How I got scammed on Facebook Marketplace (2023)
ben.page
ben.page
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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...
¹ https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...
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.
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 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.
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.
That's scary :/
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.
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.
This seems like a HUGE loophole
* 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.
> 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.
You could outright scam one in twenty and be 95% perfect/good.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
* 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.
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.
Oldest trick in the book.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
s/'d only/ wouldn't/
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Whats disturbing is Paypal didnt investigate the issue at all.
> 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!
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
Are those questions?
Someone did get escrowed tho.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Online marketplace scams are prevalent pretty much everywhere because the scammers can use fake accounts and are often in another country.
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.
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.
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.
For example, in cases of rape, some people will ask what she was wearing, as if that actually has anything to do with it.
You really shouldn't comment on posts you haven't even bothered to read.
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.
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?
- Interesting take away after this story.
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.)
"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.