Am I being Scammed? Paypal.

[drachillix]

Where is he on the west coast?

Perhaps the DoperNet could shed more light on the actual person/location.

[Alley_Dweller]

@Joey_P

So, and I’m genuinely curious, what is a good way? If someone writes a check or uses a credit/debit card, the same situation applies. It could go weeks or months before the person notices the missing money and calls the bank about it. Cashiers Checks and Money Orders can be faked, as we know from the common craigslist scam.

Westen Union is a great way to receive money – for the receiver. That’s why so many scammers try to get their victims to use WU. Once you’ve walked away from the WU store with a wad of cash, there are no backsies. Great for scammer, sucks for the scammee. Sure, the sender, if he can locate and identify the recipient, could sue the recipient, which could be a very difficult and expensive process for a small amount, and then have to try to collect on the judgment. (And it’s orders of magnitude more difficult if the recipient is in another country.)

As a recipient of a dubious sum of money, I’d want to use Western Union. As a sender to a dubious destination, I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.

[Lucas_Jackson]

Have the driver bring you cash.

[Dallas_Jones]

@drachillix

The freight company person IS the scammer or his accomplice. Thus they walk away with the $500 which is the whole point of the scam.

The rest of the transaction is irrelevant, they just want that cash.

I said as much in post #10.

They distract you by letting you think that they are really interested in your sale. But, oh, there is this little thing with the freight. I’ll have someone contact you. Minor detail of no matter.

Really looking forward to getting whatever it was I was bullshitting you about.

[Czarcasm]

In what form did you receive the money, and in what form did you send it back?

[MikeF]

The money was sent both ways via PayPal. He reimbursed me for the fees I incurred. My bank assured me the money was there. If I didn’t really have the money, how could I send it back? I checked into this background references and they panned out. In some further phone conversations it became apparent that he knew what he was talking about, technically. Stuff that no mere scammer would ever know. I could have said, “Tough luck about the shipping but you should have thought about that before. A deal is a deal.”" But why be a prick? I’m not out anything other than some time. The glider community is a small one and we tend to look out for one another. BTW, I’ve been contacted by actual scammers offering to buy the glider. They were so obvious from the beginning I was tempted to string them along until they figured out I wasn’t going to fall for it. But then I decided I had better things to do with my time. Beer, for instance.

[Joey_P]

@MikeF

If I didn’t really have the money, how could I send it back?

Just for future reference, in the cashier’s check scam, they count on you thinking this exact thing.

[Tired_and_Cranky]

@MikeF

If I didn’t really have the money, how could I send it back?

Did you check the Paypal users’ agreement to understand all the possibilities? I looked at it for two minutes and I found:

Payments that are invalidated and reversed
Payments to you may be invalidated and reversed by PayPal if:

You lose a PayPal Purchase Protection claim submitted to us by a buyer, including as a result of your failure to respond in a timely manner.
You lose a Venmo Authorized Merchant Payment Protection claim.
Your buyer pursues a chargeback related to a card-funded transaction and the transaction is not eligible for PayPal Seller Protection. The card issuer, not PayPal, determines whether a buyer is successful when he/she pursues a chargeback related to a card-funded transaction.
You do not fulfill the transaction as promised or you cannot provide proof of shipment or proof of delivery when required.
eBay decides against you under its money back guarantee program (and you haven’t opted out).
Our investigation of a bank reversal (sometimes known as an ACH return) made by a buyer or the buyer’s bank finds that the transaction was fraudulent.
PayPal sent the payment to you in error.
The payment was unauthorized (i.e., a credit card-funded payment was made by someone with a credit card that did not belong to them).
You received the payment for activities that violated this user agreement or any other agreement between you and PayPal.

When you receive a payment, you are liable to PayPal for the full amount of the payment sent to you plus any fees if the payment is later invalidated for any reason. If your PayPal balance is insufficient to cover your liability for the payment amount plus the fees, then this will result in a negative PayPal balance. **Any negative PayPal balance represents an amount that you owe to us, and, in this situation, you must immediately add funds to your PayPal balance to eliminate the negative PayPal balance. If you do not do so, PayPal may engage in collection efforts to recover such amounts from you or take other action **as outlined under Amounts owed to PayPal. PayPal may also place a limitation or take other action on your PayPal account as outlined under Restricted Activities and Holds.

(Bolding added to particularly relevant parts). My hunch is that a person committing fraud understands better than you do how to use these provisions to his advantage.

[Asuka]

@Mangetout

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 wouldn’t trust eBay to properly investigate fraud at all. Bought a $100 item off eBay two years ago and the seller didn’t send it for about a month. After weeks of delays and excuses from his eBay private messages including one where he fully admitted he hadn’t had sent it yet but was planning on sending it “soon” I filed for non-delivery and wanted my money back. Another 30 days of fraud investigation with the guy continuing to make excuses of not sending it and begging me to stop the investigation it ended with eBay finding in favor of the seller for absolutely no reason except that he was “Making a good faith effort to deliver” since apparently at one point he bought a $5 prority mail shipping label. Two years later I still don’t have my $100 item.

[MrFloppy]

I sold a few cars on eBay. One fell through and despite being given a non-refundable deposit of $500 via Paypal, the buyer that backed out utilized Paypal to get his $500 back - which he did. Paypal sucks.

Now I do cash only. Never had a problem since.

[Pleonast]

Does PayPal permit a transaction to be reversed? So if someone sends money to your PayPal account, can you later tell them to reverse that transaction? Not create a new transaction in the opposite direction, but to retroactively undo the first one.

In any case, unless I have a pre-existing relationship with someone, everything is cash-only. It’s their problem how to get to the cash to me, not mine. (And don’t forget it’s my problem how to get the cash safely to my bank.)

I fear for the worse for the OP, because it sounds exactly like a scam. And even if the buyer hadn’t intended to scam the OP, it’s quite possible the buyer could change their mind and do so now. There’s nothing preventing it except the buyer’s own honesty.

[Asuka]

@Pleonast

Does PayPal permit a transaction to be reversed? So if someone sends money to your PayPal account, can you later tell them to reverse that transaction? Not create a new transaction in the opposite direction, but to retroactively undo the first one.

Yes, since I’ve had a transaction be reversed when I had already taken the money out that had been left in the account and my PayPal account balance was actually in the negative.