Ebay Scam: Don't Let What Happened to Me, Happen to You

More and more Internet scams are arising everyday. Somewhere, some way, somebody is out there trying to get all that you are worth and they are scheming of new ways to get your last red cent. The most recent Internet scam that I encountered had to be one of the craziest scams that I have come across. I can usually spot a scam a mile away but I thought that this guy was for real. Good thing for me that I was able to spot this scam and I took proper precautions. I want to warn as many people as possible about this crazy scam so that no one else falls victim to it.

It all began the day that I decided to list my laptop on Ebay. I thought that by doing this I could increase my profits and walk away happy. This laptop wasn't top of the line or in that great of condition; however, I figured I could get something out of it. So I was completely surprised when this guy e-mailed me that he was willing to pay me $290.00 for my old computer. I started at a low reserve price of only $17.00 and I didn't expect to get much more than that. The moment that this guy offered me this I thought that I had struck gold. However, upon receiving this e-mail, Ebay sent me an e-mail too, warning me that there were solicitors out there and if I did any transaction out of Ebay that they would not be held responsible. I immediately thought that Ebay was player hating, knowing that they take a percentage of my profits, so I didn't think much of it.

I kept in contact with the potential buyer the entire day, e-mailing back and forth. He had said that he was an engineer in Africa and that he needed a computer to complete his job. He said that he would pay me for shipping and handling and for the price of the computer. I e-mailed him back to let him know that I that the computer wasn't that great and that I would offer him a lower price if he still wanted it. He still agreed to purchase the computer from me only dropping the price a little.

All day I was communicating back and forth with this guy. He told me that he was going to need me to ship off the computer today and that he would send the payment immediately through Paypal. I thought as soon as I get my money I would ship it to this guy. A few minutes later I received this letter supposedly from Paypal World Wide. I read through the document in the middle somewhere, it read: In order to protect our Paypal customer you must give us the tracking number so that we can send the funds to your account. I sat there for a moment and pondered on this one. So Paypal wanted me to ship off the item and then send them a shipping tracking number and then they would give me my money. I became skeptical right away. Was this for real? I started pressing the links on this page and they all led me to Paypal. I started evaluating the document to see if it was authentic. I was tripped out when I noticed spelling and grammar errors on the document. I thought why in the world would Paypal, a multimillion-dollar company, have spelling errors on a document, when they can hire professionals to write these pages for them? I could not believe this. I did everything I could to determine if this document was real. I finally decided to send the document to spoof@paypal. You can send a Paypal document to spoof and they will tell you if it is authentic or not. Sure enough, this letter was fraudulent. I immediately wrote the guy back telling him that he was a fraud. I never heard from him again.

I look back on this and I wonder how many people really fell for this sorry scam. It is crazy to think that people have really lost valuable merchandise to thieves like him. I encourage people to go with their gut. If it seems to good to be true then it probably is.

I hope that God Willing this will help protect you against Ebay Internet scams.