Fraudulent activity?

[mach1rob]

Guys, I've not come across this one before, so over to you!

Brief scenario, selling a phone on Gumtree, a 'buyer' mails within minutes, asking to buy phone, needs it posting, and wants to pay by Paypal. We finally get this email that turned up in the spam folder, despite us having Paypal in allowed contacts...

Dear Customer ,

You received a payment from D. Thomas. This payment is now in your pending balance and temporarily unavailable. Providing no issues arise between you and the buyer the funds will be released.

Here are the details:

• Buyer name: ***
• Payment date: 05 April 2018
• Payment amount: £118.00 GBP
• Your transaction ID: ****

Shipping details:

• Name: D. Thomas
• Address:  ****

Want your money sooner? Here's what you can do to speed things up:

• If you used Royal Mail, provide a valid tracking number. Your money will then be available within some minutes of the tracking status showing as delivered by the courier.
• Send tracking number to us or email us through this mail ****
• and our Online Customer security service center will attend to you. As soon as you send us the shipment's tracking number to us for security purposes and the safety of the buyer and the seller,the money will be credited to your account
• If your item doesn't need to be shipped (e-book, piano lessons, etc.), mark the transaction as processed and provide details. Your money will be available 7 days after you mark as processed (14 days if your buyer is based internationally).
• If you use Royal Mail, you can send your items tracking number to our Online Customer Security service mail ****
• 
  

  Yours sincerely,

  PayPal

Post edited by Moderator as per Community guidelines

[kernowlass]

@mach1rob

This is a typical scam ..................

They encourage you to accept a 'direct' Paypal payment and may ask you to send the item internationally.

You will get/got a "fake" email that looks as though it is from paypal.....it isn't because they don't actually have a Paypal account and have no intention of paying you.
It will say the buyer has paid ...you won't have been paid.
They will tell you that the payment is released when you provide paypal with a tracking/shipping number......this won't happen.

Paypal NEVER tell you to send an item before the payment is showing in your paypal account.
Paypal do not tell you to send trackable, they advise it for selling protection but it is not compulsory.

Delete any emails and ignore the scammers.

[mach1rob]

Yeah it raised alarm bells as soon as we read it, the Dear Customer bit rather than user name, plus the guy emailing every 5 mins asking if we'd got the email and to check spam folder, why would a Paypal email go into spam?? Needless to say, they've not messaged back since we called their bluff...