How I got scammed on Facebook Marketplace (2023)
ben.pageI like to think I'm pretty scam-savvy, but it only takes a moment of the holes in the swiss cheese aligning. I saw a recreation of a movie prop that looked like a good gift idea for a friend and made an impulse purchase. Something was nagging at the back of my head and a couple of minutes later I had a sinking feeling that it might be a scam -- sure enough, a little research showed that the product photos were stolen, the original was a limited-run authorized item that sold for 20x what I paid, and I found a forum post where this scam item was being discussed.
The web site I bought from was a single legitimate-looking veneer page with most of its content lifted from templates, and there was no functional tracking or order management anywhere, so I immediately e-mailed them asking to cancel the order, to which they replied that they that the product was "good quality", "you can rest assured that you have it", and that they would charge me a 5% fee to cancel. So I opened a case with PayPal and they closed it saying the transaction was "consistent with my purchase history", whatever that means. I appealed and they doubled down that it was not fraudulent. There are no more buttons to press at that point, but I wrote back again reiterating all of the evidence that they were actively providing a payment service to facilitate fraudulent transactions (the scammer was still around and still advertising the same fake products) and after a long period of silence I suddenly got a refund.
PayPal is not on your side as a customer, especially if you're dealing with a professional scammer who knows how to play the game and string things out. I suspect what happened here was that they got one too many complaints, and if they'd been a little less greedy or more careful, they would have walked away with the bag of money.
It's time to move away from Paypal and use a credit card when buying online. Fraud protection with credit cards is much stronger. Paypal has proven itself bad for consumers again and again.
It boggles my mind that people still think paypal is trustworthy.
s/still think/ever thought/
Hey, before Paypal buying on eBay was sending someone a money order or a check. It was a million times better / more trustworthly / more reliable / faster.
I don’t like PayPal but I am impressed by their ability to stay popular. I think the first “don’t use this company, they’ll help scammers screw you” horror story I heard was before the turn of the century, and it’s not like they didn’t have competition at any point but they managed to get locked into a lot of people’s minds as the best option.
The advantage of PayPal is you don't have to give anyone your payment information.
But you do: you have to give PayPal your payment information.
Sure, you don't have to give other people your information, but honestly there are few people that I’d want to business with that I feel less comfortable giving payment information to than PayPal.
Paypal is available for a great many small, part-time sellers while accepting credit cards are not. Suppose you were selling some stuff and I wanted you to mail it to me. Could you accept a credit card for payment?
In Britain you have the right to cancel an online or mail-order purchase up to 14 days after delivery.
This is not new, I think the origin is probably from disappointing catalogue ordering.
The business refusing to cancel the order would make an easy claim to reverse the payment.
https://www.gov.uk/online-and-distance-selling-for-businesse...
In the EU, We have similar consumer protections for online purchases¹: a cooling off period of 14 days where no reason has to be provided for cancelling an online purchase of products or services (I’d wager the UK consumer protections are pre-Brexit rules that remain in effect). You’re actually better off making an impulse purchase online than you are in a bricks-and-mortar store.
¹ https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...
I’m savvy too and had a similar one recently that I stopped myself at the check out. I was surprised I got so far before realising.
I clicked a Facebook link for a clothing brand’s factory outlet, which went to a site that had all the logos, a web store with correct looking products, and really great prices. Like 80% off.
I hurriedly loaded up some stuff in the cart and checked out.
At the credit card entry I realised the URL wasn’t tied to the brand’s website.. it wasn’t a subdomain, it was like https://brand.outletfactory.com or similar… still could be legit as a business partner may have been running the site.
Before entering the cc details I went to the brands website to see if there was a link to follow to their outlet site and there wasn’t.
At this point the dread set in as there was no actual link between the brand and this site despite the right logos, products and a nice looking webstore, so I googled for a scam and found people had been caught out.
I promptly backed out of the transaction and reported the ad to Facebook. I can’t remember the exact response I got but I remember being underwhelmed as if the scam ad would continue but I had been taken out of the filter.
Was it the Jurassic Park Barbasol Can? I got it as an Instagram ad, $30 lesson.
I was thinking if that camera was only $30 I'm not sure I'd jump thru the hoops, and so more people would get scammed.
That was the one. Two for $70 in my case.
Wow, i was half serious but did buy it from the IG ad, and 3 months later after seeing the ad over and over, notice the orignal creator kept tracking the scams and posting in the ad comments it was a scam, I reported it to paypal, and the day after that (roughly 2-3 months) they shipped it, and it was wack.... like parts of it seemed to be machined, but not the acutally thing from the video from the og prop maker.
Edit: for anyone wondering here is mine: https://i.imgur.com/wc9hgwM.jpeg
It's not the worst thing, but definitely not what the ad showed, it showed the movie style twist and pop. Every part onb this is loose/free floating.
I cant seem to find the original ad or the scam ads, but this is what I'm at least referring too.
Interesting.
It's difficult to second-guess a scammer but this could very well be something that started out like a scam with the intention of shipping nothing, but within 3 months turned into more like a Kickstarter where they got a bonanza of buyers beyond expectations and decided to build and ship some products after all.
At least ship to the wheels that squeak enough.
And only ship when product is available, it doesn't have to be a sustainable business if it was supposed to be fly-by-night to begin with. So they could quit any time, or keep going for quite some time even after "inventory" has been fully depleted.
Could be about the reverse of the Kickstarters that started out legitimate but end up the equivalent of a scam when they fail to deliver anything.
I fell for a sob story about a woman who's kid died and left behind a PS5 they wanted to get rid of. I was kind and sympathetic and said "If you want I can sell it for you and forward you the money" they then asked for money to ship it to me. (I immediately caught the scam there and blocked them). This happened on an open groupme group apparently people can enumerate and join them randomly.
in hindsight 1) Don't sell something for someone else-- you dont know if it's stolen and 2) Don't front strangers any credit/money (I didn't)
Paypal's CEO should read this.
I got my account limited because they mistook my birthday date. When the guy on support told me the problem was that I was still underage and I told them that, they just deleted all messages, haha.
I got scammed on a Facebook group (not marketplace). It was a surprisingly sophisticated scam but now that I'm aware of it I see it constantly in every group that has people posting wanted to buy posts.
I was searching for a hard-to-find car part. I asked in the group and got a reply saying "try this page" with a link to another Facebook page that appeared to be a business a few cities away selling car parts. The posts on that page all looked legit, with listings for vehicles that make sense for my region, real-looking photos of parts laid out and labelled, etc. The posts had timestamps that made sense, not just hundreds of posts made on one day.
So it seemed trustworthy, I messaged the group and got an immediate response (should have been a red flag, response was "yes I have that part" within seconds). We negotiated a price ($200), he sent through bank details and I transferred the money. About an hour later someone else responded to my original post with "that's a scam".... sadly, too late.
I dug into the page a bit and found Facebook has a "view post history" feature. Every single post on the page had been edited. The original posts had all been a rabbit enthusiast posting pictures of their rabbits. They had been edited to be pictures of car parts with descriptions matching the pictures. Clearly someone's credentials had been stolen and their page hijacked.
It's unbelievable to me that Facebook can't detect this kind of fraud. Surely someone logging into an account from a new location, editing every single post on the page then spamming Groups with links to that page should set off automated alarm bells. As mentioned, now that I'm aware of this scam I see it in every single group that allows "wanted to buy" posts, constantly. Like, in every thread.
The infuriating part is how easy it apparently is to highjack dead people / inactive accounts, and use them for fraud.
Case in point, I never use FB except for the marketplace every now and then. I naturally forgot my login/password, hit the "Forgot password" option, put my phone number and... got given access to someone else's account, that they've not used in years. They likely had my number before, I guess, passing away.
I contacted FB and did my best to try to lose access to the account, starting with login out, but I kept receiving notifications through text messages, and was permanently given the option to "switch account" with no authentication whatsoever. Out of option, I ultimately deactivated the account in question, but that pisses me off because I really really did not want to alter it in any way.
Long story short, it's not a surprise Facebook is riddled with shit like that.
> The next morning, I called PayPal and asked them how the seller could’ve opened a case on my behalf against themselves. They weren’t sure.
That's scary :/
I think this is the worst part of the event.
PayPal is the most annoying service I use because it asks for 2FA for every damn action. So how could they take that action? Surely if they logged in they left breadcrumbs?
The post is mildly infuriating because it doesn’t even try to answer very important that question.
They provide a possible reason, that being mobile number spoofing and calling the call center
This might be an option you turned on? I don't experience 2FA for paypal... But I'll probably go fix that today.
I'm pretty sure it's part of "the algorithm". I don't get 2FA prompts every time, but ever so often for it to be annoying - especially since I am then thrown back to the login prompt which dares to tell me that the password from my password manager was wrong. No, it wasn't wrong, your system apparently just cannot handle going from a password prompt to 2FA and then realizing that the correct password was already entered! I asked lots of people around me and they don't have this issue, so I guess it's kinda random who is treated how.
It is apparently very inconsistent.
My own experience with using PayPal usually (as in: almost always) goes like this:
I get a PayPal popup that says something like "You're already logged in! One moment," and then once that goes away I push the whatever button corresponds to "Yeah, sure -- pay it."
It's generally a one-button operation for me, and has been for years.
I wonder what the differentiation is.
Agreed on the yikes here - this should be a high priority issue from paypal's side to address.
This seems like a HUGE loophole
Eh, I'm sure PayPal could see how it happened but the relatively low level support person wouldn't have access to such information.
Fake tracking numbers are a common occurrence in scams now. Somehow the scammers are getting access to a database of real time legitimate tracking numbers, they wait until there’s a shipment in their database going to the same city as the buyer, and then use that tracking number to claim that they shipped the package. Maybe they’re paying a real merchant for access to their shipping database? Or are UPS tracking numbers short enough to brute force?
I think the idea is the scammer just picks a random business in the area then ships them an empty box with a real tracking number.
There are no till drills that are being sold exceptionally cheap (~$800 US) and show up as the first google ad that are rumored to be an empty box shipped from the country of origin (not China) with incorrect paperwork that gets stuck in customs. Most people say they get their money back through CC or Paypal but maybe a few don't check? Either way it was plausible enough that I did not purchase. The market is small farmers and hunters planting food plots. You can use an old repurposed grain drill if the grass is super short/overgrazed and you can fix it, ~$1500 used on marketplace, or buy a small 4' (no tires/3 point hitch) no till drill US made low end ~$8k. So it is "too good to be true".
Maybe one of those sites that come up when you search Google for 'track package' is selling tracking numbers?
Been using Marketplace for 5 years with probably +100 items sold. Scammers in my experience usually exhibit these traits:
* They have a new account, and have no Marketplace reviews.
* They want it shipped and will pay extra for shipping. (While some real sellers will want it shipped, most will come by to pick it up.)
* They do not try to low ball you or even negotiate. (Facebook sellers are notoriously cheap.)
* There is a sense of urgency and very responsive to messages. (Most Facebook sellers are not instantly responsive as they have a life.)
I have also seen scam sellers appear as well. They sort of do the same thing:
* The price for the items are amazing, a steal.
* They always ship, often for free. You can never pick it up.
* They are very responsible to any messages.
* The account is new.
There's another red flag I've seen: buyers ask to pre-pay on the spot without having seen the item. They usually want to use Zelle or Venmo, and say they're going to have a relative come pickup the item.
Happened to me the other day. I got a weird feeling when they responded with a long message within seconds of me messaging (maybe it’s partially automated?), then when they wanted to pay upfront with Zelle and asked for my email I knew it was a scam.
At that point they’d send you a fake Zelle/Venmo phishing email, saying you need to upgrade to a business account, or “login” and do something else to accept the payment.
It's helpful being outside the USA. Many scammers are easier to spot.
Profile pictures are obviously American, and often show more breast than face.
Instant replies.
Quickly ask for an unusual payment method which no local would use.
Write in the local language (machine translated) and don't switch to English if I write in English.
The Zelle thing is a huge red flag for me.
I almost got scammed by a couple on Facebook Marketplace. They had a Mac Mini they were selling for about $20 less than the going rate I had found on ebay so I initiated contact and we agreed on the price. I asked how they do payment, Paypal, Venmo, Stripe?
None of the above. The husband kept telling me sob stories about why they don't use any of them - only Zelle. I was like, I don't have that, and I'm not setting up another payment app just for one purchase.
That's when the scam and the sketchy feelings started creeping into my brain. They told me to go get a prepaid card, and then send it and they'll ship the Mac Mini when they get it. They were a few cities over and just like OP said, they didn't want to arrange a pickup. I was like, "Yeah, fuck that, you send the PC first and THEN I'll send the money." Then the husband told me if they were going to do that, I can just scratch off the security label and send then the code for safe keeping, and then they'll send the Mac Mini when they get the code.
That was the last straw - I told them to fuck off and go scam someone else. I got few nasty texts from the husband before blocking them.
Scammers use Zelle because nobody else uses it, which then forces people to go to great lengths to get something and will start to jump through hoops. I was wondering how many other people this couple had scammed before I contacted them.
No. Zelle is widely used as is Cash App. Which is more popular varies with your location, your age, your socio-economic status.
I'm surprised you consider Stripe widely used among small, part-time sellers.
But if I were buying something to be mailed I would insist on either credit card payment or Paypal.
I had an eBay sell once for an expensive camera and the buyer asked if I could change into pickup and have a relative pick it up. Was suuuuuuuper sus but because it was local and paid through eBay I figured sure let’s see where it goes. Went totally fine. Had the person sign a an invoice not that it would do anything on the eBay front.
Scammers know it’s hard to judge sometimes. Heck there’s always the risk someone just comes and runs off without paying.
Now on marketplace I say cash only in person in public and when the person shows up then I offer Zelle or cash whatever. That seems to have stopped most of the automatic scam attempts.
Interesting. I wonder what the author should have done differently. Second paragraph in the article is:
> I bought the camera from a profile that was created in 2017. They had some other things for sale, too. The account looked legit — lots of family photos and comments from family members.
I still think of https://xkcd.com/325/ often (bobcat) as especially when dealing with companies/individuals.
You could outright scam one in twenty and be 95% perfect/good.
Or scam only when selling something expensive
Yeah on marketplace I always do the “pick up only, cash only” thing. The scammers try to talk me into some other arrangement but if I hold to it they disappear.
When I do FB marketplace I go cash and in-person. It lets you assess the quality of whatever you're buying.
Same. Only time I ever dealt with shipping on FB marketplace was the time I was selling my Steam Deck and some guy didn’t want to drive. So I said “How about I list it on eBay so we’re both protected, send you the link, and you buy it there”. He was on board and it worked well. Of course I had to eat eBay’s fee but better than getting scammed.
This is the way.
Does FB Marketplace even have any sort of reputation system? Or are you banking entirely on the age of the account?
I'm a heavy Facebook user, but I avoid FB Marketplace like the plague. Just seems like a great place to get scammed.
I've had good success with a couple buyers who mail stuff over marketplace.
I used the same criteria: Number of items listed, number of items sold, how long they have been on the platform. For good measure, I cyber stalk them a little bit to make sure they exist.
Even with an Ebay-like ratings system, one of the thing which happens is legit accounts get hacked and go rogue. (I am guessing they got hacked; someone who was legit could also just randomly decide to go rogue) You're always going to be at risk of that.
>I avoid FB Marketplace like the plague. Just seems like a great place to get scammed
There are scams but I think they are avoidable.
My next door neighbor has spent many thousands of dollars on FB Marketplace and has never been scammed. He buys tools and construction supplies and equipment. Usually gets the stuff 90%+ off retail price and sometimes free.
I think the key is dealing in person.
I got scammed from a FB advert selling clothing, turned out the company is a scam and sends nothing, FB have allowed them to still advertise for months still.
I get downvoted for saying this every time I post it here, but a huge number of facebook adverts are scams of various sorts.
Some are as you say - you order something and never receive it. Straight up
Some are fast fashion companies which get spun up quickly with slick ads and websites, which are somehow "going out of business" even though they were registered less than 2 months ago.
Some are kickstarters for products which obviously are just clones of other products which already are ubiquitous.
A lot are drop shippers who use slick ads to sell you something they aren't even in possession of, at 2-3x the price which you could get it for if you just took the time to look elsewhere.
"Sadly, we're closing our shop... :( The whole inventory is 80% off while the stocks last."
Oldest trick in the book.
Back in the day, you'd see some semi-truck park in a lot and then two dudes with thick AF Southern accents would get out and tell people they tried to deliver all these items to the warehouse, but the warehouse refused the shipment (insert various reasons why) and they can't go back to Ken-tuck-yee without getting rid of it all.
They said they're selling (furniture, electronics, clothing, art) it all for 80-90% off retail. You know, just so they get it off the truck and get back home. I remember working in a commercial area and the owner of the business would come and tell the guys to GTFO their property so they'd pull out and then pull into the next driveway over and rinse and repeat until they were out of the area.
It was a total scam though. My boss bought some couch and said it started falling apart after a few months. I'm not sure these guys had stolen all the stuff, or if the truck got hijacked our what, but during the Summer it was a regular thing that happened a few times every month.
I'd be interested to find out if anybody else remembers these "truck load" scams in the late 90's early aughts.
There's a truck I've seen that sells meat at stupidly low prices, but they're sold in boxes so you don't really know what you're getting.
They'll sell you a box of 20 ribeye steaks for only $40, but you open the box and realize that each "steak" is only about 1/4 inch thick and is absolute dog-food level marbling, completely zero intra-muscular fat.
I bought two of the “white van speakers” in the late 80s. They were unexceptional but okay and lasted 5+ years of heavy college and immediately post-college usage.
The last of those is at least a value-added service for some people.
I don't really see it as a scam:
* I see an ad that says "do you want to buy this item for this price?"
* If I like the price, I can buy the item. I got what was promised.
The fact that maybe I could have bought the same item elsewhere for less doesn't make it a scam. Lots of things are offered at different prices in different places at the same time. That's not a scam.
I think you were replying to my original comment.
It's not a capital 'S' scam in a legal sense, but it's a scam in that they are playing a trick on you by jacking the price way up and relying on your ignorance to make the sale at an inflated price.
If we consider a door-to-door salesman who is selling (say) basic Android phones in retirement communities where hypothetically some folks have never used a smartphone, they might get away with selling a $100 basic phone for $1000. That's not illegal, but it surely is a scam in the ethical sense.
Did you perhaps reply to the wrong comment? I completely agree.
yes, they fit this pattern exactly. I only discovered this issue after being scammed. There are hundreds of people for example who got scammed by a company advertising dolphin blankets, as described by reddit users who where victims of it, and the adverts and company have still not been taken down by FB.
Since I only deal with "in person" sales, to me it's less sketchy than most eBay purchases. I had a similar happening to this story, but with eBay. I don't know why they bothered trying the scam, I got my money back relatively easy, just had to be patient.
It's a great place to get goods cheap. Stolen goods, that is.
Is seems like people selling hot goods want near msrp prices it’s pretty silly.
Or just stay away from people selling brand new products below msrp.
That limits you to buying stuff locally, its a good precaution but means you can't buy anything that is only available further away. I've had good luck buying stuff so far and saved money, I certainly could have got scammed and that would suck.
>That limits you to buying stuff locally, its a good precaution but means you can't buy anything that is only available further away.
To me, that's an entirely reasonable trade-off. You sacrifice the breadth of the market available to you in exchange for greatly reducing your attack surface. You'll easily filter out the legions of machine-assisted international scammers if you require transactions to be in-person with cash.
Like most people - I have a niche interest that doesn't have a large market locally. When I want something that everyone in the country has there is no problem. When I want something unusual though I need to expand to a larger market than local to have a chance of finding it.
I know others have had good success with FB Marketplace, but man I only see scams. I've posted stuff there and on Nextdoor and CL, and I get 10x the number of scam buyers on FB. I stopped even trying to post stuff there, since it was all chaff and no wheat. Kind of surprising, considering I live in SV, just a few miles from FB HQ. I'd think there would be plenty of legit users here!
I've bought and sold so much stuff on Facebook marketplace. Almost always in person and in cash and always a good experience.
At least one time I broke the rule and actually sent money up front for an item but the seller packaged up and sent it right away. The amount was low enough that I wasn't worried about losing it, the item was pretty unique, and I spent a bunch of time checking on things before I decided to trust.
I sold a handful of items on FB Marketplace. Sold in-person for cash. No problems, except for one attempted fraudster who was very obvious. People show up in person, hand over cash, take away items to declutter my garage.
I even managed to sell a nearly-new MacBook Pro for $1900 on FB Marketplace (employer let me keep it after layoff). Local buyer for cash. The buyer was super careful and had the Apple store verify everything about the MacBook.
I've bought/sold hundreds of items on FB Marketplace and never had a problem. The quality and response rate is significantly better than Craigslist, Nextdoor and others. The simple rule is – local, in-person meetup and cash only. If someone insists on anything else then just block and report them.
Yeah treat it like Gumtree, Craigslist, Newspaper Ad or carboot sale. Why do anything else?
> (They asked early on for my phone number “for the tracking information,” which in retrospect doesn’t make a lot of sense.)
When I have shipped parcels (legitimately to people I know personally), the courier services have a place on the form for phone numbers. And I do generally try to make sure I fill in an accurate phone number.
Came here to point out the same thing. I guess when dealing with internet randos, it's best to keep your real digits to yourself (or at least use a phone number that isn't linked to your PayPal account).
This is why I HATE providing my phone and banking information. Phones are the worst 2FA available yet it unlocks almost all doors.
Related to e-marketplaces, I decided to sell something on eBay, an account I've had open for many, many years. They decided to tell me after the item was listed that I would have to link my bank account if I wanted to take the money out and would face further restrictions by the end of the month if I don't comply.
Somewhat tangential - but one of my friends used to buy lots of concert tickets off Craigslist - but he had one simple rule - he’d only buy them unless the seller emailed from a corporate or school email account - it was pretty simple and effective - how is Facebook marketplace worse than Craigslist
You probably meant to write "as long as" or "if" not "unless"
Or
s/'d only/ wouldn't/
I'm curious how Craigslist is bad? I'm a regular user and love the functionality of CL. I'm certainly aware of the many scammers operating on CL but have found them to be rather easy to spot and avoid. Of course, I have a rule - always meet in person and test the item. I'm not aware of anybody shipping items in CL which is where many of these problems arise.
FWIW - I collect vintage portable music players (minidisc, CD, DAT, cassette, 8CM CD) as well as analog music (vinyl, cassette, etc). There are so many old guys on CL selling stuff they see as useless junk - its an amazing resource. I have a rather ridiculous amount of minidisc players and recorders purchased for as little as $10 - often in immaculate condition.
eBay is another matter - but I haven't been scammed on that platform in many years. I think they are doing something right.
Craigslist knows there are are lot of scams and so when you go to contact a seller they give a big warning that there are scams and so avoid them. Facebook accepts ad from scammers but gives you no warning that they do that. And not just things that marketplace, but they also accept ads from scammers and redirect you do their website for the scam - without any warning that it could be a scam.
I refuse to buy from Facebook because they mix things so that things that it seems I shouldn't have to beware of could be scams. I don't mind buying from a potential scammer - but I'll take extra action if I have reason to worry, which in turn means if you are not local to me I won't buy from you. There are a lot of things that I cannot get locally though, so I have to buy from someone who might or might not be scamming me, there I look for signs that it is not a scam - and there Facebook is not helpful in separating out scams from legitimate companies.
I recall years ago I tried to sell something via Craigslist (it was like a 7" LCD monitor with a serial touchscreen, back before cheap touch devices were everywhere), and someone started sending me all a whole song-and-dance of fake postal order documents and insisting I mail the device out. No.
Interesting story - I wonder how they managed to manipulate the Paypal account of the victim. Clearly Paypal has a problem there.
But the other issue is that of general lawlessness and the fact that this scammer will get away with the attempted scamming, and probably do it to other people, too. For every person like the OP who manage, somehow, to protect themselves, there are 1000 others who don't. And there is the issue that the scammer broke the law, in their state and in the victims state, and probably federally, and yet there will be no action from law-enforcement. In such an environment, why not go into this kind of business? What's the downside? It seems to me that there isn't any downside. Sort of like committing perjury.
In general, how bad does it have to get before the law gets enforced?
The author had a theory: "I’m still not sure how the scammer was able to open and close cases on my behalf. My theory is that they were able to spoof my phone number and call PayPal support and do it over the phone. (They asked early on for my phone number “for the tracking information,” which in retrospect doesn’t make a lot of sense.)"
In my experience, you can log in to Paypal/eBay by supplying your email address, then choosing "another way to sign in" (other than PW), at which point you're prompted to enter a single use code sent thru SMS. So: phone spoofing sounds likely, and it's my guess the scammers were operating without even having to use Paypal support to close the tickets.
Well if any one can log into paypal and open and close cases, they might as well just use the paypal account to pay themselves directly or buy stuff. I don't understand why the seller had to use FB to scam people when they could manipulate the paypal account directly
I got scammed for £60 the other day as well when I wanted to buy a Flipper Zero to play around with. I suspected it was a scam, but having never had a bad experience on Facebook Marketplace before (I only bought face to face), I figured I'd give it the benefit of a doubt.
The guy asked me to wire him some money and then disappeared. Once I knew what signs to look for, I realized that all ten people who sold a Flipper Zero on FB were scammers.
How did the scammer close the ticket?
Zero day on Paypal? Unlikely for a lowly FB scammer to have this.
SMS hijack? Unlikely the OP would have noticed.
Phishing? Maybe… could have been a sophisticated phishing attack. Maybe using those fake package delivery SMS messages.
I'm assuming paypal customer service just needs name, address, and phone number to fully authenticate a caller and perform all actions.
They may have a person on the inside.
Whats disturbing is Paypal didnt investigate the issue at all.
In this case, but we aren't aware as to whether this got investigated later. I imagine any issues where they lose money they will follow up on.
There's a lovely line in the original BitCoin paper which says:
> Transactions that are computationally impractical to reverse would protect sellers from fraud, and routine escrow mechanisms could easily be implemented to protect buyers.
The word "easily" is doing a lot of the heavy lifting there! Escrow is a difficult problem to solve. There is no infallible smart-contract which can protect both buyers and sellers. There's just a lot of messy human interaction which - if the stakes are high enough - can only be resolved in court.
Are PayPal's protections sloppy? Probably. Is Facebook Marketplace a cess-pit? Mostly. Can technology solve a cultural problem? I think we all know the answer to that!
There have been routine escrow mechanisms on bitcoin for 10 years?
Its a very lucrative side business to operate those?
They involve humans, they also involve multisignature accounts and smart contracts just like the white paper inspired or imagined 15 years ago. Its been one of the biggest boons for crypto native commerce, even when automated by the marketplace when the local government doesnt like a website they no longer have been able to seize the funds found in the server because buyer and seller just invalidate the escrow account from the multisig and reconcile money deposited/in transit.
These services are far cheaper than escrow agents I’ve seen on marketplaces that dont involve paypal, far faster than those and paypal, and about comparable in cost to paypal goods and service but mostly cheaper at around 1% instead of 2.89-3.49%. But thats mainly from lack of competition.
Given that paypal offers crypto merchant services, this decade, its far more likely that paypal will get in the crypto escrow game too
and maybe next decade HN collective conscious will catch up to a point that these kinds of comments wont appear in HN threads at all, in favor of people showing us their escrow contract just like they do for their random libraries and products in the rest of the tech space
>There have been routine escrow mechanisms on bitcoin for 10 years? Its a very lucrative side business to operate those?
Are those questions?
No, they are exclamations!
Seems like you missed the mark then
Cryptocurrency is kind of the opposite if escrow. Especially the complex stuff like smart contracts. It is more “technical wizard who hacks it takes all!” with zero recourse.
Code is law bud. Wait, not the actual code, the code I meant to write without a bug that could be exploited.
Many people don't realize the bitcoin protocol allows for multisignature transactions, making escrow much simpler to implement (e.g. you can make a 2of3 keypair or 3of5 or anything you want to pay for blockchain space to transact).
Is it possible that the scammer works for paypal or has someone on the inside with access to open and close tickets?
Wow, for once a PayPal story where someone didn't get screwed.
Only because they reached to a real person who listened to the details. Arguably that was also the source of the scam in the first place, so I'm not sure whether to rejoice or be angry.
> someone didn't get screwed
Someone did get escrowed tho.
A couple of similar, now-common scams I have experienced on Facebook Marketplace and eBay:
1) Buyer messages you, wanting local pickup, but claims they can't pick it up themselves and wants to prepay (but won't pay through Facebook or an eBay or Mercari link if provided). They ask you for your Zelle info. Then they'll tell you your Zelle isn't working and needs you to confirm it with them, you'll get a confirmation code, give it to them, and they'll have your Zelle account.
These scammers' accounts typically look legitimate but are often from other cities/countries with no relation to yours. They will engage you in complex conversation about arranging pickup but typically will disengage and block you if you tell them flatly that you do not accept prepayment via Zelle.
2) On eBay, as a buyer, scammers seem to have access to tracking numbers for nearby but not actually the same place. They'll ship things to you with an apparently legit tracking number, and when it never shows up, blame the shipper.
I have to say that I am not sure how this latter case is making money - eBay nearly always sides with the buyer in these kinds of disputes.
I sold a few piece of furniture on Marketplace, and had so many occurrences of "My employer is relocating me and I need to furnish my new place, I'll send movers to pick up the piece". Looking at the seller profile, it's often an account that has seen no activity for a while, and the job rarely matches the type of position that would get an envelope for relocation (e.g.: Amazon warehouse workers surely don't get a package to move to a new location).
I just had a Facebook marketplace camera scam happen to me Today.
Seller marked as shipped, and delivered, but my package wasn't there.
After some sleuthing (I knew a guy who works in UPS) the seller put a different ship to address. So Facebook marketplace isn't doing something as simple as verifying the tracking label is heading to the right destination.
Only doing E-bay from here on out. They have this problem solved for the most part.
I've had the exact same thing happen to me on ebay, FYI.
Bought an A7IV for a very good price. Seller sent a bogus tracking number. After it was delivered to not me, I got USPS to confirm it didn't match my address and got a refund from ebay. It was a pain, and I've learned to never buy from sellers without a reasonable history.
It made me very aware to how many times the best price for an item is from an account with no feedback. Ebay doesn't seem to care about these obvious scams.
FB Marketplace should only be used for in-person transactions. Think of it more like a craigslist replacement than one for eBay.
I feel like the scammers just had his PayPal creds and this is how they extract money from it. If they just transfered it PayPal would be more likely to react swiftly to the complaint, this method might stymie someone completely.
This whole post sounds scammy. There's no way to "call" PayPal. If the author would have said "spent two hours in a fruitless attempt to find a phone number on PayPal's web site," then I might have believed them.
But I can't figure out what the scam is here. Why make up a story like this? Maybe it's some weird way to train a 3rd party LLM? It finds some text on the internet and just includes it into its training set. Months later it barfs out sentences about "calling" PayPal? Seems like a lot of work.
One has to be wary of fake investment companies online these days. I was a victim of an investment scam. I lost $70K to a scam broker. However, I was able to recover all my funds with the help of this Contact (wisetechhack@ gmail .com)
The crazy part is how they managed to open/close Paypal cases for the buyer, it sounds like Paypal has some kind of bug or just lax security over the phone in verifying who someone is.
> I paid $1,030 using PayPal
Stopped reading right there. I don't know why anyone thinks this kind of transaction will ever work out in their favor. FB Marketplace/Craigslist etc. are fine, but the golden rule is to use them for local, in-person, cash-only exchanges and nothing else.
Bingo. It's about as obvious as the people who are surprised when their car gets broken into and then they tell you that their backpack was visible.
Believe it or not, in most of the USA you can leave a backpack visible in your car and it won't get broken into. It's only some shithole cities where this is a serious problem. So, it's unsurprising that many people would be surprised by that particular type of crime.
Online marketplace scams are prevalent pretty much everywhere because the scammers can use fake accounts and are often in another country.
If so, the idea you can safely leave stuff in a car is the triumph of anecdotes over data.
Long ago when starting a software & network company, I got a commercial insurance policy on the computer equipment. It covered everything, suprisingly including the usual exceptions such as war, terrorism, Acts Of God, lightning, fire, etc.
But, there was ONE thing it did not cover:
"Theft from an unattended motor vehicle".
I took the hint and to this day never leave anything in a parked car, and never had anything stolen, and I have friends who didn't follow it and have been robbed that way, sometimes literally in <10 min. I know people in some areas (and these aren't bad areas, parking at beaches, yacht clubs, ski areas, etc.) who leave their cars unlocked with trunklids popped open.
The actuaries have data and know some things ordinary people don't.
When you get that info, listen.
Theft from a parked car would typically be covered under an auto or homeowners insurance policy, and most of those contain no such exclusions (although there are limits on covered losses). I don't understand what point you're trying to make by bringing up commercial insurance which is irrelevant to most people.
That the actuaries of that insurance know it was such a big problem they expressly excluded it.
Also, many auto and homeowners insurance policies have low (or no) coverage for personal property theft in cases like this, at least for computers, etc. unless you expressly pay for it.
I knew a woman that legit would frequently leave her purse in her passenger seat. Told her it was only a matter of time before someone broke in, but she just insisted that she hated carrying it around, and would just pull out her credit card from it when needed.
Sure enough, her window got smashed and her purse was stolen, and she was all Surprised Pikachu. She legit didn't think it would ever happen.
And you know what...I really don't think it's victim blaming when the victim not only didn't do anything to protect themselves, but even took action to make themselves a prime target. Leaving a purse in sight? Might as well just leave cash on the dashboard. She could have at least put her purse in her trunk or glove box, somewhere it can't be seen.
I don't know how "victim blaming" became such a taboo. There are plenty of cases where the victim could have avoided the problem entirely by taking easy, sensible precautions, but nowadays if you point those things out (for the benefit of future potential victims), you're an evil Victim Blamer. People have agency--we're not just helpless sheep walking through life getting inevitably victimized by things totally beyond our control. It should be OK to talk about preventative measures.
It became taboo because people victim-blame in cases where it's entirely unwarranted.
For example, in cases of rape, some people will ask what she was wearing, as if that actually has anything to do with it.
Without knowing what proportion of non-local transactions are scams its hard to say that this is reasonable. I've used ebay and facebook for non-local purchases and not been scammed. I do my best do to due diligence and then hope.
>> Stopped reading right there.
You really shouldn't comment on posts you haven't even bothered to read.
Buying anything on Marketplace without seeing & trying the product is an absolute mistake. And then expecting PayPal does the right thing? Can't believe people still do this
I didn't even have to read the article to know how someone got scammed on Marketplace. Its nothing and I mean NOTHING but scams (oh with the exception of stuff people are giving away).
I have bought and sold well over a hundred items on Marketplace in the past few years. There are scams, mostly from buyers wanting you to ship items to them, but insisting on in-person transactions nullifies most of them.
I've even shipped and gotten some items shipped in rare cases from people who I could verify the identity.
This is in Canada (Québec), so I guess mileage may vary.
Interesting and disturbing I set up 2 factor with a token in Authy for Paypal a few years back and I never click the 'leave me logged in' link to prevent anything at all like this.
Since 2020 I stopped buying things used. I do not trust online anymore, not even Amazon brand new. If I need something expensive I will get it shipped to the store and open it there.
That's pretty ballsy to buy anything that needs to be shipped from Facebook Marketplace. I wouldn't.
I don't mean to be funny, but like.....why is Facebook Marketplace even allowed to exist at this point? Clearly they do literally 0 vetting of anything - I've literally just opened it right now, and the first 3 "sponsored listings" are:
1) Fake UK passports/driving licences
2) Fake UK banknotes(literally advertised as passing UV tests)
3) Drugs. Like like literally just magic mushrooms advertised on facebook - says various quantities available, contact me on Telegram.
At this point I have no idea what would it take for Facebook to interviene - actual child porn being sold openly?
Yeah omg, I have seen those. TBH I don't know if it is undercover cops or just really the absolute wild west that is FB.
How the heck such a FB account is not banned yet? The author said it was created in 2017.
I wonder if the scammer is using emails and passwords from a breach against Facebook to access "reputable" accounts and then posting marketplace listings.
FB has many scam adverts that get reported but never taken down, I know as I got scammed from 1 and the company is listed online as a fraudulant company, but FB just dont care as they make advert money.
When I was still using facebook ages ago, I repeatedly reported trivially fake accounts. Every single time they concluded the accounts are fine.
It hasn't improved - I still do it from time to time, with the same results.
So for eBay, am I safest using PayPal? Or a Credit card?
I'd very much say Credit Card as you are insured for the purchase
"Thanks PayPal :)"
- Interesting take away after this story.
The title should be "How PayPal refunded me for a scam" no?
> Instead of closing it, I pretended that I couldn’t see the case on my end and even sent doctored screenshots of the case not showing up.
You can handle a potential scammer without behaving like a scammer yourself.
You might want to be known as a person who's always honest, not a person who tries to decide when it's OK to act dishonestly.
(In this case, it sounds like the writer guessed correctly that the other party was a scammer. But no one can always guess correctly. And I can imagine even that example situation turning out in a way in which the writer would've gotten into significant legal trouble.)
Thanks, Immanuel Kant
For people who have different ideas of what's good practice in normal life, maybe a helpful exercise is to imagine that example in a business context:
"Bob, uh, did you say you doctored a document from a regulated financial institution? And passed it off in a representation in a business transaction? It was inter-state commerce? And you think the transaction might get disputed, and be investigated? ... OK, I think we need to go talk with Legal right now."
Of course, just because something is bad in the conventions of business, doesn't mean it should be considered bad outside of business. But thinking about why it's considered bad in one set of conventions could be helpful.