Today, to my disappointment, I experienced a real fraud online. I was selling one item on ebay and was very happy to have someone bought it so quickly, only a couple of hours after it is listed on eBay.
First email I received was from eBay (eBay Member: victoriarob1ww <member@ebay.com.au) as below:
I’m glad to have bought the item you advertised on ebay.I actually wanna buy the item as a birthday gift for my boyfriend in Vancouver Washington,United State.I’m not home at the moment,I’m presently in Asia on an official assignment, that why am buying on ebay with my PayPal account,I’d like you to do me a favor of posting the item directly to my boyfriend in Vancouver Washington,United State.I’ll pay extra postage fee to United State.Pls get back to me asap with the item’s present condition.
Regards
Victoria
– victoriarob1ww
The above email is a real email from eBay as email address shows that.
I replied with below:
Hi Victoria,
Thank you for purchasing from us. Paypal is fine for us.
As we normally only post to Australia domestically, can you please ask your friend or relative to help you to ship to USA?
Please let us know their detailed address in Australia.
She did not reply very quickly, so I sent another email below:
Dear victoriarob1ww,
Hi Victoria, not sure if you received my email
this morning. We prefer to deliver to your friend
or relative in Australia. We will deliver the item
as soon as we receive payment. If all your friends
or relatives are not available, we may find out
how much it costs to USA by courier. Insurance
also is a must when ship to overseas. You are
welcome to find your own courier so that make the
shipping cost more reasonable. Let me know.
I believe every seller is eager to finalise the deal, that’s why I agree to ship to overseas if customer really wants to.
The buyer replied and asked below:
i need your full name before the payment could be made and send the cost of postage to usa because i have no relative in Australia.i wiill be very grateful if you can do this for me
Regards,
Victoria
Be careful here, she asked about my Paypal account real name, which she could later in a fake email. And you should know that you only need an email address to send money by Paypal.
Before I find out the cost for Freight, I received an email from below which said a payment was sent to me. Receiver’s detailed address in America also included. Read below carefully.
The email was sent from service@paypal.co.uk. which has the realy email address <payMerchant@mail2member.com>, service@paypal.co.uk is only a name for email address. For example, you can put your name as the name showing for your email address when you send email to your friends. Sometimes you can need read the email address name to find out who sent it. But here is tricky. At first glance, you think it is from service@paypal.co.uk. but actually it is from its realy email address <payMerchant@mail2member.com>. You can find out this information from email details. Read below please.
Dear “Your Paypal Account Name”,
You have an Instant Payment of AU $750.00 from Mrs.Victoria Robinson (victoriarob20@rocketmail.com) for an eBay item.
– Show quoted text –
Payment Details
Purchased From:ebay user name
Transaction ID:68F8034528382432U
Buyer’s User ID: victoriarob1w
Buyer:Victoria Robinson
Amount:AU $650.00
Postage & Packing:AU $100.00
Postal Compensation:AU $0.00
VAT:
Total Amount:
Payment Status:AU $750.00
Payment Status:AU $750.00
Verified (Awaiting Shipment Verification)
Pay With:
This payment is pending because it was sent in a currency in which you do not currently hold a balance. Get back to us with the Shipment Tracking details so that we can verify that the item has been shipped and transfer the funds deducted from the buyer’s PayPal account to your account. If you have any question or you want to send the Shipment Tracking details to us at :payMerchant@mail2member.com You can also send the Shipment Tracking details to the buyer if you want. Please Note: If the buyer is no longer registered on eBay, does not affect the payment for been credited into your account as soon as the Shipment Reference is confirmed.
***PLEASE NOTE***
THE BUYER OF THIS ITEM HAS REQUESTED THIS ITEM TO BE SHIPPED TO THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS BELOW:
BUYER’S SHIPMENT INFORMATION:
Confirmed
PLEASE NOTE*** FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT HAVE PAYPAL ACCOUNT, PAYMENT RESIDENTIAL DELIVERY ARRANGEMENTS TO YOUR REGISTERED ADDRESS WITH US WOULD BE EFFECTED AS SOON AS WE HAVE RECEIVED A TRACKING NUMBER FOR SHIPMENT VERIFICATION.
If you have an account with PayPal your funds will be transferred to:******@gmail.com. If you do not have PayPal account your payment will be delivered to the Registered Address with PayPal.
Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team
PayPal Credit Card
With PayPal, you always shop without sharing your financial information.
This is definitely a fraud email, the tricky thing is your payment is pending due to some reason. When you check your payple, of course you will not see the payment. I almost believe the above email is a real one. eBay sent me an email as below to warm me that this buyer has unregistered from eBay, so maybe it is a fraud.
|
|||
|
At this stage, you will see it is a fraud. The most important thing is check your paypal account to see if a payment has beenb paid to you before you ship the item out. But seriously, if eBay did not send me a warning message, I might already have been cheated. Lucky as me, the email from eBay arrived before this buyer’s another email below:
Am sorry for the late response due to some circumstances …I just wanna let you know that the payment has been effected now Via PayPal now AU $750.00 has been deducted from my PayPal account now and i had pay the postage cost to united state ..i have check postage cost on courier service web site kindly get the item post to him today and get back at me with the tracking number,for me to know when the item has been sent,it Nice doing business with you i hope we know each other more.here is the address.. Vicky Roberts, 6400 north east highway 99 #G180,Vancouver Washington,98665,United State.
Regards
Victoria
That address in America is not a residential address. I checked google map, which shows it is a business area. The buyer is so generous that she also paid $100 postage before I adivse her this cost. Too good to be true.
There is another blog also the same Paypal fraud for seller. Link is: http://www.mogmachine.com/sellers-beware/
Please be really careful when you sell or buy.
Fraud continued… received futher email on 10 July 2010 19:46 below:
Hello,
Good Day,how is you family?hope they are fine.can you tell me what is happening over there?because the payment has been made via paypal,and the fund has been deducted from my account,but i have not hear from you and i have already contact paypal customer care and i was informed that you have not get back to them with the tracking number for the posting of the item.so get the item posted to today.and get back to me with the tracking number for the posting of the item.i have contact ebay about this transaction.Hope to hear from you before 1hurs
Regards
Victoria
You can see from the above, they won’t stop trying to get you into the trap either by enticing or threatening. I guess, there will be more emails from this Victoria in next few days. Will get this blog updated later.
5 comments
Comments feed for this article
24 August 2010 at 7:26 pm
winchesterfan
I recently put my laptop up for sale on ebay and was suprised when it had been sold within a day!
I was shocked to see that i had to post to the netherlands, but the fact that i had sold it was exciting!
The buyer sent me an email closely matching what yours said
that he has made the payment plus an extra $200 to cover postage (an insane amount right) it only costs around $70 to post there!
He said that the payments made through paypal and can be cleared the moment that i give them the tracking number for my item.
Obviously I havent sent it yet because theres no money in my bank….
Im gutted to find out that it was a fraud who bought my laptop lol! But hey hopefully when i re-list another HONEST person can buy it…..
16 October 2010 at 5:11 am
Vicky
This person has written defamatory remarks about me unfairly. He did not include the facts that I contacted him, as a result of email copies he sent with his iPAD.
The person he purchased the ipad from was unknown to me at that time, how my address made it into the mix of this interaction.
I emailed Fredereich with my concerns that his email copies raised red flags to me, and that I wasn’t forwarding the iPAD to it’s destination until the payment issue was resolved, either by him or the buyer.
I was met with vulgernes, abuse and threats from Fredereich, I have all the copies of my attempts to help him work through this situation with the buyer, up to and including the return of the iPAD to him. But he felt I should pay for the return, as I am not a party to the transaction, I held no liability and asked him to do one of two things. 1. See if I could ship back to him Cash on Delivery to Ireland, 2. Send me a prepaid shipping label to send it back to him.
I also contacted the buyer, since the emails he sent had her email address, telling her I was not shipping the iPAD to her until the proof of payment was verified.
Instead of either resolving the issue, I was pressured by the seller to ship it post haste at my expense to her final destination, I was sent harassing, intimidating and vulger emails from Frederich accusing me wrongly of being involved in ripping him off. I finaly came under the impression that maybe Fredereich was trying to rip off the seller by stating the payments did not go through, so I also asked him to provide me proof that the payments had not gone through. He did not comply with that either. He would rather post maliciously against me, and obtain money through filing a fraudulent loss claim.
To date, I even threatened to throw out the iPAD, but I keep hoping one of the parties will resolve the matter, at their own cost!
Meanwhile, this defamatory post remains, which I guess is in Fredereich’s mind, justice. However, it is not, I am and have been an innocent party in all of this, but his posts are seen by prospective employers. How fair is that in this time of turmoil? He knows I am unemployed, as I told him that was the reason I had no extra funds just to ship it back. Every cent I have is accounted for, each month is one less I have of any income, and with a post like this affecting my background searches, what chance do I have?
I tried to be a mediator, as I was placed innocently in the middle. To date, neither party has taken responsibility to seek resolution. Instead Fredereich posts this blog.
Any party interested can view the email transactions from Fredereich and I. From the beginning, just email me. vickyrvickyr@yahoo.com
Please encourage this man to remove this post, ask to see my proof that I tried to be a help, not a party to this horrid situation he brought on by being greedy and selling to a very suspicious buyer to begin with, why sell out of your country if you have honest intentions to begin with, and as for the seller, why buy out of your country if you have honest intentions? Both buyer and seller appear to be scammers to me, and I am the only one who’s reputation is in ruins.
After thought, he even threatened local police action, and stated he’d hired an attorney to sue me. I kept waiting and even contacted him for the attorneys name so we could work this through, but nothing came of that.
26 November 2010 at 12:38 am
Jeffster
68F8034528382432U
Same Paypal id number – thank you!
25 January 2011 at 5:34 am
Vicky
It might be the same paypal id, but still not mine, Victoria Roberts, but the fraudulent seller’s number, Victoria Robinson, aka Victoria Dixon.
Fred Clear my name from your slander here!
I assisted you in recovering your iPAD against all odds, and still you slander me?
The slandering my name is offensive and chargeable offense, even in Ireland.
Vicky
3 April 2013 at 7:12 am
TSUKINE
Thanks so much!! I experienced the same thing as well! Just after a few hours the buyer won the item, Ebay notified me that she was no longer registered on Ebay, which made me unable to find the original list. So annoying! Then yesterday I got another email saying that the buyer’s account has been reinstated, but when I checked the email address I found this email was not sent by Ebay.
Also… I got emails saying the buyer did the payment, which were not actually sent by Paypal…