scam

Every minute of every day there is always someone trying to make a buck. Most of our are trying to make money the honest way. Then there are some that try to scam your hard earned money from you.

The Scam was somewhat clever. I’m trying to sell a car on one of those car selling sites. There are several sites. They are all about the same. After about 48 hours of posting my car, I get a hit. Some contacts me and wants to know the sale price. Through text messages, they agree to pay full price but they want to transfer the money through PayPal. Okay. That’s fine. Then are going to ship the car themselves. The shipping will cost $820. Okay. So they are going to pay me the cost of the car plus the cost of shipping. So far everything is sounding good.

Now, the rub – The guy who is going to pick up the car only takes MoneyGram. I needed to send this guy $820. Of course they are giving me the $820 so that shouldn’t be a problem. In order for the guy to leave immediately to get the car, I need to go to MoneyGram and send the money now. Oh, and they were going to sent the money to my PayPal account now. Cool.

There was no activity on my PayPal account. I did receive 3 emails that almost seemed that they were from PayPal. The third email was the kicker. It was written by someone who didn’t speak English as their first language. Syntax was wrong. There were words that were misspelled. The urgency of the process was also unusual. So I called PayPal. The transaction number that I was given was wrong. Of Course. I gave PayPal the emails and hopefully they will find those folks because someone had to pick up the money. There is a real person out there. Hope they find him/her.