The Facebook marketplace scam everyone needs to know about – after young mother almost fell victim while selling garden furniture
- Scam targets Aussies using Facebook Marketplace
- Sellers asked to transfer money into PayPal account
- The scammer tells them the funds will be sent back
Australians wanting to sell items on social media have been warned to keep an eye out for scammers posing as fake buyers.
Fake buyers will message the seller claiming they are interested in the item and ask them to send their email address.
The seller will then receive an email that appears to come from PayPal and informs them to send money into a holding account to confirm they are legitimate.
The seller will be told the money will be refunded into their account – but in actual fact they won’t see their money again.
Paige Hinson, 31, almost became an unwitting victim of the scam after she decided to list garden furniture on Facebook Marketplace.
A ‘quick fire’ online scam is targeting Aussies who sell goods on applications such as Facebook Marketplace (stock image)
The young mother was selling the outdoor table and chairs as her family had just moved to a new property in Sydney’s west.
She immediately received a message from a middle-aged woman named ‘Rosi’ who appeared quite interested in buying the goods.
After confirming her location, ‘Rosi’ told Ms Hinson that she would pay through PayPal and her husband would pick up the outdoor furniture the next day.
‘They were quite pushy and they wanted to come and pick up the furniture the next day, which I was quite excited about because it was a $700 sale and my husband said that was way too expensive,’ she told news.com.au.
‘Rosi’ requested Ms Hinson transfer $500 into a holding PayPal business account to confirm she was ‘legitimate’ before it was released back to her account with the $700 for the furniture.
She asked Ms Hinson what her PayPal full name and email address was before informing her she had been sent an email from PayPal.
‘Hello can you check your email inbox or junk folder now I (sic) just got an email from PayPal telling me to make an additional payment to your account in order to express and your limit (sic) and am about to do so I just want to know if you get the same email now and you will assure me of sending the money back after you get the additional payment now,’ the message read.
‘They asked for an email address, which I gave thinking you can’t possibly get scammed with just an email address,’ Ms Hinson said.
Sydney mother Paige Hinson, 31, was targeted by a scammer who was interested in buying her outdoor furniture (stock image)
A scammer pretending to be a woman named ‘Rosi’ asked Ms Hinson what her email address was before informing her that they had been sent an email from PayPal
‘Then I got a very legitimate-looking email from PayPal with all the details to transfer the money into, so I started doing that.’
‘Rosi’ told the mum that sending the ‘extra funds’ was the ‘only way it can be done’, to which Ms Hinson responded she had ‘never heard of that before’.
The scammer sent Ms Hinson a series of lengthy messages telling her that they had sent an ‘additional payment’ through to PayPal and advised her to send through the ‘refund of the additional payment’ so it was confirmed on both ends.
Ms Hinson was mere moments away from transferring the money when she had a ‘gut feeling’ something was off and decided to contact her bank, who confirmed that she was being targeted by a scammer.
She reflected on how ‘lucky’ she was she didn’t fall for the scam and trusted her instincts to contact the bank.
The young mum is part of a growing number of Aussies who have been targeted by scammers on social media and online marketplaces such as Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree.
A growing number of Aussies have been targeted by scammers on social media and online marketplaces. Sell Securely estimates that half of all scams come from social media (stock image)
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) estimates that Australians lost more than $3 billion to scammers in 2022.
This was an 80 per cent increase over what was lost to scammers in 2021.
A national survey found that more than 52 per cent of Aussies had been scammed and 66 per cent had never reported it.
Online escrow payment service, Sell Securely, believes the number of people who have fallen victim to online scams is much higher than the figure put forward by the ACCC.
It discovered that almost half of all scams to defraud people came from social media. Most of these took place on Facebook or Facebook marketplace.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk