Having a laugh at a scammer

[Richard.]

Got an email, usual rubbish "hi I want to buy your item it's just what I need I can pay via pay pal blah blah blah"
Usually I either ignore them or politely tell them to go away.
I sent one back saying of course he could buy it and asked him what he wanted to do with the item. He said "make metal".
So straight away he's tried to pretend he knows what it is. So I said yeah this will be very suitable but you need to get some plastic tungstens for it as the metal type don't work in this machine. He says " I already have some plastic tungstens so that's ok and he sends me a Chinese postage company link asking if he puts money in my PayPal would I pay post to this link ha ha. I've not responded yet but if you guys have any questions I should ask this joker while he's hanging on ha ha I'll gladly ask him before I blow him out the water and tell him what I really think.

 

[ford34/2]

String him along. Ask for a pic of his workshop. . Stan

 

[rtbcomp]

Tell him it needs a SIM card and you'll fit one set it up if he sends you £20

 

[cumbriasteve]

I am occasionally involved with the 419 scam baiting:

Have a google and a browse, some hilarious reverse scams are listed with photo's and eventual outcomes.

Basically it is seeing how far you can get the scammer to go, wasting his time etc, we had one guy travel 80miles to the next town 3 times for the mobile phone he thought we had posted wrongly, he had paid with a false paypal invoice, he was not a happy bunny and claimed to be the son of a man of powers and would place a curse on us if we did not pay him.

Some of the other guys have even had the scammer send money to clear UK customs after a long drawn out reverse scam.

It's great fun and fills in an hour or so on a winters night when the workshop is too cold to play.

 

[Richard.]

Tell him it needs a SIM card and you'll fit one set it up if he sends you £20

I like that. Defo in the next email.

 

[Richard.]

I can't stop laughing at the SIM card suggestion. I've just put " sorry I forgot to mention I no longer have the SIM card for this item so if you wish to make connection to the services I can provide this pre configured for an extra 19.99" ha ha ha. I look forward to the reply.

 

[CompoSimmonite]

Tell them you have registered it's details with the Police for protection in the event of theft so he needs to contact (Scotland Yard ?) to get a transfer of ownership reference before you can legally hand it over otherwise the item will go into default mode and won't work.

 

[Maker]

I assume it's the Rehm you're selling? What metal does he want to make with it?

 

[Richard.]

God knows but I wish him the best of luck. He's gonna need it with them plastic tungstens.

 

[TechnicAl]

Got an email, usual rubbish "hi I want to buy your item it's just what I need I can pay via pay pal blah blah blah"
Usually I either ignore them or politely tell them to go away.
I sent one back saying of course he could buy it and asked him what he wanted to do with the item. He said "make metal".
So straight away he's tried to pretend he knows what it is. So I said yeah this will be very suitable but you need to get some plastic tungstens for it as the metal type don't work in this machine. He says " I already have some plastic tungstens so that's ok and he sends me a Chinese postage company link asking if he puts money in my PayPal would I pay post to this link ha ha. I've not responded yet but if you guys have any questions I should ask this joker while he's hanging on ha ha I'll gladly ask him before I blow him out the water and tell him what I really think.

Im not very enlightened on these things. If he is offering to pay by paypal how do you know its a scam?

 

[Richard.]

What they do is ask for your pay pal address to pay u then they send you an email confirmation from a fake pay pal website saying the money has been paid. They then ask you to pay there courier with western union usually (why I don't know) they then take the money and run. I've had fake gumtree websites that look so real come to my email asking for logging in detail and account details they say is security details. It's easy to fall for if your not on the ball.

 

[Richard.]

Gumtree is literally hounded by them as there isn't the same level of security as is on eBay.
You'll usually get a text from "gumtree" saying. George wants to buy your item please email him on ...............@gmail.com. Always gmail for some reason. So you email and it goes from there. They are never available on the phone they always accept your asking price and if you ask any questions regarding the item you'll find they don't know the first thing about it as all they want is your cash. They are clever as they can make you believe they have paid when they haven't simply by there very well copied links and websites that they send. I'd love to get my hands on them. I hate thieves with a passion especially ones that prey on people's good nature.

 

[TechnicAl]

If you check your paypal does it say theyve paid?

I didnt know anything about this..........Im a bit naive

 

[TurtleDude]

I've found a cunning way to avoid these ebay scammers.


Hoard.

 

[TechnicAl]

I recently had a clear out. Paid £175 for a skip. I think I filled it 3 times. Had I known people would take the stuff I could have saved the skip money.

I once sold my Drive on ebay

I was having it re block paved and its quite big. They wanted £600 to remove the old blocks so I had a brain wave a put it on ebay........buyer collects.......starting at 99p..........I got £150 and they took them all away

I had a bloke from Birmingham offer me more money but he intended moving them in a car trailer........it would have taken him weeks so I refused

 

[TurtleDude]

I recently had a clear out. Paid £175 for a skip. I think I filled it 3 times. Had I known people would take the stuff I could have saved the skip money.

I once sold my Drive on ebay

I was having it re block paved and its quite big. They wanted £600 to remove the old blocks so I had a brain wave a put it on ebay........buyer collects.......starting at 99p..........I got £150 and they took them all away

I had a bloke from Birmingham offer me more money but he intended moving them in a car trailer........it would have taken him weeks so I refused

After he'd factored in the petrol/diesel, time, and multiple trips, McDonalds on each journey, Selco could probably have delivered the materials for less.


Unless he's parked his Ducati on the drive ...

 

[TechnicAl]

After he'd factored in the petrol/diesel, time, and multiple trips, McDonalds on each journey, Selco could probably have delivered the materials for less.


Unless he's parked his Ducati on the drive ...

exactly.......some crazy people about

 

[TurtleDude]

exactly.......some crazy people about

I once 'won' a BMX on ebay, thinking the Diamond Back brand was 'top of the range' as it had been in my teens.

Later research after the 'win' through the fog of beer revealed I could buy the same bike from a local halfords for £10 less.

And this one was used!!

I wriggled my way out of it. (Cat ate my homework and spewed on my keyboard etc...)

 

[skotl]

If you check your paypal does it say theyve paid?

I didnt know anything about this..........Im a bit naive

Paypal has an iron-clad guarantee for buyers.
You'd think this would be a good thing, right?

So how the scam works is that an army of hackers (mainly from Eastern Europe, Africa, Russia and China) "harvest" stolen paypal accounts and sell them onto these scammers. There's nothing massively complex about hacking the paypal accounts; they will start with a list of 1 million accounts and simply try common passwords against each one; "password", "paypal", the user's email address, the user's email address normalised (e.g. if your paypal account is "fred.bloggs@thing.com" then try "fred", "bloggs", "fredbloggs", etc).

For each million paypal accounts they might get ten that they can break into and these go to the scammers.

Fast-forward; ebay/email/my phone is broken/bargain/send you the money/money appears in your paypal account...

Why would you think there was any problem? The guy said he'd send you £400 and your paypal balance is now £400 to the good.
So you ship the unit.

Or they "overpaid" and sent you £500 accidentally. No problem, you wire them £100 back.

All good!

4 weeks later the rightful owner of the paypal account gets his bank statement, realises he's been ripped off, and complains to Paypal. Paypal immediately refund the money directly from your account to his! Check the T&Cs you signed up to with Paypal - you must supply a bank account or credit card and they are entitled to retrieve money from that account. To be fair, they are in the right, because the money you received was stolen.

That's how the scam works - you either ship the goods and never see them again (which is actually far more complex for the scammers, as they have to receive and re-sell them) or you get over-paid and you send them cash. Bear in mind that Paypal protection doesn't help you in the latter case cos you transferred the money to a hacked account, the bad guys took the money in cash, and you have no comeback on the genuine owner of that account, as he was the original victim in all this.

 

[TurtleDude]

Paypal has an iron-clad guarantee for buyers.
You'd think this would be a good thing, right?

So how the scam works is that an army of hackers (mainly from Eastern Europe, Africa, Russia and China) "harvest" stolen paypal accounts and sell them onto these scammers. There's nothing massively complex about hacking the paypal accounts; they will start with a list of 1 million accounts and simply try common passwords against each one; "password", "paypal", the user's email address, the user's email address normalised (e.g. if your paypal account is "fred.bloggs@thing.com" then try "fred", "bloggs", "fredbloggs", etc).

For each million paypal accounts they might get ten that they can break into and these go to the scammers.

Fast-forward; ebay/email/my phone is broken/bargain/send you the money/money appears in your paypal account...

Why would you think there was any problem? The guy said he'd send you £400 and your paypal balance is now £400 to the good.
So you ship the unit.

Or they "overpaid" and sent you £500 accidentally. No problem, you wire them £100 back.

All good!

4 weeks later the rightful owner of the paypal account gets his bank statement, realises he's been ripped off, and complains to Paypal. Paypal immediately refund the money directly from your account to his! Check the T&Cs you signed up to with Paypal - you must supply a bank account or credit card and they are entitled to retrieve money from that account. To be fair, they are in the right, because the money you received was stolen.

That's how the scam works - you either ship the goods and never see them again (which is actually far more complex for the scammers, as they have to receive and re-sell them) or you get over-paid and you send them cash. Bear in mind that Paypal protection doesn't help you in the latter case cos you transferred the money to a hacked account, the bad guys took the money in cash, and you have no comeback on the genuine owner of that account, as he was the original victim in all this.

You seem to know a lot about how this works Mr Skotl!

I always thought you were such a nice boy too!