Yup, not the first time ive been scammed, but definitely the most, and it was because of my own foolishness this time. The guy changed out one of the letters in the MSN e-mail to make it look like the real deal, and i handed over almost 70k gold, and he signed off after he got it, then i came to realise that he had the wrong letters... So, $124 gone
From what i read, i think he meant that the scammer edited the paypal invoices that would usually be sent to you when you made a payment or you receive payments? -> & thats very evil cause ur totally helpless against it. Only way about it is to cross check and see the money is already in your paypal.
Guys... He got scammed through MSN. Nothing even went to PayPal. Scammer makes a name that looks like a legitimate website's MSN / AIM. Messeges people and says they're buying gold. If you dont pay attention, you'll lose your gold. The scammer takes the gold and you never hear from them again. I always check my buyers' names in the "Courier" font to distinguish o, O, 0, L, I, and l and so forth.
This doesnt work either. Had $300 pulled from me because "They said" the credit card was stolen. So now paypal threatens to send me to collections, and so I tell them to go ahead, thanks for the protections jacklegs. So gift isnt secure either.
In these types of scams, the scammer is usually the person that contacts the scamee. For example, you post to sell something on MMObay and this guy messages you and says "I am so-and-so from mmobay. I want to buy your junk" If you don't ask them to post in your thread, you wont know if it is really them or not. From there, you've just been duped into thinking this person is legitimate and your stuff is gone with no payment, or a retracted payment.
It is also possible that the scammer got the OPs MSN from here. I'm sure most of us have our MSN open with several gold sites on our list. How many times a week do they message you asking if you have any gold for sell? All a scammer needs to do is get on these forums, contact people using a spoofed, similar, or legitimate looking screen name that looks like they are a buyer from a gold site and the rest ends up in this thread. Any time someone contacts you claiming to be from a gold site, go to that gold site, double check their messengers, get on their live chat and verify that you are talking with them. It is nearly impossible to get scammed with this particular method if you use this advice.
I always use Moneybookers as its harder to do charge backs as they actually investigate claims rather than some guy with his finger on Enter to agree to every charge back.
