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Comment by tornato7 | Hacker News Reader

Some years ago I was selling an expensive aquarium on Craigslist, a scammer ‘paid’ me with a fake PayPal payment before asking to come pick it up.

So I convinced him that I was the manager of a Red Lobster restaurant and it was an old lobster tank that we were selling. I told him to show up during business hours and tell the manager he’s there to pick up the lobster tank.

The next day I got some ‘on my way’ texts and then soon after a bunch of swearing at me.

Good times.

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Actual scammers tend to not pick up the actual goods.

It's hard to turn a profit by reselling an expensive aquarium tank that's probably pretty unique and they don't come up for sale frequently.

I suspect you fleeced a real buyer

A real buyer would have made a real payment.

With paypal, finding out what is a 'real payment' is actually pretty hard - they do these odd 'echeque' payments which are reversible for a number of days. they also do 'buying a product' payments which can be reversed through a buyer-usually-wins process, and 'friends and family' payments which are mostly-but-not-entirely irreversible.

They all come with differently styled legit emails, which blend right in to the fake spam emails also claiming to be from paypal.

I can totally imagine confusion occurring.

Or the "buyer" crafted their own PayPal email.

That scheme does not make any sense. What would they gain out of it

Yeah, I bet he’s thinking of the other way around where the scammer gets you to give them money but doesn’t deliver the product. In this version you deliver the product and the scammer hasn’t paid. I don’t think scamming people out of aquariums is especially lucrative but I’m not a professional.

How did you know the PayPal payment was fake? Was it an edited screenshot, or did they actually spoof a 'you received money' email from PayPal?

I ask just on the off-chance that you got a seeming-real email from the real PayPal, and I'd like to know what to look for if so.

It was a fake ‘you received money’ email.

I believe this scam works by then reversing (withdrawal) of the PayPal funds.

Thanks. So I guess they send the money with the "goods and services" type instead of "friends and family" ? I wonder if that's (very) visible in the 'you received a payment' email. I never looked before.

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