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Last week I decided to sell all of my camera gear as I just couldn’t find the time to use it regularly. Here I had almost $3,500/- worth of camera and lenses that was just sitting in its dry cabinet. So I wrote a nice little description about the gear and posted to ebay, HWZ and gumtree. A couple of days later, I get a reply for the ad posted on gumtree. Buyer communicates via email asking for best price so that she can gift the camera to her brother in Malaysia. So I make her an offer, we negotiate and settle on a price. Now I buy a lot of new stuff online. But when I buy or sell second hand stuff, I prefer to deal with people here in SG as its easier to meet and you know who/what you’re dealing with. Now the girl says she’s on assignment outside of the country and that she will pay via paypal collect. Hmmm…. I have to raise a paypal invoice and money will be credited to my paypal account. Hmmm… I’m not happy about this but still, I only have to spend a couple of minutes creating a paypal invoice so what the heck! I did it and emailed her the invoice. Busy over the weekend so I read her reply only this morning. In it, she says that she has completed the payment and that I should send the tracking number so paypal can complete the transfer. [me: wait… what? I have to send my stuff and then paypal will transfer? uh uh] She also says she sent the funds to paypal account (prabhjot something@gmail) and that paypal’s service message might be in my inbox or spam folder [me: hmmm… who the fck is prabjot whatever? And why the fck should paypal messages be in my spam folder?] I check the spam folder and lo and behold, there’s a message with the email alias “[email protected]” [me: wtf? I pay for stuff using paypal and I’ve always got the messages in my inbox. Now its in spam. Doesn’t smell right] And then I notice the actual email ID used in sending the message. “[email protected]” [me: haha. Now why the fck would paypal use accountant.com domain to send messages] Lol, they even have a small "how do you know this is not a fake email" disclaimer :D So I google the email ID pp_service and sure enough, plenty of hits about people being conned out of their stuff by peeps in MY. The MO and address is the same; 1) reply to personal ads (mostly camera’s) on ebay/gumtree (seems gumtree being abused more) 2) try some token negotiation to instil confidence 3) get seller to send paypal invoice and promise to pay to paypal account for both the item and the shipping cost 4) send a bogus email claiming funds will be credited once paypal verifies evidence of shipment 5) disappear So guys beware when peddling/buying stuff online. Just for laugh, I sent this reply to "Kim" this morning;