Gumtree - Bank transfer scam ???

leahw38

Spoonie_Turtle said:

MarkN88 said:

Create a new email address and give them it just to test the waters. Play them along for a bit just to waste their time. 

It would be the unltimate irony if you could scam the scammer - not that you should actually scam them, but you could still get the money for a phone you don't want/need any more and as a bonus leave them with something they don't want either

I set up the email address, sent it to him he said money has been sent obviously it hasn't I checked the bank, i have received 2 emails. Dont these people have anything better to do 🙄

leahw38

posting the emails for anyone else looking

soolin

leahw38 said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

MarkN88 said:

Create a new email address and give them it just to test the waters. Play them along for a bit just to waste their time. 

It would be the unltimate irony if you could scam the scammer - not that you should actually scam them, but you could still get the money for a phone you don't want/need any more and as a bonus leave them with something they don't want either

I set up the email address, sent it to him he said money has been sent obviously it hasn't I checked the bank, i have received 2 emails. Dont these people have anything better to do 🙄

A scammer can make a decent amount of money for very little effort unfortunately, that’s why the emails are all so generic  and not specific to the thing you are selling. Send out a cut and paste email to a few hundred people a day , maybe hook a handful, send out more generic emails and again some will go through with it.  Probably just one or two victims a day gives them more income than benefits alone, and they are probably claiming benefits alongside this scam as well. 

People do fall for this , dozens of threads here and on other sites every week with people falling for these scams and somehow believing it is the bank or Facebook that have cheated them. 

theonlywayisup

It was always going to be a scam, you were told this would happen.  I appreciate you haven't been taken in, but really it isn't worth the time or effort. 

leahw38

theonlywayisup said:

It was always going to be a scam, you were told this would happen.  I appreciate you haven't been taken in, but really it isn't worth the time or effort. 

I'm in lockdown it gave me something to do for the afternoon 🙂

[Deleted User]

See I’d be tempted to send them something in the post and pay postage and provide some sort of tracking just to make them think something meaningful is on its way but then that’s just me. 

Spoonie_Turtle

MarkN88 said:

See I’d be tempted to send them something in the post and pay postage and provide some sort of tracking just to make them think something meaningful is on its way but then that’s just me. 

Ooh, that could be quite fun - though the scammer is likely using someone else's address so they themselves are untraceable, then either intercept the post or knock on the door asking for it.

Might be good to let the actual person who lives there know that their address is being used for scam purposes ... actually you could send a letter, and get proof of postage and upload that. Hypothetically speaking, anyway!

shmuli9

leahw38 said:

Hi,
I'm selling a phone on gumtree and was contacted by someone offering full asking and said they want to pay by paypal and will pay an extra £20 for me to post the item. Very pushy asking for paypal info I was very suspicious because there was no questions about the phone and didnt question the price at all.

I told them I wouldnt accept paypal on bank transfer (I have heard of lots of paypal scams) as I believe bank transfer to be the safest option. I thought I wouldnt hear of them again but they have messaged again saying okay they will pay by bank transfer and need 
Account number
Sort code
Bank name 
Email address

Again I somehow feel like it's a scam, asking for the email address raised concerns for me.

Is this a scam and if so what scam is it?
I can't figure out how they would scam me but I feel uncomfortable about it so wanted to check

Your lucky you avoided this. I had the exact same story yesterday with my laptop.
Only difference being 3 separate phone numbers contacted me making similar offers. I went through with two of them, and they both sent me fake emails (one purportedly from paypal and one supposedly from navy federal bank in the usa) saying that the money was being held until i sent in proof of postage. Both emails ended up in my gmail spam folder. No way i would have dispatched the items without money in my hand/account so there was no real danger, but i do feel like a bit of a twit for allowing it to get that far....twice

Whats also interesting is the 3rd person who contacted me asked me to add a non-gmail email address to my paypal because "... it takes days to go through, but you can add another email to your PayPal account as a second email for payment...You can add a yahoo or hotmail account to your PayPal account as a second email for payment". This is utter rubbish, i've been using gmail with paypal for years and never had issues. I think this person was trying to get me to give them a yahoo/hotmail email address because the spam filters on those are not as good as gmail's...first time i've been scammed like this, and then 3 happen at once! ridiculous

Think the moral of the story as an earlier poster mentioned, gumtree is a face to face platform!
...and the fact that none of these people tried to negotiate down the price, haha, i should be so lucky

in_the_Cotswolds

shmuli9 said:

Your lucky you avoided this. I had the exact same story yesterday with my laptop.
Only difference being 3 separate phone numbers contacted me making similar offers. I went through with two of them, and they both sent me fake emails (one purportedly from paypal and one supposedly from navy federal bank in the usa) saying that the money was being held until i sent in proof of postage. Both emails ended up in my gmail spam folder. No way i would have dispatched the items without money in my hand/account so there was no real danger, but i do feel like a bit of a twit for allowing it to get that far....twice

Whats also interesting is the 3rd person who contacted me asked me to add a non-gmail email address to my paypal because "... it takes days to go through, but you can add another email to your PayPal account as a second email for payment...You can add a yahoo or hotmail account to your PayPal account as a second email for payment". This is utter rubbish, i've been using gmail with paypal for years and never had issues. I think this person was trying to get me to give them a yahoo/hotmail email address because the spam filters on those are not as good as gmail's...first time i've been scammed like this, and then 3 happen at once! ridiculous

Think the moral of the story as an earlier poster mentioned, gumtree is a face to face platform!
...and the fact that none of these people tried to negotiate down the price, haha, i should be so lucky

I've had the same some time ago.  I was also selling laptop, phones etc.  The best one was my laptop it was an old Macbook Pro. The person who claims to have "bought" gave me an address in the same city as my in-laws and I knew where it was.  I said I'll be visiting the "in-laws" and drop it off tomorrow.  Funny thing I didn't hear from him again.

I don't worry about how far it goes so long as you know how to carry out basic checks to protect yourself have fun with them. That's what I do.