I sold a computer for $600 about 40 minutes after I had it listed. I thought it was a little weird but I sent the invoice, and about 30 minutes later, I get this email

"Hello,
Compliment of the season to you. I am Mark Smith from FL
USA,but Presently in London,England for a church seminal. I saw your product item below on ebay # 6850573035 and i am really intrested in buying it for my Daugther as a surprise gift for her in school(university of lagos)at nigeria and i will handle the shipment expenses.i will send
you my fedex account so you will not pay no money for shipping.
i will be sending you payment via PayPal,so kindly send me your PAYPAL EMAIL ADDRESS so as to immedaitely make out your payment.make sure you get the package ready for shipment,you can ship the item as soon as you recieve the paypal confirmation.Expecting your reply so as to immedaitely make out the payment.
Thanks,
Mark Smith
N.B....... If terms are acceptable.send me your PAYPAL EMAIL ADDRESS
and i will make out your payment immedaitely and you will receive the
payment comfirmation from paypal."

Now, the spelling and grammar is great and might actually be from a (semi-retarded?) American, but it isnt likely. My question is this: if this guy sends me payment and I send the item, then he will screw me and try and reverse the charge, this I know. Is there anyway to prevent this from happening?

"Compliment of the season to you"...awesome.

sounds kinda shady

Nice of him to explain to you how eBay works.

This is a scam. Look it up on Snopes.com or something. People troll the web looking for sales on Friendster, MySpace, Craigslist, etc. and this sounds exactly like several I've received about purchasing the car I'm selling. DO NOT sell to this person.

Doesn't this sound A LOT like those emails you get where the imprisoned foreign national military leader has $35,000,000 socked away overseas and they need your help to get it out?

I'll ask my friend who's an eBay PowerSeller what he knows about stuff like this and report back.

my question is, if he sends the money to paypal, is there any way to avoid him getting his money back?

I just googled part of the email you received and got quite a lot of hits, check out this link here

That is a scam!
I was on Craigslist and saw one of those "too good to be true" ads. A late model car for a ridiculously low price. I wanted to know what thscam was so I responded. here is his reply:

"Hello,
As the seller, I would like to take a moment to personally thank you for your interest in my car. I know that you have many choices out there and I appreciate your interest. I hope you are serious in your intention for buying. Don`t take it personally, but I am tired with people who offer to buy my items and in the end they turn out to be scammers. Anyway, the car is available and I guess you could be it`s owner if everything turns out all right and you are serious about buying. The car looks and runs exactly as new. The title is clean, and you will receive it along with the vehicle, so you will have no problems whatsoever registering it there. It has 15012 miles.All standard equipment is included, such as power windows, power locks, power mirrors, power moonroof, keyless lighted entry, alarm system, dual front and side airbags, tilt and telescopic steering wheel adjust, air conditioning, climate control, cruise control, electronic stability programming, AM/FM radio, in-dash CD player, in-dash cassette player, 18 inch alloy wheels,and all books.
This GLI contains a 1.8 liter, turbocharged, inline 4 cylinder engine, producing 180 horsepower. Power is transferred to the ground via a 6 speed manual transmission and front-wheel drivetrain. The car belonged to my late brother who died 8 months ago serving in the UN peace keeping forces detached in Iraq. I am selling because I don`t like driving it, I am not really into cars, I preffer riding my Harley Davidson to work and everywhere else. I am located in Zagreb, Croatia. My final price on this is US 7,600$. I know it seems a little low, but I will be quite happy to get rid of it, believe me, ever since my brother passed away, it just sits useless in my garage. If you will take this price, I am willing to pay for shipping and insurance to your location. I ONLY accept payment though a third party service, which will ensure the funds and hold them until you have the car there, and will guarantee I get the money after you have the machine. I do not know pretty much about theese machines, but I will be happy to assist you in any way. Please get back to me asap if you decide to buy.

Daniel Brunovic
Viktora Cara Emina 6 St.
City: Zagreb
Zip: 51410
Croatia"

I know its fake. I also figure that if I tell him my PayPal email address that I will get a 'fake' PayPal confirmation email. I told him he could click on the Pay Now link in the invoice to pay. If he actually sends money to Paypal then I figure I can send him the computer. However, I dont think we'll get to that point.

The internet should be banned in Nigeria.

this reminds me of the greatest internet thingie ever...the one where the guy gets screwed so he sends the scammer a fake IMac, made from a cardboard box, complete with spies around the country to look for this guy. anyone else remember this?

What's the dude's feedback?

Definitely forward this to eBay security. Chances are some poor dude has had his eBay account jacked by this schmuck.

University of Lagos indeed.

Must be the Boston archdiocese.

0, brand new user

Tell him he misunderstood the auction terms and that you really must have his left testicle shipped to you by DHL prior to any auction goods/money exchange, with the understanding that it will be returned upon mutually satisfactory completion of the remaining terms for payment/ merchandise receipt.

I will totally send him a picture of a computer and a picture of me flipping him off if he pays for shipping

I remeber. It was a fake PowerBook, and I think it was made out of a three ring binder.

I was wholly impressed by how everything fell together in his plan.

Yea, that was about brilliant.

I'd say make sure the money clears your paypal account before you send him anything.
Under the paypal buyer protection program, if he is not happy and sends the item back, he gets a full refund of his money up to $1000, which means they extract it from your account later. For him to get his money back, I think he just sends you the package, and a tracking number to Paypal, so when they see the item is received back by you, then they refund his money.

I recently went thru this with a cell phone that I bought which was missing a battery, among other things. I am wondering if I could have just sent the guy back an empty box. The tracking number would have been docmented as him receiving something from me, so it would be his word against mine, so he would have to deal with Paypal to get his money back from me, haha. The seller might have had to verify that the item was indeed in the box, but I have no way of knowing.

but after reading dumpjack's link, I wouldn't send them anything.

it just gets better. so i responded to this guy through ebays site (not my real email) that he should click 'Pay Now' in the link to pay, and I get this:

Hello i'm having technical problem with the Buy it now option i will be glad if you can email me your PayPal account email in order to receive the payment confirmation Thanks


Followed about 90 seconds later by an email with heading all caps reading PAYPAL CONFIRMATION (has this guy even seen a PayPal email before?):

Dear o-statedoc,

This email confirms That Mr Mark Smith, have paid idiopathic at gmail DOT com $600.00 USD using PayPal.

Make sure you never provide your password to fraudulent websites

You should never give your PayPal password to anyone, including PayPal employees.

Note:This PayPal®payment has been deducted from the buyer's account and has been "APPROVED" but will not be posted to your account until the shipment tracking number is sent to our customers service for shipment verification so as to secure both the seller and the buyer. (pay_pal_verify@accountant.com)


BUT, even though this is funny, the funniest thing is that at the bottom of this email is a little tag that says:

Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/


Very strong work. Nigeria is really putting out some quality scammers

America should pull out of Iraq and invade Nigeria instead