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Comment by IG_Semmelweiss | Hacker News Reader

A big portion of them happening now thanks to chatgpt.

For example, my partner posted an item for sale in FB marketplace.

The buyer said she couldnt pick up item, but her brother would. She could pay via Zelle, all she needed was an email & phone # . None of that seemed weird, so my partner agreed.

The buyer then said she sent a Zelle payment. My partner got an email from "Zelle Pay" saying money was pending due to my partners account not being a business account.

Luckily, we know zelle and didnt fall for it. The sender was a Gmail account.

My partner must have been talking with a bot.

5 min later, another buyer showed up. She also could not pick up but her brother would. She was to pay via zelle.

Be careful with FB marketplace. It's a mess now.

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My easy way through this is to put in the listing that the exchange is cash only and to be done at the local police parking lot where it’s monitored. As soon as I started doing this all the BS stopped and I only get more serious offers. It is harder to sell, but I’ll take that over the scams.

The local police parking lot trick is not always guaranteed to work. Meet inside the police building at least.

I did this a few years ago to sell a PS5 in the outskirts of Metro Detroit.

We were in communication with the possible buyers and saw them turn into the lot. As soon as we asked them to meet us inside they got cagey, hung up, and just left.

Fair enough on that point. I don't live in a particularly sketchy area. I think it probably depends on how popular/in-demand the item is as well. A PS5 is one of those items that was super hot back a few years ago when it came out, so it would probably attract a lot of people willing to do anything to get one.

> None of that seemed weird

In my experience, in a FB marketplace transaction where the buyer picks up the item, the buyer only pays after personally inspecting the item and (often) haggling a bit.

Prepaying using Zelle for an unseen item is very weird.

Yeah. If you're picking up the item in person, you can bring cash.

That scam predates ChatGPT by a lot, it's not necessarily AI driven.

It had nothing to do with ChatGPT, if anything ChatGPT would have let them come up with more unique messages

There's the exact same scam here in Australia, but using PayID instead of Zelle.

I'm not sure there's a particular reason to think it's a bot or AI is there? It could just be a script and a call-centre type operation.

I've had this exact same experience, the emails are fake but its pretty hard to tell if you aren't savvy. I've also had an anti-scam where someone legit sent me $200 saying it was a mistake and it was for someone else (I have a common seeming email address) and they needed it back because it was for their grandmothers funeral. I said that this sounds like a scam and to contact me in a month to make sure the transfer isn't reversed. I never heard from them again but the $200 stayed in my account.

I'm guessing you haven't sold many things via FB marketplace or craigslist. Anyone offering to pay sight-unseen is a scammer. Just report and delete the chat. Bots will tend to spam you immediately after you post the listing too.

Anyways, I sold a ton of stuff on FB marketplace before we moved out of our old place, only allowed cash / venmo payments and they had to come pick it up

If a person is physically picking something up, have them pay cash. You just avoid all this kind of crap, including closed accounts and whatever from PayPal and the like.

>Be careful with FB marketplace. It's a mess now.

Now? I think you've missed that by a bit which is understated in the same manner your "now" is.

Yet it is still miles better than the previous state of the art, craigslist.

How is a platform that consists of bots and scammers any better?

I don't know about you, but it's fairly easy to see if someone real is behind Facebook profile vs someone running a scam. When I buy or sell on marketplace it's local and if we don't have a friend in common or a friends of a friend, or an open profile that looks real there is little time wasted.

In contrast, in Craigslist-land I'm interacting with just a phone number or an email.

Its really not. Cl still has more legit and timely ads.

If your better is still bad, you're not good

It's Log, it's log, it's better than bad, it's good. From Whammo! (Also brought to you be Zelle)

It has been like this since years. I had the very similar scripted responses in 2019 at craigslist.

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