I thought I have seen or heard of all the nigerian scams. To protect myself I always use PayPal or else I deal in person with the customer. Basically PayPal is a good company for running transactions because they are really focused on security, it is fairly hard to scam someone on paypal. But today I posted something on craigslist, I specifically stated that I will only ship my item to people who pay with PayPal. Craigslist is a huge target for bad people and almost all checks are fraud.
So a few minutes after I posted the item I got emails from two people who were interested. They were both from free accounts. (Red Flag) Both were eager to buy at the full price with out asking for anything (Bigger Red Flag) Next they wanted it shipped to Africa (100% Fraud massive red flag). But I wanted to see how they would scam paypal. Paypal is very secure. So I told them to send me the money. This is how stupid they are, they just spoffed some emails from paypal. They took the normal one and made it seem that it came from paypal but when I logged in there was no money in my account. The email really came from paypalverifyingagent@mail2consultant.com but they made the name say service@paypal.com the real address paypal sends from. They did a decent job of spoofing the email, it looked just like a real one if you did not look at the header. But then to try to ease any subspisions they sent a second email saying this.
This e-mail is sent to you as a confirmation of payment made to your PayPal account.We have rigorously examined the payment for Your Laptop by PayPal Member(monica0002) and the amount to be credited to your account by PayPal is $800.00 USDThis transaction is in order and legal.This fund will be credited to your paypal account once the shipment tracking number is sent to our verifying teamWe encourage you to ship the item immediately (due to Paypal's policy) as your payment has been confirmed by us.Security is of critical importance to us at PayPal.We use proprietary technology and constantly innovate to help ensure your transactions are safe. In addition, PayPal has over 20,000 staffs worldwide dedicated to keeping PayPal accounts safe, and stopping online criminals. And we work with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) worldwide to shut off fraudulent websites as soon as possible.PayPal‘s Fraud Investigation Team is highly experienced in fraud prevention. Several members of the team were former law enforcement officials with extensive experience in fighting online fraud. PayPal‘s fraud investigation team focuses on: Identifying and preventing fraud before it occurs, Detecting fraud in process Mitigating loss, if fraud does occur, Delivering information to law enforcement around the world to help stop those committing online fraud.
I sent a message saying that I had not received the money when I checked my account. Of course cause it is totally fake. Four minutes later they sent another that was almost the same, but this time it said that my account would only be credited once they confirmed the tracking number with UPS (A total lie, PayPal never does this.) After 10 minutes I receive 5 more emails from the buyer who really wanted me to contact them ASAP (I guess their time at the Nigerian Cyber Cafe was almost up.)
I also receive another fake paypal message that is much more desperate
Dear Jason Dragon (dragon@capitalactive.com), This is to notify you regarding Payment made by "Monica0002" to your account. The payment has been successfully made but on escrow due to security reasons we have to receive the shipment tracking number before your account will be credited. This a new measure we are taking in order to protect both sellers and buyers against fraudulent activities. Immediately the Item has been ship, send the shipment tracking number to PayPal Customer Service Department: paypalverifyingagent@mail2consultant.com composeto=shippment_proof@consultant.com&composecc=&subject=&body=" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">and immediately the shipment tracking number is CONFIRMED. Your account will be credited immeditely. PayPal, and Craigslist company Copyright 1999-2008 PayPal. All rights reserved. PayPal (Europe) is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority in the United state as an electronic money institution. PayPal FSA Register Number: 226056
I simply sent an email back saying I don’t ship to scammers. I wonder if that FSA number means anything? I also noted how they misspelled, and why would a PayPal message mention Craigslist? All odd.
Of course the reason that they do this is because it DOES WORK on some people who are too naive. I am sure they have received tons of free stuff. I bet at least one person who reads this blog has shipped an item out. If this is you, or if you even were sent this scam I would love to see a comment from you.
Well, I’ve always believed if your head is firmly on your head it’ll be very difficult to scam you. And this just comfirms it. Fact is if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is just that.
By the way, I’m curious as to how you knew the scammers were Nigerians. Did they tell you that themselves?
Yea both times they wanted the items shipped to people in Nigeria.
they tried this on me but i knew it was a scam because imtoo smart for them 😀
Hey mate, im presently dealing with one of those scammers, but im not an idiot and im screwing him around. The longer hes worried with me then thats at least one less stupid person getitng scamed. Dumbass scammers
Thank you for posting this article. I too was just e-mailing a potential buyer through craigs list. Turns out they wanted my item shipped to Nigeria and they used the stupid paypalverifyingagent@mail2consultant.com with false paypal information in it. Does anyone trust Nigeria anymore? ROFL!
hi all , i have a serious problem with these Nigerian scammers, every time i post anything i get at least 10-15 offers to buy at on haggling and what gets me is they want to add 100 dollars for shipping to Nigeria, i try to be nice but one get tired of being targeted then other times i email them a very nasty email and i don’t here from then anymore, they are really a pain , just today i had 8 attempt of scam, sometime i play along little to learn any new technics they may come up with, but its a pain to deal with them even if its not a scam, so all have a pleasent day
i posted several items on Craig’s list and with in minutes i got 7 emails that said they was really interested in my items and they went through the same path as the Nigerian scam and i let them know that no money was in my account and so on, well i keep getting emails with pay pal identity on it saying to ship in 12 hours or pay pal will resend my account, to one of the blogs reply…no no one trust any thing that comes from or goes to Africa, I’ve had my fill of the scams on craigslist. seems that craig’s list can do something about all the stuff that goes on its site, believe it or not they will (is) be loosing customers if this keeps up and get worse. i know i have pulled my items off then got another email address then posted them with a note that “i do not ship to Africa”, this seems to calm the scams down a little, so all you that posted on craigslist, try that method, this is making it hard on legit posters and buyers to get together.
Thanks for all your comments.
Anthony, yes craigs list is very open. I really don’t think they care about most of the people that post there. The only charge in a few key cities and even there in only a few key sections. They have no reason to make it any better. In fact I feel that it is fine the way it is. They have a ton of warnings about scams, and from what I have seen most people who post there are smart enough not to be scammed. It is lame the amount of bad people who reply, but if you follow the simple rule of MONEY before SHIPMENT you should always be ok. And a check, money order or anything like that is NOT money. 2-3 weeks after I deposit it I may start to consider it money.
The other night I listed a PS2 on craigslist, asking $80 for it.. I received an email last night from someone, offering me $250 plus $90 shipping.. Now I was confused, because you can get a PS2 BRAND new for only $200 in stores, but he had told me he lived in Nigeria so I thought maybe they couldn’t buy them there and thats why he was desperate, said he was giving it as a Christmas gift. As a jerk that I am, I felt bad to make them pay the extra $90 for shipping, and told them just to pay the $250 they offered. A few minutes later, I had an email from paypal saying the user had sent me the money, and that it would be put into my account once I sent paypal a tracking number. Now i’m good on the computer, and I know a scam when I see one. I was already a little wary because of how much money this person was offering, so I decided to google paypal scams, and sure enough, got the confirmation that the guy was scamming me. Ha. Funny thing is, the guy sent me an email today telling me he paid me promptly so would appreciate if I can ship the item and give him the tracking number NOW! haha I wrote him a lovely email after that =]
i was receive the same scam mail about that they was paid for my item. i`m not stupid, i know it – that is the BIGGEST SCAM!!! They also threatened to me, that they go complaint to fbi that im not send them tracking number. something like this::
NOTE:
Failure to Abide to this means your Name and Address will be forward to the law enforcement Agency in your Country to get you Arrested, because you are practicing Scam, And your Account with PayPal will be BLOCKED, In order to free yourself from this” Ship the package within 48hours and send the Shipment Tracking to PayPal for them to Verify. If you have any comment on this issue do not hesitate to contact us.If the information you wish to provide pertains to an emergency situation, please contact us at (232) 304-3300. Although we check our e-mail frequently, we do not consider it to be an alternative to telephonic contact in emergency situations.Feel free to contact us directly to this mail (shipments_verify@mail2consultant.com).
lol stupid scamer!
I got a similar request from craiglist to buy a camera I had posted – the buyer told me he sent the money and that I should be receiving an email from paypal – that email (real or not) never came and I checked paypal and there was nothing there. I’ve googled and came back with tons of proof of these scams (like your site here for instance) and just deleted his emails. He offered $80 extra for shipping to send it to his son in school in Nigeria. My stupid scammer couldn’t even get the fake paypal email to go through (as I still haven’t received it like he said I would be) so I got pretty lucky this time that it was stopped right away.
honestly they bout got me.. i posted a cellphone on craigs for $15 and when this person contacted me they said they were buying for there son schooling in africa.. i hadent heard of any scamming at the time… i got rescued by the post office.. cause i got the fake paypal email and figured id just ship it but i wasent going to pay special shipping to get a tracking number.. i told the lady at the post office where i was trying to ship it (nigeria) and she stopped me and said it was prolly a scam to look into it more. had it been a more expensive item i actually cared about i think i would have payed attention.. so i went home and looked over the paypal email and sure enough it originated from paycomfirmation@mail2consultant.com … sily scammers didnt even spell confirmation right.. i have been toying with them ever since.. ive put fake trackin numbers in spammed this persons email inbox and all kinds of things… its been going back and forth for 2 weeks but odly they still keep replying back to me… one email even said this (You will die hard…………………….i told you to give me thephone but u refuse why are you mailing me?you do give pay pal wrongtracking number??????) but yes sadly they were so close to gettin me…
this is terrible. cause i fell for one of these regardless of all the big signs… first of all i DID notice that spelling was terribly wrong and that all the email links seemed wrong. then i noticed my paypal account wasnt acredited. regardless of this i ignored it and wanted to believe it was true. so i sent my ipod out. within the 4th day of me shipping it. my light bulb turned on and i finally admitted to myself. wait this is fake! so i called my usps and they said had i called a day sooner they wouldve been able to ship it back. but it had left the us. its not like 15+ days that it has left the us and the scammer has not recieved it yet and my item is going under investigation and was requested to be sent back.. but apparently nigeria has 30 days to reply back… i know my chances are slim of me getting it back. but i’ve learned now to always trust my gut feeling
its been 15+ days*
The root of the whole problem is the poverty in those nations, and the fact that the government does nothing to stop these people. It has ruined the reputation of those nations for any legit business.
After failing to see the signs I finally saw the light…too late. I shipped off my laptop to a man in Portland Oregan. I tried stopping the shipment before he received the laptop, but an idiot at the post office let it go through. Now, I am in contact with all branches of authority to either get it back or get the insurance from it. the paypal that was used in this instance was from service@paypal.com (paypal_careservices@mail2consultant.com). The purchaser was a Mr. Charles Williams, a legitimate addressee. From what I am to understand from the PPD, he was scammed too.
I had the exact the same experience, but when I clicked on one of the links in the email to see if it was legit or not, it actually took me to the real paypal site and everything. How ever the person prolly just put that in there to make it seem like it was a real email from them. There was no record of a payment on my account at all. I did at first think it was to good to be true so I started to do some research and found that this is real common. Is there anything I need to follow up to ensure that my paypal is safe? I dont think they can access my account but I would like to make sure they cant drain it or change the password on me.
Sadly my brother got caught up in this scam. And it’s changing. Now instead of shipping straight to Nigeria, you get a address in the states. My brother, never done this before, shipped the item when he got the “payment confirmation” from PayPal. After that it got weird. Somehow PayPal overcharged the buyer, so my brother was asked to send money by Western Union to an address in Nigeria. So now he’s had me looking into it and all the big red flags are there. The emails that they send look really professional, even to the people who use this service all the time. Only slight little things are out of place to give it away.
Yeah some asshole tried to scam me. I sent him an email giving him a piece of my mind… it is as follows..
just wanted to let you know that I am on to your scam. Perhaps the next time you wish to fool someone you will think things through properly. You used about three different email addresses to contact me which seems extremely out of the ordinary. Furthermore, who in their right mind would pay $450 for a Ps2? Don’t you know that a new Ps3 in the states retails for fifty dollars less than that? Additionally, you have a very poor command of the English language and made numerous grammatical and syntax errors in your emails. Pastors read a lot and are usually gifted orators, and I seriously doubt their English would be so horrible. I know you are probably a teenager sitting in a Nigerian cybercafe trying to dupe dumb Americans into sending you a product at a loss. I think you should know that craigslist is a LOCAL venue for selling items, so when you asked me to ship the item it was an automatic red flag. Then when you told me to ship it to Nigeria, I knew you were full of shit. U.S. media reports on Nigerian scams extensively. I feel sorry for you because I realize you are probably living on less than a dollar a day, but I won’t be the fool to lose money to a leech like you. Also, Cox is a very rare surname in the United States. You should have done a google search for the most commonly used surnames in the states. Never use US or USA in your email either….its a dead giveaway. As I said before, I feel bad for you and I just want you to know you can go to hell. You aint getting shit from me!
Yeap I just picked up on one of these scammers.
They Just sent some shit saying that the FBI has been Notified and this is the Email Address they are using to send me stuff as Paypal.
paypalconsultants@mail2consultant.com
Yeh just got a few emails from “service@paypal.co.uk”
What a scam!!!!! just told him to f-off and that was it! for a split second he had me convinced though!
but there was no money lodged to my paypal account so that was a bit of a giveaway!
I hope nobody gets conned into this trick!!!!!
I had this happen today to me. The person listed their name as a dr that i google that was legit, as well as the address being a childrens hospital there, but the email name said service@paypal and when i hit respond it showed the actual email as . The personal emails from the person are from derry anna , a complete different name than the “DR”. I forwarded the emails to paypal and they confirmed that this person was a phishing scam.
I was contacted in a similar manner. I put an ad on CL about a sax. They offered me more than I asked plus shipping. They said it was for thier pastor’s daughter. Sent me 6 emails from “paypal”. Which acually came from
shipments_verify@mail2consultant.com
Bottom line, if it seems too good to be true….then it is!
Hey, author. I think I have just fallen for the scam you mention above. I was selling a hdtv over ebay and I am at point now where I have shipped it and I have not got payment from the transaction. I’ll outline how it all went along.
I posted it on ebay UK and got a bid. The bidder sent a question saying if he won could I post it as soon as I could because he had just moved house and they did not have anything. That was fine with me. He wins the bid but only then did I realise he was bidding from the Netherlands. I thought that was a reasonable place to post something to so still no alarm bells. I could never get why for every email I received when I clicked reply service@paypal.com came up in the box but never questioned. Communicating was difficult but as he said English was not his first language no alarm bells there either. His ebay account was no longer active though I did not think that was my business to ask about. He said he wanted me to paypal the money quite early on in the transaction so I did not think much there either. I got forwarded copies of his confirmation of payment of paypal from him. One of the emails had a dodgy choice of font for a paypal email but there was me thinking oh, that’s just Paypal’s NL website format. It said that to deposit funds into my account shipping details needed to be forwarded to transferteam@mailconsultant.com. I did find that weird but the reason the email gives is it protects buyers and sellers from fraudulent transactions by requesting shipping details first. I gave the shipping reference and assumed the ‘team’ waits for the order to reach the destination before releasing funds. I had been thinking the converse – that paypal is needing to protect buyers from bogus sellers who say they are selling something take the money and vanish. The tracking number shows the item was delivered yesterday and signed for by the person in the email correspondence I had. Paypal has just emailed me that they have no record of any recent transactions into my account and that money is just deposited immediately when a transaction takes place. I was thinking at first that maybe the money is just a little late. However after reading the article above I doubt that very much now. That ‘shipping reference’ argument and I will send that email to anyone who would like it was extremely convincing sounding so more awareness does need to be made to people in future. I thought I was being careful. Obviously not.