Thanks to Kate Booby at Spinefex (www.spinefex.com.au) for alerting us to this one!
“I thought I should bring your attention to a scam that we have 3 separate cases of occur within our immediate friends/family.
All of these people had advertised to sell items (2 x cars, 1 x horse) and had been contacted by email and phone calls from a buyer.
The buyer has asked to pay for the items through paypal (and the sellers had to set up paypal accounts) because the buyer is overseas or can’t use their internet banking (one case the man said he was on an oil rig, another was overseas). Paypal is generally a safe & secure way to receive funds or pay for items.
They were also requesting for the item that they were purchasing to be transported to a different state and were offering to pay extra in the paypal transfer for the seller to arrange this.
The catch was that they asked for the seller to transfer the transport cost to a Western Union account BEFORE they could do the paypal transfer – these amounts varied from $800 – $1000.”
What a great scam. The ‘buyer’ is asking you to pay for the cost of the ‘transport’ until they can pay you the entire amount via paypal, yet no transport company is involved. They are then free to walk away with your money and never be heard from again.
Seller beware!
-SCuffy