Suspicious Email from Service @ intl.PayPal.com

eltsiou
Contributor
Contributor

Hello,

i am selling an item and yesterday in the night a lady sent me via the website where the item is hosted and she asked me to buy the item. So i gave her my bank account number to purchase the money via PayPal. Afterwards i received one message from the lady and 2 messages from the PayPal confirming the money transfer (70E for the item + 40E for the shipping agent) in my account and guiding me how to send the amount of 40euros to the shipping agent in Nigeria (out of my pocket) via Western Union. Once i complete the payment to the shipping agent i will receive a MTCN number with a scan and i have to send it to PayPal and then the money the buyer paid is going to be credited in my account. Of course no money seems to has been added in my account.

 

The lady still sends me messages to complete the payment to the shipping agent.

 

Is that a fraud? 

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kernowlass
Esteemed Advisor
Esteemed Advisor

@eltsiou

 

Yes its a fraud but firstly why are you giving her your bank account number to pay with paypal?

The whole point of paypal is that it keeps your bank or card details secret.

All someone needs to pay you is your paypal email address.

 

Secondly >>

 

THIS IS A TYPICAL PAYPAL SCAM.

They encourage you to use paypal and often ask you to send the item as a gift to a relative somewhere often Nigeria.

You will get/got a "fake" email that looks as though it is from paypal.....it isn't.

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.

If the item requires shipping they will tell you that they will pay you extra and you must pay the agent via western union / moneygram BEFORE the funds are released to you.

They are not interested in the item, they just want the western union etc funds and you will never see money in your paypal balance.

They also threaten legal action...have a laugh at that one and ignore it as its rubbish.

Paypal NEVER tell you to send trackable, they advise it for seller protection etc but it is not compulsory.

Paypal NEVER tell you to send an item before the payment is showing in your paypal account.

Paypal NEVER expect you to use a rival money transfer service eg western union or moneygram.

Delete any emails and ignore the scammers.


Advice is voluntary.
Kudos / Solution appreciated.

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kernowlass
Esteemed Advisor
Esteemed Advisor

@eltsiou

 

Yes its a fraud but firstly why are you giving her your bank account number to pay with paypal?

The whole point of paypal is that it keeps your bank or card details secret.

All someone needs to pay you is your paypal email address.

 

Secondly >>

 

THIS IS A TYPICAL PAYPAL SCAM.

They encourage you to use paypal and often ask you to send the item as a gift to a relative somewhere often Nigeria.

You will get/got a "fake" email that looks as though it is from paypal.....it isn't.

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.

If the item requires shipping they will tell you that they will pay you extra and you must pay the agent via western union / moneygram BEFORE the funds are released to you.

They are not interested in the item, they just want the western union etc funds and you will never see money in your paypal balance.

They also threaten legal action...have a laugh at that one and ignore it as its rubbish.

Paypal NEVER tell you to send trackable, they advise it for seller protection etc but it is not compulsory.

Paypal NEVER tell you to send an item before the payment is showing in your paypal account.

Paypal NEVER expect you to use a rival money transfer service eg western union or moneygram.

Delete any emails and ignore the scammers.


Advice is voluntary.
Kudos / Solution appreciated.
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eltsiou
Contributor
Contributor
Thanx a lot for your advice. Of course i acted as a stupid. Next time i will only use my paypal email address. Hope there is no problem now thay i gave her my IBAN. However she does not know any of my passwords. Thank you again.
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tsilvius
New Community Member

I just received this today. It looked suspicious so when I HOVERED (not clicked) the blue paypal-looking button I noticed in the link preview in my browser that it would have sent me to a page using a redirect link, not a paypal.com page. This is flag number 1. 

Flag number 2 happened when I zoomed in on the paypal logo. Even withouth zooming in I could see it was "grainy" and faked. When I zoomed in more I could see that it was carelessly cropped or clipped. I also noticed that the overall image resolution was extremely low quality. A graphic designer incharge of a company's branding logo would never let any of this slide of email and/or letter head communication.  (See embedded image below)

Flag 3 was the sender's email address that had the abbreviation "intl" at the start of the domain instead of just paypal.com. This doesn't necessarily mean anything suspicious because sometimes email addresses have multiple partitions separated by periods, but still it was added to my mental list of "phishing look-fors."

Flag 4 didn't actually happen and is one that I have come upon to rely -- spelling and grammatical errors. This is usually the big tip-off; however, in this email there were none. This is the reason I took to the web to see if anyone else had a similar problem.

Needless to say, I had enough suspicions. Add to this list the context of this email I got: it's supposedly from paypal which is very secure; why does it need to confirm my identity if it emailed me and knows who I am; this was received over a major shopping weekend in the States, Black Friday.

Best of luck to your situation. I just wanted to share some of the steps I use to look for stuff like this when it is slung my way if others might find it helpful.

Screenshot_112517_010313_PM.jpg

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PayPal_paula
Moderator
Moderator

Hi tsilvius and welcome, 

 

Thanks so much for sharing this and your tips on how to identify if the email is genuine or not. I am sure it will help other members in the future. 

 

Thanks again, 

Paula 

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