ebay motorhome scam in news (bank transfer)

soolin

Tallaght said:

Do a google image reverse search and it will show if ad pics originate elsewhere.

The issue though is that those of us who know this is a scam (which is probably 90% of the population) would probably just walk away as there is no need to check the photo. The ones that are vulnerable and gullible wouldn’t bother as they don’t anticipate a scam and have ignored every single warning about this already. 

GabbaGabbaHey

I'd love to believe that it's 90% of the population, but I suspect that your view is skewed by spending a lot of time interacting with people who are aware of these sorts of issues. Only a tiny, tiny proportion of people contribute to forums like these.
Sadly I'd probably put the awareness level down in single figures. (There's also a reason why the fraudsters use motorhomes in their scams - the target audience are less sceptical than the population at large. I was quite shocked, when looking to buy a kitten, at how many very obvious scams there were, until I realised that the fraudsters saw people who buy kittens as a soft option).

soolin

GabbaGabbaHey said:

I'd love to believe that it's 90% of the population, but I suspect that your view is skewed by spending a lot of time interacting with people who are aware of these sorts of issues. Only a tiny, tiny proportion of people contribute to forums like these.
Sadly I'd probably put the awareness level down in single figures. (There's also a reason why the fraudsters use motorhomes in their scams - the target audience are less sceptical than the population at large. I was quite shocked, when looking to buy a kitten, at how many very obvious scams there were, until I realised that the fraudsters saw people who buy kittens as a soft option).

You are probably right, I suppose my optimism that people generally have common sense rather took over from my experience of seeing people fall for this.

I know I’ve posted about it before but I have been removed from some local selling groups for trying to warn people about obvious scams. on one occasion I was told by admin to stop scaremongering and if people were trying to make a bit of a living selling things online and weren’t stupid enough to take PayPal and pay fees I should keep my nose out of it. Apparently any small seller should be savvy enough to take bank transfers and they weren’t hurting anyone. From memory that was for prams and baby equipment where before I got removed from the group I watched new mums being conned out of thousands buying new equipment at considerably less than RRP from a ‘new mum’ working for a shop  that had apparently overstocked And were going to get in trouble with their boss if they didn’t move them all on.