Examples of Suspected Fraud/Fake Emails

[PayPal_Adrian]

Hello everyone!

One of the greatest strengths consumers possess against fraud and phishing is education and collaboration.  To help support your safety online, I'm going to open this special thread up for you.  Here, you can post examples of what you believe to be attempts by individuals to defraud you or others of their hard earned valuables and money. 

Before we begin, a few housekeeping points:

• We will be using this as a "master thread," so if we find an example in other areas of the boards, we may merge the post into this one.

• For everyone's safety, please remove any last names or contact information (including email addresses) from your examples.  In many instances, the names provided by fraudsters are fake or may actually be the name of someone they already defrauded. 

• On that same note, please don't ever attempt to confront a fraudster or attempt to track them down.  Instead, turn the information you do have over to your local authorities. 

• Please also remove any links from your posts, as these could potentially go to spoofed or phishing websites.

Other than that, we only ask that you keep it productive and stay within the Forum Decorum and posting guidelines.  I'll be stopping in on a regular basis to clean house and comment on posts, so don't be surprised if you see my mug - or another moderator - stopping in to say hello! 

With that said, I'm going to start moving posts in, so you might see some older examples mixed in with the new posts.  I hope this thread becomes a great resource for everyone!

Stay safe,

Adrian

[Temp20230526aq]

i keep getting this email, suppossidly from paypal, i know its not, as its sent to a completely different email account, one that is not connected to ebay or paypal.  How do I email paypal so they can get on top of this scam before it does catch someone out please 

[kernowlass]

@Temp20230526aq

As its a 'spoof' email and not from paypal then sorry but what do you expect them to do about it?

They are hardly able to fly to somewhere in Africa and find the probable 'internet cafe' that was used to send the email and then try and trace who was sending it are they   

[Ballbreaker666]

 I agreed to sell a watch to someone and they purportedly "sent me payment" to my paypal account.  I received a "Paypal notification" from the following email address:

<removed>

I was just recently scammed by someone supposedly using Moneygram and I received an email from "Moneygram" with a gmail.com address as well.

Is this a scam?

[JamesMerrick]

Does the transaction show in your Paypal activity? If not then most definitely a scam in my opinion

[Ballbreaker666]

@JamesMerrick wrote:

Does the transaction show in your Paypal activity? If not then most definitely a scam in my opinion

No it does not show in my PayPal account, even as "pending".  That's why I questioned it.  And the email address looked suspiciously similar to the "moneygram" email I got last week.  Live and learn!

---

[Temp20230526ar]

I got an email from PayPal saying I would get arrested for not posting an item as the lad originally said postage was to London then ‘sent the money’ via postage checker to only transfer money when tracking number was sent to that exact email that was sent but he then changed where it was being posted to to the phillipenes and I’m confused to what to do as it seems like a scam as the email is in broken English any help would be great thanks

[Oregon11]

@Temp20230526ar

If you're unsure of an email, go to the PayPal site directly (don't click any links in the email) and log into your account to see if you have any notices or transactions listed.

Here is a PayPal link with useful info.

https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/scams-on-craigslist-and-other-classifieds-websites-faq302...

[27detector]

I am an 85 year old doddera and unfamiliar with modern technology . I beleive that I have inadvertently partialy opened a fraudulent email . What do I do now to safeguard my account. Any helpfull advice would be welcome , thanks 

[kernowlass]

@27detector

As long as you didn't 'click' on any links in that email OR download an attachment then you should be ok.

Even if you opened the link but DIDN'T sign in OR enter any personal or financial info then again you should be ok.

To be on the safe side run a virus scan on your computer and change your paypal password.

[Tanran]

I have just had an email purporting to be from PayPal. It looks genuine saying there is a £30 payment pending from my account to Skype. I think it is fake as it asking my click a link to cancel the transaction. Does PayPal have an email address to forward suspected spam emails to? Also can someone confirm this is fake? Do PayPal send these kind of emails?