That sucks. I hear about it all too often and I’m sure my day is coming. I try to prepare myself by contacting known scammers, before their account is locked/banned, as a prospective buyer to see how they operate to generate some red flags in the future.
A few tips:
—A lot of these scams are people overseas acting like they’re in the US. Analyze their grammar for clues that English might not be their first language.
—If the email address is something off the wall batshit crazy, red flag. Take a look at the email address in the photo in the next item. Also, his “name” associated with the emails he sent was “God First.”
—Time stamps on emails can help, too. When they reply, if they don’t specifically delete all prior messages in the chain, it’ll put all of the old messages down in the body of the email and it’ll capture the time in each of the messages. They’re captured from that person’s computer’s timezone. Use that time compared with the correct timezone in the ad’s location to see if they match up.
In the example below, the seller claimed to be in Indiana. However, I was replying to emails almost immediately so take a look at the time stamp (this reply was sent ten minutes after I received his email). I was in Texas working nights at the time, not Ohio - I just said that since it’s close and I knew he’d offer to ship them, anyways, since it was a scam - so if he’s in Indiana, he should have only been an hour ahead of me in Texas.
—Ask for references. If it’s on a forum, get references from well-respected, long-time active members who have dealt with the person successfully. Also, always check out the reference, too. If they both joined around the same time and don’t post much, red flag. If you go back and look at all of their posts and it’s a bunch of meaningless drivel to get their post count up to seem like an active member, red flag.
—Google image search is your friend. Most of the time they’re “selling” something they’ve never had in their possession. 9 times out of 10 if you do an image search on their ad’s photos, you’ll find another webpage from which they’ve taken the photos.
—Smell test. If it’s too good to be true, proceed with caution. In the example below, the guy was trying to sell me a $2,200 binocular for $950 shipped. Okay.
—Always use a form of payment that offers fraud protection.
—The first thing I’ll do when dealing with someone new or that doesn’t have references I trust is to always ask for a photo of the item with some type of proof that it’s actually in his/her possession. An example is to ask something like, “Can you send me a quick picture of the (_________) on the arm of your couch with your right hand making a thumbs up beside it?” That’s a little over the top, but illustrates my point. I’m usually buying guns online so personal information is routinely shared.
I just ask for a photo of the person’s driver’s license covering up the trigger well on the weapon. Easy to do, not a common photo they’d be able to find online, and proves they have possession. Some folks will try to get tricky but paying a little attention goes a long way.
Here’s an example of a time where I played along with one of these bastards for educational purposes - same example the email above. The photos below are from a known scammer on a gun selling website before his account was banned. He claimed to have this binocular for sale. I knew going into the conversation that he was a scammer and had already taken money from someone, so I had zero intention of buying it, but I wanted to pretend like I was a possible buyer to familiarize myself with their tricks. When I asked for a photo of the binocular, I got this:
There were other photos, but this illustrates my point. When I asked for a photo of his driver’s license, I got this photo (I don’t mind posting it because it is involved with a scam and others should know the name and see the face, just in case. More than likely, the person on the DL isn’t even involved with this scam, someone has just stolen an image of his identification and is using it to seem more convincing. More on that later):
So if you’re still with me at this point, this is where it gets kinda good but also where you need to pay attention. I then asked for a photo of the driver’s license with the binocular to convince me that it was actually in his possession.
A bit of photo/video editing background - if you’re watching a documentary or a reality series or whatever, they always over-dramatize stuff which is typically accomplished by less than honorable methods, a bit of sleight of hand/lens, if you will. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a scene where they make it look like someone is having an encounter with a bear, except they never show the bear and the person in the same frame. Often times, you can slow down the footage and analyze the surroundings to determine the two clips are completely unrelated, think bear footage from somewhere in Alaska portrayed as a close encounter in Idaho, for example - evergreen trees in the shot with the bear and deciduous in the shot of the person, different lighting, wind vs. no wind, etc.
This scammer made it WAY easier than that. Here is the photo I was provided when I asked to see the DL with the binocular:
Apart from it being the world’s smallest driver’s license, it’s fairly obvious that this is a poor cut & paste job combining the two photos from above. In fact, with better resolution, you can zoom in on the DL and see the black background on the corners from where he “cut” the image. The angles are the same on the box as the original photo as are the angles on the DL, making it pretty obvious that this is comprised of the two original photos.
This led me down a rabbit hole with the guy because it started getting interesting, then. His emails were coming back within minutes which made the next observation really important.
Who’s paying attention?
I got this photo emailed to me in the middle of the night in Texas. I was working nights back then and thought it was kinda odd that a dude from Indiana was up all night emailing me. If you look at his photoshop job on the DL/binocular picture, it’s a screenshot from his phone (another red flag, should just be an image if he had both items in his hand) but he didn’t crop out the data at the top of the phone. So I get this email at, well I guess it would have been right around 1:30am in Texas and noticed the time on his screenshot said 3:27pm. That means he’s twelve hours ahead of me, placing him somewhere in East Asia. Similar concept as the email time stamps referenced above, this is just additional confirmation or could be used if the scammer is deleting the prior messages from the body of his emails and you don’t see time stamps that way.
He went on to try to get me to send him a USPS Money Order to the name/address on the DL. I’ve since read that these are typically operations from another country who either have someone in the US helping them out, getting a cut of each deal. The other option is that the person on the DL doesn’t even know this is happening and someone is watching their mailbox to take the MO after verifying it was delivered with tracking. This is proof enough that USPS money orders are no more secure than lighting money on fire.
If you’re buying something with PayPal and you don’t know/trust the person, pay the extra money for “Goods and Services” so you have buyer’s protection. If you’re selling something, it doesn’t really matter. Someone above, I think
@Casual said to view any request from a seller other than “Goods and Services” as suspicious. I don’t necessarily agree with this. When I sell things I almost always specify “Friends and Family” so I don’t have to pay the fee. It’s right at 3% so the larger the sale, the more money PayPal takes. I have no problem with a buyer wanting to use “Goods and Services,” I just ask that they add 3% to the purchase price to cover the fee. Since it’s their own protection, I don’t feel it’s my responsibility to pay for it as a seller. I would, however, be a little concerned if the seller refused to do the deal if I offered to pay for the buyer protection through “Goods and Services.” If he still gets the total he’s asking for, why should he care if I pay a little extra for the coverage?
Sorry for such a long post! I’m by no means a detective, and I was lucky to know going into this example that it was a scam so I could just spend time picking it apart to figure out what to look for. I share it willingly so that others might learn a few tips to hopefully keep from falling victim to one of these asshats in the future.
