I spotted this post and couldn’t believe it! My husband fell for the Nigeria phone scam back in 2005-2006 and I was so shocked that it was still going on. Whist I was out one Saturday morning he found his old mobile phone in a drawer and decided to list it on eBay. It was the first thing he had ever sold on eBay and he didn’t have the knowledge of the full ins and outs of how it all worked.

Within a few minutes of listing he sold it via BIN to a lady registered in the UK. She sent him a message straight away saying that she wanted the phone for her son who was a doctor working for the UN in Nigeria and that she was prepared to pay for the phone and additional postage for shipping to Nigeria. He replied to the message that he agreed to ship to the Nigerian address and then quickly received an e-mail from who he thought was PayPal saying that a payment for the agreed amount had been received and that PayPal were holding the funds until he could provide them with a viable Royal Mail Tracking number to prove he had sent the goods.

He packaged up the phone and on the way to collect me from the shops he dropped it off at our little village post office. When he collected me he told me about what he thought was a good mornings work and I was horrified as I had read something about this scam on the internet previously. We went straight back to the post office in an attempt to retrieve the parcel but we were out of luck! Even though we could see it in the top of the bag and my husband had the receipt and produced his driving licence to show them that his name and address matched the senders details on the package, it is apparently some sort of crime against the Queen to fiddle with packages whilst they are in Royal Mails possession and she was not allowed to hand the parcel back to us. We had no choice but to kiss the phone goodbye!

I used to get these sorts of things all the time when I traded online. Posted the following story in the sellers section, might be worth a go for anyone with far too much free time or anyone as frustrated with the general situation as I was back then.

"Back in about 2006, I had someone pay for a few things (not on ebay) and then ask me to ship to a very unlikely looking street address in Lagos. This was a £1900 order for a server so it had "scam" written all over it.

I decided to do a bit of google detective work and managed to find the cardholder's home phone number. Naturally they'd never been to nigeria and it was clearly a case of credit card fraud.
I had them do a chargeback with mastercard, meanwhile I was getting messages from the buyer in increasingly poor english, wanting to know what had happened to their order.

It was at this point that I stumbled upon a "scambaiting" site, and discovered that a lot of couriers do cash-on-delivery (and only cash) shipping to Nigeria and other scamming hotspots.

Once the chargeback had gone through, I contacted the nigerian buyer and told them there'd been a problem with payment and everything was sorted now, but that they'd have to arrange delivery to Lagos themselves. I gave them the address of an empty unit at a nearby industrial estate, a link to a courier booking service and a time/date to arrange collection for. Warning them that the server and packaging combined was likely to be quite heavy. They did!

So, had a quick rummage around in the back office at work and found an old beaten up server case that'd been damaged so badly it would no longer fit in the rack, which made it a perfect candidate for what I had in mind. Took it back to my flat, and decided that it would look a lot more fetching (and harder for the scammers to sell) if I painted some love-hearts on it using pink gloss house paint. Then I filled it with bricks, and bits of old cardboard boxes to stop the bricks from moving around too much. Didn't want my masterpiece getting damaged in transit.

Once I'd finished my creation, I packed it up, and after having to knock on the doors of my neighbours on both sides to get three of us to lift it into the back of my car, it was ready to go.

I took the "server" down to the nearby industrial estate about 10 minutes before the agreed 30 minute collection window - DHL were uncharacteristically on time. Took about five minutes to load the box into the back of their van which was a laugh.

I kept an eye on my package tracking - final weight was 71.2Kg - and it got held up in customs for several days (prompting more angry poorly-written emails from what I was beginning to think was several people all pretending to be the same buyer).

But after almost 3 weeks, success! They delivered! Costing the scammers ~£700 in DHL bills plus whatever customs decided to charge them for delivering my little present. The level of rage in my email inbox for the next month was fantastic!

Sure, it's an absolutely crazy amount of effort to go to just to mess with someone, but that has to be the most satisfying way I've ever dealt with scammers online."

I have also recently had this same problem, from a kim tanner, getting emails in poor english firstly asking to send a blackberry curve to essex, and then it being changed to nigeria, additionally asking for more photos of the phone. I simply emailed them saying I don't ship anywhere else but the UK and the item will be re-listed. I then immediately opened a case in the customer support part of eBay to cancel the transaction with the reason being I have been asked to ship somewhere where I do not ship. Not heard off them since! Hope this helps!

i stupidly sent a blackberry 9700 out to these people scamming !! it was supposingly a women and it was for her son in africa while she was away on an aids campaigne! the adress was in nigeria buluku way and when i looked it up it wasnt even an address! so wound up and just want something back from this but ebay have basically told me they cant do anything! tampin!!

You could try reading pretty well any section of this thread.

Of course it is an attempted fraud.

Report the ebay ID used for haing false contact information, file an unpaid item report, learn the basic rules of self protection before listiong anything else.

af,
the dinosaur of eBay.

afantiques wrote:

It is a lovely story but I just don't believe it.

 

Too many holes.

Sorry, shadow, but KI'm with Afantiques. A lovely story and how, I wish i could believe it but it's just too Serendipitous.

My friend (who I mentioned in my post just below this)  has promised to send £700 Mobiles, iPads iPhones etc for a (relatively) nominal payment of P&P only - usually £30 or £40 - and has never had a taker.

These people are thieves and I see no way that they'd voluntarily hand over £700  for any reason whatsoever.

They work much too hard to scam the people who fall for it to start giving away their ill gotten gains.

True or not - You're a good raconteur and I enjoyed reading it - it was quite cathartic just imagining it to be true !!!!!

They say that you achieve immortality through your Children. Personally I would like to achieve immortality by not dying.

I heard a funny phrase that is common in her home country (from my african girlfriend - who is NOT nigerian! lol) that 'if a Nigerian shakes your hand, check that it is still there afterwards'. Apologies to those Nigerians that are not scammers. Please send a complaint to my PayPal email address.

People really should have learned NOT to send things now, those that do kinda deserve it! As these people are the reason the scammers keep on going. The scams have only been going a decade or more!! Lol. They also say that common sense is not so common (hence the state of health and safety paperwork in the UK, but thats another rant for another day).

ANYWAY, rant aside (now feeling better), I too am p'd off trying to sell an expensive item, with all the selling preferences enabled, and STILL getting a new member on my BUY IT NOW within minutes, meaning yet another week wasted. Have now had to resort to the scary option of bid only! Time will tell how that goes!

Should not have to do this!

Why will eBay not allow an option (for more valuable items, say over £100 as an example) whereby a new user with no feedback cannot bid on it?? Is there any reason they have not done this??

I was scammed by this, for a macbook pro. i lost 860.gbp as i belived the whole scam. is there anything i can do to get my money back? .. i thought i was safe on here but its been a nightmare!!

Hi i was almost scammed 2day. The lady messaged me saying she would pay the full price for my phone. When i agreed she said she was needing it sent to nigeria as she has a resale shop there and she would pay me £40 postage.  She had me send her a money request thru paypal and then i recieved 2 fake paypal emails telling me that the amount had been taken from her account but would only be credited into mine once i sent them proof of postage.  I completely fell for this and was comparing courier prices when i came across this forum.  I then checked the emails from paypal more carefully and it then stood out like a sore thumb that they were fake.  I contacted paypal which they confirmed they were fake.  The lady then got quite nasty when i challenged her about it. Be very aware and trust no1 i've had my eyes opened, I was so close if I hadn't seen this id have been well n truly scammed.

yea i totally agree lol

you have done the right thing-reported them to ebay..cancel the transaction and change your password immediately. i had a problem years ago when i got threatening emails about a sewing machine i wasn't even selling which i hadn't sent..ebay suspended my account ..it was a nightmare and took a while to sort out..if you are really worried use the contact button ebay will give you a slot to ring them and speak to a real! person, explain what has happened and don't worry, it's scary but can be sorted, angie

sad old Meldrew havent sold  for years , just poking your nose in and making usless comments- from Nigeria?

You got it, sonny jim.

af,
the dinosaur of eBay.