Scam Using Paypal

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Main Question - Posted From Lowell:
Hello, I recently ran an ad in Craigslist to sell my TV, and on May 20th, my wife received a response from a Mike Zarnny (mzarnny@aol.com) saying that he would like to purchase the TV and was wiling to send money to PayPal. On May 22nd, I opened a PayPal account, and sent a conformation to Zarnny that the account had been opened and he could submit his payment to them, and after I received the payment then I would ship the TV. This is where my suspicions came to pay. Later on May 22nd, I received two separate email from PayPal(?) stating that Zarnny had made a payment but PayPal was hold the money until I sent them conformation that the TV was shipped, and the second email stated the following: lowellshoaf@gmail.com, We received a shipping update from Mike Zarnny,the buyer of your Craigslist item The Shipping information is as below : Receivers Name: Mr Oladipupo Olabode Address: 5 Elekuku Street off Ajeigbe, Ring Road City: Ibadan State: Oyo State Country: Nigeria Zipcode: 23402 Address Status: Confirmed We have confirmed and verified this shipping address,therefore we urge to ship the merchandise to the above address and verify it by sending the shipment tracking details to us. *SHIPMENT VERIFICATION* You can have the shipment confirmed/verified in any of the following ways: (1).Contact us stating the tracking number of the shipment at: shipmentrepresentative@consultant.com (2).You can give the buyer of your auction item the tracking number of the shipment and once he/she verifies the shipment, he/she will notify us immediately. Thank you for using PayPal!!!. We Look Forward To Serving Your Online Payment Needs In The Future. Yours, PayPal Customer Protection. After thinking about this I contacted PayPal and they said that I should report this to PayPay Fraud Department because they had received any payments and if they had they would immediately deposit them into my account, which I did. Fortunately, I following my instincts and my suspicions and checked into this matter before shipping the television. 1. Is it possible for AOL to close Mike Zarnny’s email account 2. How is it possible for a third party to have to ability to use what looks like a valid email address such as Service@paypal.com. Thank you for any help that you may provide with stopping these activities. Sincerely, Lowell Shoaf

Moderator Says:
You did the smart thing about being very suspicious, especially when dealing with other countries and ESPECIALLY Nigeria. Nigeria is where tons of fraud happen. I'm glad to hear you didn't get ripped off. They don't have the ability to send from a paypal account, thats just a fake email. Anyone can easily "fake" an email address with email software and make it look like it came from paypal. Don't ever assume that an email is legitimate based on just the email address, especially when dealing with someone outside of the United States. It really doesn't do much good to shut down free email addresses, they can just sign up for another one. AOL, Yahoo, etc., all provide free web email addresses and its simple to just select and sign up for a new one. I'm glad to hear you didn't get ripped off, more people should be cautious on these things.

Moderator Says:
One other thing, craigslist is also a popular place for fraud activity. Another very popular fraud activity there is people applying to rent a place, and "accidently" overpaying in advance so you send money back to them only to find out later the money order was fake and now you lost that money. That is a common scam for people that are renting houses or rooms.

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