CES020
New Member
I was given the task by a family member to try and locate something on craigslist. An item popped up, looked and sounded like a good price for a good product, in the city I'm in. Emailed for some more information and got a response back that included 4 photos of the item, sitting on carpet, as if in someone's home. She stated she had moved back to somewhere in Canada, but the item was in great shape and no issues. I also got a follow up email about 10 minutes later asking if I got the original email.
I emailed back with one follow up question and the response I got was the exact same email chain. Same wording, everything, as the first, then 10 minutes later, the same follow up, none of which answered my question.
That was all I needed to know, so I thought I'd play it out a little. I emailed her, told her I wanted to buy it, how can I pay her? I got the same emails back again, 2, same thing as before. Then later, I got a response that didn't answer my question.
I emailed and said I only have cash, so how could I pay her?
The next day she sent me a link to a company she said she's "researched" and she'd try to use. It was called pacel2go or something like that. I looked at the site and it said that the seller goes to a store, they drop off the merchandise, the parcel2go place verifies it's what it's supposed to be, contacts me, then I send them payment, when they get it, then they will send me the product.
I spent some time reading the site, which is full of "ebay friendly" seals and signs and it kept saying you have to drop off the merchandise at one of their stores. I couldn't find any locations listed, so I went to the "site map" text at the bottom. No go. No hot link there. No other words were linked either.
I went to google and entered the name parcel2go to see what people said about it, and didn't see anything bad, off the bat. I clicked on the site from google and noticed it looked a little different. All the links worked, it was all real and much more information on it. Then I came back and checked where I was being directed, only to realize that it wasn't a parcel2go site, but rather a site made to look just like it.
It was a VERY good scam with all the personal details and information they kept sending me, and the redirect to the site seemed very good. If hadn't already determined I was being scammed, I can see how easy someone could fall for this.
About 4 days later, I looked in a surrounding city and found a slightly different thing listed, but noticed many of the same key points being listed, so it seems like it's a fairly common technique being used right now, but it was new to me.
They are getting more and more clever.
I emailed back with one follow up question and the response I got was the exact same email chain. Same wording, everything, as the first, then 10 minutes later, the same follow up, none of which answered my question.
That was all I needed to know, so I thought I'd play it out a little. I emailed her, told her I wanted to buy it, how can I pay her? I got the same emails back again, 2, same thing as before. Then later, I got a response that didn't answer my question.
I emailed and said I only have cash, so how could I pay her?
The next day she sent me a link to a company she said she's "researched" and she'd try to use. It was called pacel2go or something like that. I looked at the site and it said that the seller goes to a store, they drop off the merchandise, the parcel2go place verifies it's what it's supposed to be, contacts me, then I send them payment, when they get it, then they will send me the product.
I spent some time reading the site, which is full of "ebay friendly" seals and signs and it kept saying you have to drop off the merchandise at one of their stores. I couldn't find any locations listed, so I went to the "site map" text at the bottom. No go. No hot link there. No other words were linked either.
I went to google and entered the name parcel2go to see what people said about it, and didn't see anything bad, off the bat. I clicked on the site from google and noticed it looked a little different. All the links worked, it was all real and much more information on it. Then I came back and checked where I was being directed, only to realize that it wasn't a parcel2go site, but rather a site made to look just like it.
It was a VERY good scam with all the personal details and information they kept sending me, and the redirect to the site seemed very good. If hadn't already determined I was being scammed, I can see how easy someone could fall for this.
About 4 days later, I looked in a surrounding city and found a slightly different thing listed, but noticed many of the same key points being listed, so it seems like it's a fairly common technique being used right now, but it was new to me.
They are getting more and more clever.