I don’t normally “narq” on people, but I’m a little ticked off. As you may remember, I was selling Kristin’s old 12-inch PowerBook on ebay. The auction had about 3 buyers bidding on it, things were looking good and at the last minute anna_cole40@yahoo.com won the auction. She then emailed me and asked if it would be okay if I shipped the PowerBook to a friend of hers in Nigeria. Even though I had the item listed as U.S.-only, I calculated what the shipping would cost and agreed. She then said she would pay me via PayPal as soon as she got home from work. The next morning she sent me an email saying that she had paid me and to ship the item. I checked my PayPal account and had a big fat $0.00 sitting there. I emailed her back and told her such. She replied again:
But they have deducate the amount frommy account
pls what is going on
get back to me asap.thanks
Shortly after receiving this email, I received another email, supposedly from PayPal:
Subject: Requesting For Tracking Number:Email ID PP305
Dear C.K. Sample, III,A payment has been made to your paypal [TKTKTK] by ANNA COLE for an eBay item #270017200440 in which it will get into your account as soon as we verify and confirm that the item has been shipped in 24hours after confirmation due to the standard paypal method used by the buyer. We Request that you should send the item today to the buyer’s shipping address since he/she has made payment to your PayPal account otherwise the payment will not be credited to the account specified. We need the item shipping tracking number to verify the shippment of the item to the buyer’s shipping address provided. Shipping tracking numbers should be send to this Email: paypalcostumeralert@usa.com check your email addressn we have send you payment confirmation. This is to reduce the high rate of fraudulent act going on and to ensure that both buyers and sellers are satisfied.
Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team .You can also confirm your email address by logging into your PayPal account at https://www.paypal.com/us/. Click on the “Confirm email” link in the Activate Account box and then enter this confirmation number: 0912-7467-0344-5123-3308
——————————————————————————–
Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot beanswered. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and choose the “Help” link in the footer of any page.To receive email notifications in plain text instead of HTML, update your preferences here.PayPal Email ID PP305
Notice how poorly written the entire email is. The subject alone is a huge red flag: “Requesting for Tracking Number.” Also, there are numerous other odd clues to this being a total scam (the most notable being that if you go to PayPal’s site, there is no mention of any such program. Neither is it mentioned on eBay’s site. I confronted “Anna Cole” with this info via another email, and suddenly her account at eBay had been closed. I’ve filed through eBay to relist the item. I will also be contacting Yahoo about anna_cole40@yahoo.com.
I hate scumbags.
If you are interested in this PowerBook, it has been relisted here.
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