Scamming Season

 Last week I was almost caught by a scammer on email and I thought I would share my experience with you so that you too don't get caught out.

My friend was moving from a large 3 bedroomed house to a small 2 bedroom bungalow and as I sold a few things on a local selling site she asked me if I would list some of her things. This had gone very well up until last week.

All the adverts are maked "PICK UP ONLY" as I can't be doing with working out the postage and it's a local selling site anyway, also listed was my friends phone number and not my email address. I had listed some curtains and accessories for my friend and she had a text message asking to comunicate by email. Well her computer was all packed up so I did it for her. The buyer wanted to buy the curtains for her cousin but couldn't pick them up as she was in a wheelchair and had recently had a heart operation so would it be possible to post them. It was agreed and she would pay through paypal. My friend doesn't have an account (another reason for pick up only) so we used mine.
The payment email came through with £200 more than the asking price. I though this was rather strange. At the same time the buyer sent me another messages saying that she has arranged for a courier to come and pick up the parcel and the extra she had sent had to be paid in cash through instamoney/instacash/instapay or something like that, I can't remeber now. Anyway, I didn't like the sound of that. further down was some more details the name of the person to recieve the package and the country, Nigeria. No way no, no, no, no this sounded so wrong. I phoned my friend and said I didn't like it and felt very suspitious. After our chat I phoned PayPals and explained about the email. The very helpful chap I was speaking to told me, amongst other things, that they only send out emails that are addressed "Dear 1st name and 2nd name" and as mine was addessed "Hi email" I should just delete it and do nothing. Which is what I did.
Later in the day I was checking my emails and I had another from the buyer asking if I'd made made the payment yet and if not could I do it ASAP. My reply was - Nope. You're busted. See ya. And I've not heard anything else.

Scammers really prey on people at this time of year when they are busy working and doing a lot of shopping on line and waiting for parcels. In the past we have had cards put through the door. Looks like they're from the post office and you have to phone to arrange redelivery. It's not, and don't ring the number because as soon as you do you are charged £100's.

If you are aware of any other scams please share them here or on your blog to keep our readers safe.


Carolx