How to avoid falling for scammers – Typical buyer scam

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Originally Posted by Lizardlicks

I just honestly don't trust anything that's cashiers checks or the like. I only ever see them used in scams. Pay me up front or no dice, kemosabe.

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Sadly all form of payments can be problematic when dealing with a dishonest person, even online payments. Cash is great option but that means local sales only and that greatly reduces your potential as a breeder.

Honestly, if he didn't add the orphanage part, I might not have caught it as a scam myself LOL. They sometimes add the weirdest things that make the scam obvious! And thanks for making him work to post screenshots!

I posted an ISO for an australian shepherd many years ago, and got an email saying they have a mini aussie puppy for sale. I asked for age and pics, and they posted a clearly 7~8 week old puppy, and told me "5 months old". I replied asking for more info, just in case they were legit, and they then sent me a HUGE complicated email stating that the puppy is currently in South America, because his owner needed to move to Africa for 6 months as a professor, and the puppy is living in a shelter and looking for a home, and they need to find a home as fast as possible... and on and on. Which made me laugh! It's pretty crazy how they can add these random detailed stories that they think makes them more convincing, but actually just exposes them as a scam.

Thanks for exposing them Deb! I was contacted by several of them but found it strange when they asked for my full name and address to send the check or money order. To top it off your going to have your assistant arrange for the pickup? When I told them I only take PayPal, they said they could only pay by check or money order and they would add 50.00 for any inconvenience. I asked them to call me and that seemed the end of that attempt for them.

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Originally Posted by piedlover79

Love that he tried the 'you think you can scam me'. Hahaha.

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Not going to lie, I'd have emailed a picture of DJ Khaled with the caption "You played yourself" for the next week straight, 4 times a day.

Oh Man, I didn't even thing about scammers, I'm still growing my snakes to breed and don't have any babies yet so I'm sure that's part of the process as a breeder. I'm actually 100% confident using PayPal. I actually fell for the Nigeria scam when I tried to buy a tarantula from Nigeria, they scammed me for a couple hundred bucks. But I paid with PayPal and when I told PayPal about it they immediately refunded me the money, no questions asked! Now that's service!

paypal isn't fullproof either. Its more secure than most forms of payment but there are scams involving paypal too.

Never accept a payment via friends/family. Always do transactions under business. Even then people if they really want to can open a dispute with paypal and freeze your money in place for months while they have your animal in their possession. ALWAYS keep detailed notes such as communication between you and the seller so if a dispute is opened you have a better shot at winning.

Yes, document EVERYTHING.

EDIT I meant between you and the buyer since you are the breeder selling, sorry

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Originally Posted by Lizardlicks

I just honestly don't trust anything that's cashiers checks or the like. I only ever see them used in scams. Pay me up front or no dice, kemosabe.

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I work for a bank in fraud research and our sole job are reviewing cases for fraud rings, scams, exploitation and the like. We've seen fraud checks that are nearly impossible to tell are fraud and other checks look like they were put together in MS Word. If you choose to accept cashier's checks, money orders or personal checks you can call the paying bank where the item was issued from to confirm if the check is valid and if the funds are available. There are only a few banks that won't verify over the phone but your local branch can also help with that as well.

USPS MO's are ok, you can take them to the post office and they can figure out almost immediately if they are good or not - and you can get cash for them there.

PayPal is good for paying if you use G&S rather than F&F. The biggest problem with accepting PayPal as a seller is when the scammer/buyer uses a stolen credit card to back up the payment or even when the scammer/buyer disputes the charge through the credit card company rather than PayPal; the seller is very likely to lose that dispute.