Fraud Buyer

[userk007]

Hello,

I got a message from fraud buyer that he wants to buy the item(new mac laptop) I listed on ebay. I recevived few emails about the shipment verificaiton and item has been paid, So I shipped the item assuming they are valid. After speaking ebay customer support I reliased its a fraud buyer who never made the payment. Is there any way I can get my shipped item back? How do I tackle this? I have already reported this on ebay but customer support suggested to report it to police.

Thank you.

[rusticrye]

I've just read your responses to another poster, and you're mistaken. Ebay don't send 'payment confirmation' emails as they never see payments. Payment goes direct from the buyer's PayPal account or card to your PayPal account. What you receive from Ebay is an order confirmation email. (And, incidentally, you must never send to the address on the order confirmation, as that is not necessarily where the buyer wants the item to go.)

PayPal sends the payment confirmation email (which includes the address you must ship to), as they are the payment processor. However, this email was not from PayPal, as you would have discovered if you'd simply checked your PayPal account before shipping the laptop. You fell for the oldest scam in the book, and believed the buyer when he said he couldn't pay you via Ebay and asked you to send him your PayPal email address so that he could pay you direct.  Which you then naively did, and the criminal gang, which is what the 'buyer' is, sent you a fake payment confirmation email purporting to be from PayPal.

All you can do is report this to the police, and do a web search for 'payment scams' and 'staying safe online' so that you don't make such an expensive mistake again.

@userk007