yes I can have them ready for him to pick up on Tuesday afternoon. So far so good. Then he says he’s going to send someone over to pick the up in a reefer truck (don’t know why, they don’t need to be and shouldn’t be that cold). Ok, IIRC, at that point he gave me a credit card number. Still nothing out of the ordinary. Then he said that the trucking company charges $300. He needs to pay them but asks me to just add the $300 to the credit card charge and pay them. I told him I couldn’t do that, he needs to take care of paying them on his own. Without hesitating, he said I could add $200 to the bill for my trouble. That’s when I knew this was probably going south. That’s a lot of extra money for, if it were legit, just handing a truck driver some money. Hoping I wasn’t wasting the last half hour, I declined the offer and suggesting he just give the trucking company the CC number or send them a check and he had one excuse or another for all my suggestions. At that point I told him this wasn’t going to work and hung up.
I realized how easily many other people would fall for this when, even explaining it to them, they still didn’t see where the scam was. But then when you explain the cashiers check scam, it doesn’t click right away for many people either.
Funny thing, a few days later a friend of mine that owns a restaurant called me up, very excited, about ‘a deaf guy that called him to set up a large event’. It was the exact same scam, probably the same person. He refused to believe me until I said ‘did he want you to run his credit card for an extra $200 and give that to the person picking the stuff up?’. Yup.