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Gateway M675 laptop relisted on eBay (courtesy of Adeyemi .A. Bolarinwa from Nigeria) | |
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Posted: October 11th, 2007 at 12:52 pm Written by: jeff | | Post a comment eBay, Spoof/Fake E-mails, Used Computers For Sale, ExchangeDefender, Security, Support, Tips & Tricks |
If you were interested in purchasing my laptop today is your lucky day. It has been relisted due to the winning bidder’s account getting hijacked by someone wanting me to ship the laptop to Nigeria. It is a really decent laptop and should make a great home/office computer for someone.
Item #150170879691 - “GATEWAY M675 P4 HT 2.6GHZ 2GB 80GB CDRW 17″ WIRELESS“ - Start Date/Time: 10/11/2007 @ 12:30PM EST (9:30AM PDT)
<rant>I’m really tired of all the scammers out there sending out spoof e-mails from banks, eBay, PayPal, etc. I’m tired of all the spammers sending out junk e-mail trying to send me billions of dollars because someone in Nigeria has died. Luckily ExchangeDefender can take care of the symptoms of the spam problem. However, the source of the problem still exists. It would be awesome if there was some way to magically find all of the scammers to lock them up and throw away the key.</rant>
There are other people (example1, example2, example3) that were asking about this same scam on eBay over a year ago (as early as 08/15/2006). In fact, they even listed the same shipping address as the one sent to me. You would think the police would eventually shut this guy down.
The address listed was:
Adeyemi .A. Bolarinwa
No 12 Dikat House
Ring Road, Ibadan
Oyo State, Nigeria 23402
Here are some things that should raise some red flags about the e-mail screenshots that I posted below:
- The buyer wants the seller to ship the item to an alternate mailing address. This should raise a red flag in your mind (especially if it is an address in Nigeria).
TIP: Only ship to the shipping address listed by PayPal/eBay as the buyer’s address. Also, usually only verified PayPal addresses give you protection when selling items on eBay. I would also recommend trying to independently verify the buyer’s contact information (i.e. if their phone number is listed in the white pages you can type it into google and it will give you their home address). Make sure you also use a reputable shipping company and be sure to get a tracking number. Insurance might also be a good idea but I’m not sure if it protects against fraud or only shipping damages. - The e-mail address in the e-mail messages is a fake e-mail address (i.e. on the PayPal e-mail the e-mail address ends in @officeemail.net instead of @paypal.com which is a big red flag).
TIP: The e-mail addresses should always end in @paypal.com or @ebay.com. You should also be careful because the from address in e-mail messages is easy to spoof. If you get an e-mail that you think is a spoof (even if you aren’t 100% sure) please forward the e-mail message to spoof@ebay.com or spoof@paypal.com right away. - Official e-mail messages from eBay and PayPal will also usually have corresponding messages that show-up on their website after you login to your account but these messages didn’t show up there for me.
TIP: Don’t click on the website links in the e-mail but open your web browser and manually type in http://www.paypal.com or http://www.ebay.com instead. One way accounts get hijacked is by tricking people into going to a website that looks like the real website but instead captures your login credentials and sends it to the scammer. If they start asking you for personal information (i.e. social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc.) that should definately raise a red flag in your mind. If you think it is a spoof e-mail (or website) please report it to eBay or PayPal right away.
TIP: PayPal and eBay will never ask you for your personal information in an e-mail message. If you get an e-mail that you think is a spoof (even if you aren’t 100% sure) please forward the e-mail message to spoof@ebay.com or spoof@paypal.com right away. - They try to make it sound like the payment has already been sent and ask you to ship out the item right away. However, in my case the e-mail didn’t list the correct payment amount and when I signed in to PayPal there were no notices of any payments or pending payments sent.
TIP: Never ship the item out without confirming that the payment has been received and has cleared the bank. Be sure to login to PayPal by manually typing the address into your web browser and verify that the money is there before shipping your item.
Additional Information:
Fake E-mail From Buyer:
Fake eBay E-mail:
