Mom Shorts IX...Fraud

Oh they are good.

Scary good.

Wow. Frighteningly impressive.

We could have been had.  Seriously had.

Brandy is selling his *old* car.  Very good condition.  He put it on Craigslist. Got a couple of interested people.

One "gal" was quite interested.  Wanted more pictures.  Ok, we can do that.  However, her English wasn't quite perfect.  Almost, but not quite right.  That set a flag up in my mind.  Fraud.

When I was selling our puppies online, I ran into fraud every once in a while.  Yuck.  This sounded sadly familiar.

She also wanted access to our PayPal account to make payments.  NOT!  Our PayPal account is directly linked to our bank account.  On the off-chance that she was legit and just didn't know how things worked, I sent her a secure PayPal invoice, without my personal banking information.

I get a PayPal confirmation that payment is pending...as long as we send $900 via Western Union.  You see, "she" is having trouble and can't get money to her shipper that way, could we help her out?  Then she'll complete the PayPal payment along with another $1000 ($100 for our trouble, I guess).  I thought to myself, PayPal does this??

I sent "her" an email saying I'm sorry, but no funds will be sent until funds are confirmed in my bank account.  I'll probably get a crabby response.

You see, upon further examination, the email I got from PayPal is a FRAUD as well.  It's got their logo at the top, it says it's from them, but exploring further, it's from another email address not linked with PayPal at all.  Tricky.  I discovered it because of English grammatical errors in the so called PayPal email told me to check further.  Including one that called Kathy (the buyer) a "he."

Oh, and "her" last name?  "Smith"

This is frightening.  Many people who use Craigslist have no previous Internet selling experience.  Were it not for our experience with puppies, we may have been duped.  Fake emails from PayPal?  They are getting smarter.

So, here's a few tips to keep yourself from getting duped out of your own money!!

1. If you are SELLING something, NEVER send money to someone else.  Never ever ever.  You are selling, not buying.
   
   
2. NEVER send personal information (banking, credit card, Social Security number, passwords, etc) over an email or phone to someone you do not know (I pay with my debit card all the time on real websites, however my computer confirms that they are secure).
   
   
3. PayPal will NOT send you a "payment received" email pending on your sending money somewhere else.  If you get one, it's a fake.
   
   
4. Watch out for common English names such as "Smith."  A person with a common name could indeed buy your items, so don't discriminate against them. But if you receive an inquiry from a "John" or "Smith" or another common name, keep your guard up.
   
   
5. Look out for slight grammatical errors in email communication.  Many scams are from oversees, written by people whose 1st language is not English.
   
   
6. If you are BUYING, watch out if it seems to good to be true.  You see, this "woman" could easily now use our pictures to dupe someone else into buying a car that doesn't exist (wish I hadn't sent them to her, but it was a reasonable request).  It happened to my friend when I was helping her sell puppies.  Her exact puppy pictures were "for sale" somewhere else online at a very low price.

Keep your eyes open!