PAYPAL
Employment scam
Someone contacts you about a great new business opportunity. They need an employee or partner to sell cameras (or some other expensive product) for them.
Scammers trick innocent and trustworthy people into sending them money and merchandise.
The scammer may even say they found you through eBay’s Trading Assistant program. They will ask you to:
- List some products for sale on eBay or on your website.
- Use the money from the orders to pay their supplier. They’ll contact the supplier in advance to let them know you’ll be sending them money.
- Update your PayPal account address to their address. They’ll usually give you an address that looks like a regular address but it’s a P.O. Box.
After you pay the supplier, you’ll start receiving complaints from your buyers stating that they didn’t receive their merchandise. Instead they received an empty box (from the scammer).
You contact the supplier. They inform you that your partner said you would be sending money for gold bouillons, so they shipped the gold bouillons (not cameras) to your PayPal account address. You remember that your partner asked you to change your PayPal account address to their address, so they could pickup the gold.
You paid the supplier for the cameras, so you file a complaint against the supplier. Unfortunately, you learn that you may be liable for the money since the supplier delivered the merchandise to your PayPal account address.
How to avoid this scam:
- If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Know who you are dealing with.
- Don’t list someone else’s address on your PayPal account.
- Verify your suppliers and don’t send money to someone you don’t know.
- Only ship items to the address on the Transaction Details page.
- Be on alert if you’re asked to ship a lot of packages overseas or to the same post office box.
- If you think you’ve received a suspicious email or have been directed to a fake website, forward it to spoof@paypal.com and we’ll investigate it for you. After you send us the email, delete it from your inbox. If you clicked on any links or downloaded any attachments within the suspicious email or website, log into your account and view your transactions. It’s also a good idea to change your password.
To report SPAM SMS messages, forward them to ‘7726’ (which is the keys for SPAM on most phones). Check with your service provider to find if this service is supported or read more here: http://www.gsma.com/aboutus/.
To view all transactions and activity, log in to your PayPal account and check your recent activity. If you see any unauthorized transactions, go to the Resolution Center to report it.
