Scam Witness - 6 Months Since it happened
Hey everyone on eBay,
It's been quite a while since I went through a tragic scam, especially in a period in which budget was tight. I was trying to sell my one and only favorite gaming laptop to afford rent and surprisingly, within the span of a few days, it sold for $990. But little did I know, it was a scammer.
First, he messaged me asking for my email as 'he wasn't able to complete the transaction without it' so I waited for a few days. No reply so then I finally took a deep breathe and send him my email. Instantly later, he sent an email to my account stating that he paid $990 for the laptop including shipping and I was stunned and relieved. Then, I shipped my laptop to the address and waited for the payment to arrive in my bank account. After a few days, there was no sign of payment and I was devastated. Turns out, the emails were fake and generated by a scam company.
Then in September, he emailed me making up a story apologizing that he had 'no money' and 'really needed the laptop for his sick grandmother' and confirmed to pay by September 15, 2022. But I waited like anyone else would trying to contact or look for answers online but no hope. Now here I am struggling to pay bills and rent with that.
Any advice?
mam98031
·3 years agoThat is too bad. You should have followed your original instincts and just stop communicating. Then next go and cancel the transaction. List it again and hopefully sell it to a honest buyer.
It is a 100% GUARANTEED Fraud. There is NO reason for them to do this. Not a legit reason anyway. I can guarantee you that they are trying to steal your money or your product or maybe both.
NEVER take ANY part of an Ebay transaction Off Ebay. Not only is it a serious breach of the Ebay rules and can lead to you losing the privilege of selling on the site, but the ONLY reason a buyer would want to do this is to STEAL from you. There is NO upside to this for you at all.
Your response to them should just be a simple one.
All communication and payments will be handled on the Ebay site only. There is no legitimate reason to do otherwise.
downunder-61
·3 years agoI find myself surprised that you did not come to the boards when it happened, nothing could be done as it was an off eBay sale, but coming here now seems pointless
Maybe a post on Facebook will attract the help you are actually after, you could start a Go Fund Me page.........
kitschy*loot
·3 years ago@papa_6744 I suppose it doesn't make a difference now but I'm curious to know why you wouldn't wait to ship until after the money was safely in your bank account... of course what you explained isn't how eBay works but still would like to know what the hurry to ship was.
This was apparently a scam you were the victim of from an item sold March 2022 and the last time they contacted you was 6 months ago, which seems odd as I've never heard of a scammer who would even bother to contact with any kind of story that long after... but if it's been a whole year since the transaction and you're still struggling to pay rent and bills over a failed $990 sell this would be the least of your problems and you are in desperate need of financial assistance from either a job or some type of temporary state program.
rosachs
·3 years agoThe hurry was likely attributable to a new seller wanting to please the buyer and get them their purchase as soon as possible. Scammers are social engineers - they know how to manipulate people. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to scam nearly as many people as they do.
The secondary contact could have been to ensure the seller continued to wait and not take any legal or otherwise accountable action that could cause the scammer trouble. A nastier explanation would be that the scammer just likes to play with their food.
eBay pulls listing data off the site after 60 days, archiving it for eBay's later use. Same with order data - there's an archive date based on data of sale. There may be ways to get to the archived stuff, but since I keep my data on my system (thank you SixBit!), I've never really looked into it. eBay can't afford the processing horsepower and bandwidth requirements to allow all sellers to access all their archival data. But you can be they keep it and use it to monitor a great many things. That's called "Big Data", if I understand this new terminology correctly. 🙂
-Bob.
dbfolks166mt
·3 years agoSorry this happened to you. this is a well known scam tactic had you reached out on this forum prior to selling the laptop the first piece of advice you would have probably gotten is to NOT list the item on eBay for a number of reasons: being a new seller, highly targeted scam item and its an easy item for you to sell locally.
You have the buyers information so you can file a police report with their local police department as well as with the FBI cyber crimes unit their web site is https://www.ic3.gov/ . You should also report the buyer to eBay.
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/rules-policies-buyers/abusive-buyer-policy?id=4374
oldwestcoins
·3 years agoInteresting you show nothing listed and 0 feedback. My first impression would be you sound like a scammer.
There are many jobs out there to be had. Everyone is hiring. Have you tried looking for work to pay your bills? $15 and up an hour is good pay. Good luck.
doug_5857
·3 years agoI am also sorry this has happened to you as well. As a rule, we Sellers follow is Never post an Item that you cannot afford to give away. Any one of us can be scammed at any time for anything we post. Scammers look for sellers that are Brand New who don't know what they are doing exactly. There are some things you can do to file Fraud charges, but I am not familiar of then. I hope someone will chime in with the specifics of who to contact.
moldy5
·3 years agowhat an awful story, a mistake you will never make again. hard lesson to learn. hope you have more high value items to list ($25 at least) so some income will be rolling in. truly very sorry this happened to you.
mtgraves7984
·3 years agoWell, it is a shame that you got taken... but you did. I don't see any sold items here, but you never, never give your email address because of this very reason.
When you list... you never ship until eBay has the order under Seller Hub/Orders/Awaiting shipment. By then, it's paid. When you sell... you give the buyer exactly 96 hours and one second with out payment, then you Cancel the order, citing 'Buyer didn't pay'. This frees you up to relist and gives the deadbeat/scammer an Unpaid Item Strike. A couple of those a year and many sellers won't have to deal with them, since these users won't get past the seller blocks.
Not your current issue... but I hope you are familiar with Managed Payments and the Hold placed on new/returning sellers' funds. You'd have had a wait... but now, I'm afraid you'll get nothing. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
papa_6744
OP3 years agoapparently, the item I sold, Ebay took down so I cant do anything really...
mtgraves7984
·3 years ago@papa_6744
^^^ This is odd. Have you contacted eBay about the takedown? And this is from a sale from 2022?