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Hello again Moderati. Afraid I’m being a bit of a busybody.

But the FB trading admins group has flagged up a new scam doing the rounds, and I figured Dakka might like to know.

This involves three persons.

Victim 1
Victim 2
Scammer (boo! hiss)

And this is how it works.

Victim 1 is selling some models. They have an asking price.

Scammer contacts them, and agrees to buy, but payment will be delayed (reasons will almost certainly vary).

Sale agreed, Scammer then creates their own sale listing, for the same model and same price.

Victim 2 agrees to buy from the Scammer. The Scammer then gives Victim 2 Victim 1’s PayPal address.

Scammer then informs Victim 1 a friend or relative is paying for them, and provides an alternative address.

Victim 1 then sends the goods to the Scammer’s address.

Eventually, Victim 2 reports non-delivery.

At this point, PayPal being PayPal, one of the victim’s loses out - either Victim 1, because they didn’t post to the listed address, or Victim 2, because Victim 1 can provide proof of postage, which PayPal rarely bother to check in any detail*

If there are any questions, let me know but figured the heads up were worth it.


*trust me, I know this for a fact. It’s quite the thorn in my professional side.

Damn that's pretty clever (in all the wrong ways). Is it worth outlining this scam in a pinned post in the trade forum?

Oh, and absolute worst case scenario? Victim 1, if they lose the PP case could (if they’re in the U.K.) wind up with a CIFAS fraud marker. (There may be international equivalents)

Get one of those, and kiss goodbye to accessing financial services for at least six years. No mortgage. No catalogue. No credit card. No loan. No overdraft. No current account. And if you’re really unlucky, possibly no job.

In case there does wind up being a sticky “known fraud red flags”, here are some easy counters for this one, which can help stop it in its tracks.

1. When posting pics of your goodies, include a post-it or similar note with your name and the date listed on it. Ideally, this should appear somewhere it can’t be easily cropped from (perhaps in the middle)

2. Never, ever post to an address not provided on the PayPal payment receipt. Ever. If someone has forgotten to update their account details? Return the payment, telling them to resend when they’ve updated the shipping address to the right one.

3. If someone says a friend or family member is paying for it? Bail. Bail bail bail on that sale. Because if it is true, there’s zero reason the mystery benefactor can’t send them the cash to send on to you.

Mother fethers.

That is ingeniously fethed up.
The potential ramifications though for the Victim 1 are ruinous if that's what they get hit with.

1. When posting pics of your goodies, include a post-it or similar note with your name and the date listed on it. Ideally, this should appear somewhere it can’t be easily cropped from (perhaps in the middle)

Is this why you get ebay sellers who plaster their brand/logo/etc all over the background and what not?

curse lockdown giving crooks more time to dream up scams

Huh, that is a very simple yet cunning scam.

Very tricky for the initial seller to protect themselves as they cannot even ask for confirmation of the delivery address associated with V2's paypal as the scammer will get that through their false advert.

Very clever.

Darn that's a nasty one :(

Easy avoid is to never allow payment by anyone but the original person who contacts you which might help a bit since the scammer can't know victim 2's name/details without first scamming them with a false sale.

In general address between paypal and where a person wants something sent can be different. Workplaces are a common one, but students away from home; or even just a family home that stuff gets sent too rather than a flat or rental accommodation (no one is ever home so its safer to send it to my parents etc...).

The only warning them would be the name and even that assumes people use real names and not "user names" for registration and such.




And yep this is a hard one to prove who scammed who for PP and those scammed, though ideally once this scam is used enough PP might at least have the capacity to work out what's happened when they get certain replies/counter arguments from those on both ends who were scammed. Though I'm not sure what resolution PP would even have for that. In theory whoever sent their models would lose out because its unlikely PP would dip into their own pocket to replace the cost of what was lost, so the only correct course would be the return of the money to the person who paid. So at best Victim 1 would just avoid a black mark from PP and potential loss of the use of their account - but they'd still be out of their models or whatever they traded.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Huh, that is a very simple yet cunning scam.

Very tricky for the initial seller to protect themselves as they cannot even ask for confirmation of the delivery address associated with V2's paypal as the scammer will get that through their false advert.

Very clever.

Scammer doesn't even need the second persons address save for a bit of story. If their mother is paying for them and she's in another county that's nor abnormal by today's standards.

The only protection person 1 has is to refuse a 3rd party paying. Even then the scammer could easily say. "PP is registered where I live with parents but I'm away from home at uni" or such and here is my current address.

I think the mistake the victims are making that allows this to happen is accepting payment from an apparent third party, then following that up with a separate address. Just one of those would read as suspicious to me, but both?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I think the mistake the victims are making that allows this to happen is accepting payment from an apparent third party, then following that up with a separate address. Just one of those would read as suspicious to me, but both?

I imagine they are getting a lot of novice sellers. But ultimately these need to be non-negotiable for sellers' protection.

Yeah. Even in a theoretically legitimate case of 'I need individual B to pay for me but need it shipped to my address' it is ridiculously easy to resolve, as Grotsnik mentioned, by having individual B pay the buyer so the buyer can pay the seller. If anything that is easier to resolve for the buyer as well.

That is the upside.

Once folk are aware, it’s an easy scam to dodge with some basic financial hygiene.

But it’s creating that awareness in the first place.

FD trade admins are likely adding the protections to the rules of their respective groups.

But if you fall for it, the only one coming out smelling of roses is the scammer, as they don’t even need a PayPal account. Like. At all. And without that email address, PayPal can’t track them.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But if you fall for it, the only one coming out smelling of roses is the scammer, as they don’t even need a PayPal account. Like. At all. And without that email address, PayPal can’t track them.

I suppose that the initial seller would have the scammers physical address, and if they and the second victim compare their correspondence they could work out they were scammed by a third party in the middle. Though the second victim could also just be fabricating it from the point of view of the initial seller.

From there I guess take that to the police to file a report and then file a case in small claims court if you get a name linked to that address.

The problem is the values for most models are so low that small claims won't get you much and that's if you can track them. Anyone pulling scams will often do sneaky things with the post so that they get what they want but you can't use the address to track them so easily.

So the address they give just has to be somewhere where they can access the post and perhaps only need to access it over a short period of time to get the parcel.

Get a volunteer to 'fall' for the scam, set up a steak out at the fake address, follow them to their real address, find their identity, then send their real contact info to every single political body in the area. It's a time bomb. They will suspect nothing... until an election and SPAM. EVERYWHERE.

It's the only reasonable response.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Yeah. Even in a theoretically legitimate case of 'I need individual B to pay for me but need it shipped to my address' it is ridiculously easy to resolve, as Grotsnik mentioned, by having individual B pay the buyer so the buyer can pay the seller. If anything that is easier to resolve for the buyer as well.

You don't even need to do that. For Paypal protection to apply, the seller has to ship to the address on the paypal payment. If the purchase is legitimately being paid for by a third party, that third party can put the correct shipping address on the payment.

So the way for the seller to protect themselves from this scam is to insist on shipping to the address on the Paypal payment.

Something I personally feel should be insisted upon regardless, if not required.

There is a similar one involving bank transfers (usually to pay for cars or something).

scammer agrees price on a car
seller gives scammer bank details
scammer applies for a short-term loan, going to the seller
money appears in sellers account (usually from a TLA account name)
seller gives scammer car
loan company starts taking payments from seller.

Herzlos wrote:
There is a similar one involving bank transfers (usually to pay for cars or something).

scammer agrees price on a car
seller gives scammer bank details
scammer applies for a short-term loan, going to the seller
money appears in sellers account (usually from a TLA account name)
seller gives scammer car
loan company starts taking payments from seller.

Ouch that is nasty, especially since it might be a month or more before the first payment is taken so the scammer has more than long enough to vanish and get rid of the car. Plus that assumes the seller spots the loan repayments quickly, if they sold the car and left the money in an account as savings for a while they might not pay close attention to the account for a while.

Law is on the victim’s side there. Provided they can reasonably prove they never applied for the loan, the contract is entirely invalid.

They are however out on a car, as they’ll have to return the borrowed money to the loan company.

You can further protect yourself by contacting CIFAS (Credit Industry Fraud Avoidance Scheme) and pay for a Category 1 marker. With that in place, any prospective lender will have to do more in-depth identity checks before agreeing any credit. It’s usually enough to stop casual ID Fraud, but of course isn’t foolproof.

Best way to let people know: start a thread saying Daniel Mandelbaum is back at it.

That will get attention. You can clarify your point from there.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Best way to let people know: start a thread saying Daniel Mandelbaum is back at it.

That will get attention. You can clarify your point from there.

Wow, it has been a LONG time since I've heard that name.

I still remember when that thread was at its peak back in the day, crazy stuff, we had some full on big brain Sherlock Holmes moments.

 Grimskul wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
Best way to let people know: start a thread saying Daniel Mandelbaum is back at it.

That will get attention. You can clarify your point from there.

Wow, it has been a LONG time since I've heard that name.

I still remember when that thread was at its peak back in the day, crazy stuff, we had some full on big brain Sherlock Holmes moments.

It was the rivets. The rivets were the key.

Jesus, there's a name I'd forgotten.

There was some proper sleuthing done in that thread.

Given it’s my profession (and I’m rather good at it) I now want to track down that thread!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Given it’s my profession (and I’m rather good at it) I now want to track down that thread!

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/548621.page

Enjoy!

Edit: think is is another one https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/468034.page

Edit: And another one https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/526190.page

Edit: And the transaction reports from when he was operating on Dakka as RedStarOne: Report 1, number 2, 3, 4 featuring the beginning of the now infamous "wife has cancer/needed surgery" defence

Well that was a (un)pleasant jaunt down memory lane.
And a few hours of my life I'd probably rather have used in other pursuits.


Thanks for posting them, Malus.

This seem like novice nice sellers falling for scammer’s excuse to ship item to a different address than the one associated with PayPal account paying for it. Still a gakky thing to do within the hobby community, but could be easily avoided if the seller just follows the strict rules.

 Big Mac wrote:
This seem like novice nice sellers falling for scammer’s excuse to ship item to a different address than the one associated with PayPal account paying for it. Still a gakky thing to do within the hobby community, but could be easily avoided if the seller just follows the strict rules.

Thing is its not too hard to envision.
Eg if the scammer goes after something popular and current they might advertise a really good price and thus get lots of replies. All they'd need is someone in the same region. Then the scammer can just have items delivered to "their place of work" which might be a work unit or somesuch that they've got access too.

Or there's always good old "I'm away at uni, so can you have it sent to my uni digs instead of my parents home, which is where my paypal is registered too" line.


Work or uni address, both very believable reasons for the paypal address not to match the address they want you to send things too. Wrap it up with some general conversation and such so it sounds sensible and its an easy way to con people.

You are right that a simple "I only send to paypal address" policy can avoid it, but a lot of people only trade now and then with most trades being, in general, positive experiences. So they might not become aware of scams, many won't even google "how to avoid scams" or such; they just make a listing, wait for a reply and trade.

 Snrub wrote:
Well that was a (un)pleasant jaunt down memory lane.
And a few hours of my life I'd probably rather have used in other pursuits.


Thanks for posting them, Malus.

As one of the people who had to deal with him (tracking down details, co-ordinating with Bartertown, etc), one of my fondest memories of that period was out-scamming Mandelbaum to get money back he'd initially scammed out of me.

 Ketara wrote:

 Snrub wrote:
Well that was a (un)pleasant jaunt down memory lane.
And a few hours of my life I'd probably rather have used in other pursuits.


Thanks for posting them, Malus.

As one of the people who had to deal with him (tracking down details, co-ordinating with Bartertown, etc), one of my fondest memories of that period was out-scamming Mandelbaum to get money back he'd initially scammed out of me.

The saddest thing as I recall is that Mandelbaum actually showed some skill with sculpting. If he'd gone legit chances are he'd have made more over the years than his badly put together scams generated.
Surprising how quiet he's been though, considering all the action in that thread I half expected to have heard of him starting up all over again under a whole host of new names and such.