Scammers

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Executioner
Life Member
Posts: 10133
Joined: Wed Nov 22, 2000 11:34 am
Location: Woodland, CA USA

Scammers

Post by Executioner »

I have laptops that I sell on Facebook. I rebuild them as needed, usually replacing the hard drive with a SSD etc. About 90% of them I have to take apart and reapply thermal paste and clean the fan(s). Anyway, last week, this person on FB wanted one of my laptops. My prices I have listed are firm (I only make enough to cover part costs and ~$20-$40 profit). They told me that they were sending me money via Venmo to my account. They would have another person picking it up in the evening or tomorrow morning. I gave them my Venmo info to send payment, but after 1 minute I new this was fake and a scam.

So here is how this scam works:
They say that payment has been sent but it can't be processed until I change my Venmo account to a business account.
They reply by saying "did you receive the email with the required information"
Dear customer, Charles

We at Venmo service will want you to know you have a pending payment of $500.00 USD but we have a problem crediting your account with that amount because status of the payment is a business payment, and your Venmo account is not a business account which makes your account have a limit.

This amount sent to you seems to be above your business limit and this will not make us credit your account until you upgrade and expand your business limit in order for your account to be credited.

Note: You have to take this urgent step below to expand your limit.

Read below gently for instructions, you don’t have to do anything on your end.
INSTRUCTIONS: Contact the buyer to send in an additional payment of $400.00 USD so that your business limit can be expand to unlimited, and as soon as this is done we will have no problem crediting your account with the total sum of
$900.00 USD immediately.

An alert has been sent to payee in regard to the $400.00 USD additional payment he/she has to send to you, we will secure this transaction with high priority that neither the buyer nor the receiver will lose fund in this transaction.

Please reply to this email to get in touch with us,

Thanks for using Venmo

If you have further questions or concerns, feel free to contact our support team.

Venmo is located at 2211 N. First Street, San Jose, CA 95131

For more assistance, please reply directly to this email you will receive a response immediately. For more information visit our Help Center at help.venmo.com.
This is the second one I've gotten today. The last one was a week ago with the same verbiage and request. With that one, once I figured out it was a scam, I kept the loser on as long as I could until I had enough - about 2 hours. At the end, they said the police were coming over to get me because they never got their money back. I told them to go pound sand and blocked them. I also reported it to FB as a scam.

If I was a dictator, I would make these losers work on breaking rocks and cleaning graffiti for a month.
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reno
The artist formerly known as Renovation
Posts: 1781
Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2016 10:35 pm

Re: Scammers

Post by reno »

thing have got worse with scammers -back in the day i got scammed twice -once by a troll kid and nitro did a house call on the kid that was his last time he trolled on the old forums , then by a guy selling sony knock off thumb drives .that one I did get burned on .loaded it on my computer and it didn't work or read stop reading right away .reached out to the seller and no response. contacted sony only to fine out they didn't make one of that size . so it ended up being a paper weight , today trolls are different in they are scamming good and money off people using paypal and other payment services . being in a 55 and over community we hear all the time of the older folks falling for scams . will say some not all banks around me do try and watch out for older folks when they see them transferring large cash amounts or buying a number of gift cards . they do try to intervene without seeming to pushy here in Florida. once there sent the moneys gone .
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normalicy
Posts: 9513
Joined: Sat Nov 25, 2000 4:04 am
Location: St. Louis, MO USA
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Re: Scammers

Post by normalicy »

It's worse when you work at a small retail place with an online presence. It's almost daily that we have someone trying to pull stuff.
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