I am doing a little pre-spring cleaning and was trying to sell a Sony PSP and a bunch of games on craigslist. I received an email indicating interest and responded…I got this response:
“Thanks for the prompt and swift reply to my email, l am still interested in purchasing the item from you and I would like to proceed with payment cause I am buying this item to present my CEO as a wedding gift, l am not currently at home for now travel for business trip, so I wouldn’t be able to pay via cash or cashier check so My form of payment would be via(Alert Pay) or PAYPAL to facilitate the transaction, please proceed and log to Alert pay at (www.alert pay.com) or www.paypal.com and read how Alert pay or Paypal work. Its safer and secured way of paying. To proceed with the payment, you will probably need to setup with Alert Pay or Pay pal as member So, after you sign up with Alert Pay or Pay pal, for the payment to commence all i need is your Full Name and Your Email address which you used to register with alert pay to order for your payment with Alert Pay or Pay pal. Once the payment been approved, you will receive a confirmation notice via your email from
Alert Pay or Pay pal for you to be sure that i have paid for the item, the
item will be ship Via Express Mail Service(EMS) of USPS and also I will add extra $150 will to your asking price to cover the shipping and insurance
cost. Please proceed to delete the postage from centralist web. And email me the information to send your money. I look forward to read your response.”
I understand that this must be a scam and have no intention of responding, but I guess I don’t really know enough about Paypal to understand how this is working. I am used to seeing this sort of thing with fake money orders and cashiers checks, but the paypal bit confuses me…how does this scam work? CAn someone pull back a paypal transfer, or is it a phishing attempt for a paypal ID? Any enlightenment is much appreciated…
Sounds a bit like a potential scam another Doper asked about a few weeks back. See here for the various scenarios that were proposed… obviously, we’re a distrusting bunch around here.
(your scammer is clearly a cheapass, though… the other one was offering over a thousand in extra shipping fees)
I’m not sure of the scam but it seems odd that he would want your Full Name and E-Mail Address to pay you via pay-pal. I would think if someone wanted to pay you via pay-pal they would want your pay-pal Account number. The other stuff seems like phishing to me.
Thanks for the quick responses. So I would perhaps be OK if I just ignored any requests for giving any money back, and made sure the payment cleared in Paypal? I guess my question is really in a lack of understanding about paypal (I’ve really only used it to buy the occasional item on ebay, etc). If I independently verify that I’ve received the money and ignore any requests for money back, is there an angle here that I’m overlooking? Could someone do a chargeback to paypal if I keep receipts, etc? Thanks again for the help and perspectives!
I don’t know anything about paypal, but I do have a perspective. You already suspect that this guy is a scammer. I see nothing good happening from doing business with him. Just sell the item to someone else and be done with it. Why take chances?
Err, don’t do it. In the thread about life advice someone mentioned ‘If it’s too good to be true…’ and I think that’s the case here. Scammers (and spammers) rely on both people’s greed and hopefulness, ‘Well maybe if I just…’
The wording alone is a red flag.
If you really want, tell the person the account isn’t under your name and you can only give a number, and see how they react.
I know…I’m not actually planning on playing ball with this dude…a mental exercise while bored at work more than anything at this point. Thanks for the advice though…the paypal bit was the new part for me. These guys will be a lot better at their game when they can actually write in full and correct english sentences.
As I’ve cautioned in other threads about Craigslist: Do not allow email responses for your items. Provide your phone number and you’ll likely only get serious inquiries. Otherwise, prepare to be spammed and scammed.
That’s actually a really good idea. This was attempt number 1 at selling something on craigslist. My only reason for not doing so this time is that my cell number (and only phone) isn’t a local Anchorage number, since I’m military and just kept my old number. I didn’t want to scare anyone into thinking I was a scammer. I suppose out of are cell numbers are more common now than they once were, and almost no one actually pays long distance, so we’ll chalk this one up to a lesson learned…
Nope. If the account used to pay PayPal with is stolen or fraudulent, it can clear just fine but get yanked later, and PayPal will take the money out of your account. If you already spent it/withdrew it, they’ll charge you for it, and automatically yank it from any bank account information you gave them.
I thought it was amusing that the scammer felt it necessary to explain what PayPal is. I would think anyone already selling stuff on Craigslist would be familiar with it.
PayPal doesn’t use account numbers. It uses your email address to identify your account. To pay someone by PayPal, you generally do need to know their email address. That’s not the questionable part.
The promise of an extra $150 for shipping, etc., is the tip-off that this is a scam. As Cat Fight explained:
