He offers twice the price, pays by bogus means, and asks you to wire the
excess to his accomplice, usually described as a "shipping agent" or a
customer he owes a refund to.
It's probably hard to fake a payment to Ebay or paypal. So they usually
send you a counterfeit cashier's check or a check from an internet
pay-by-check place. That's what I received. Turns out that company offers
an internet service where anyone can cause a check to be issued (and
mailed) by providing a bank or credit card number. When the check comes
back to the company for payment, they extract the funds from the bank
account or credit card account that the sender provided. If they can't,
they simply return the check as unpayable. The scammer just hopes you wire
the money before the check bounces and comes back to you.
Curious that he wanted to pay you by credit card - why would he think that
you're set up to accept credit cards? (are you? - usually it's just
merchants who can do that).
On Fri, 16 Sep 2005, John Demme wrote:
I got some of these as well, but I got one that I flat-out don't
understand. I usually only accept PayPal on EBay, but this guy offered
me like twice my asking price, wouldn't go through EBay, and wouldn't
use PayPal. He said he could pay by credit card, however. He also
wanted me to ship to somewhere in Indonesia.
Now this I don't understand- if I get the money via credit card, then
ship the item, how am I getting screwed? Is it just that he's probably
using a stolen CC number, or is there something else going on?
~John
