I've contacted a buyer off eBay who recently purchased a used iPhone lens for 200CAD.
At first all seemed normal - I accepted the bid, he sent a phone number to contact him - but I got a strange request; a physical $300 Steam Wallet gift card. He explained he wanted the two to be sent together in the same box to a friend in America. I told him the highest you can get is $100, and that it'd be easier to just send it digitally, but he insisted. I agreed, to try and see where he was going with it. He asked me for photos of the lens, and I told him that the photos on the listing were taken on the date the listing was posted. He insisted on this too, so I sent new ones. We agreed on shipping terms, and he wanted my email for payment. I offered my paypal.me address, but he wanted me to send an email address.
So I did. He told me he'd send the $200 for the lens upfront, and he'd send the $100 for the card separately once I take a photo of it. He then told my the money was sent, and I received 2 confirmation emails from "<removed>" - a google search of which tells me is definitely suspicious. The emails say he "sent" the full $300 in USD, even though I specified CAD. $150USD for the lens, and $150USD for "Shipping and Handling Fee Via USPS EXPRESS MAIL DELIVERY AND STEAM WALLED GIFT CARD". The emails were rife with bizarrely poor grammar, and some odd wording and formatting - as though someone who didn't speak english was trying to imitate a legitimate email. Missing capitals, missing/extra spaces, mismatched fonts and colours, broken background formatting, e.t.c.
So I'm just immediately suspicious. He refused to use the .me link and wanted my actual email, he told me to ship it to a friend of his address instead, he randomly wanted me to pay for and send a physical gift card in an amount you can't even get instead of just sending a digital one (or just receiving the shipment to his location and boxing it up himself), he "sent" a different amount than we agreed on, and then the emails.... well, the emails just SCREAM fraudulent, e.g.:
Hello (eBay identifier),
We write to inform you about the payment of $300.00USD sent by (buyer's name) which is still pending to be credited into your PayPal account (my email address) and your account shall be credited as soon as we receive Picture of the Steam Wallet Gift Card scratched from you. Your Buyer (buyer's name) had also brought to our awareness that the agreement between both of you is to get the Steam Wallet Gift Card as soon as the payment is made, now the payment is currently pending on our data base system and shall be credited into your PayPal account as soon as the details are confirmed.
I checked eBay, and it says that the buyer hasn't paid yet. I checked his page (with a strangely generic western name, despite apparently being located in Singapore) and his account was created TODAY. To add on to that, in our text conversation, he often copy/pasted messages when responding to questions.
I'll readily admit I'm a pretty naive guy, and I have a bad habit of trusting in strangers, but I really don't know what's going on. The nice guy in me wants to believe I'm just confused but the reasonable guy in my knows this is as fishy as a the Georgia Aquarium.
