In this article I will talk about a scam I experienced in my career of selling products and services online directly to the customers with Paypal. This is the first article I’m writing about scams I’ve experienced in my online career, and I’ll write a few more articles about it soon.
Read about the other scams I wrote here:
Part 2 – https://onmoneyline.com/selling-online-paypal-and-scams-part-2/
Part 3 – https://onmoneyline.com/selling-online-paypal-and-scams-part-3/
Part 4 – https://onmoneyline.com/selling-online-paypal-and-scams-part-4/
Part 5 – https://onmoneyline.com/selling-online-paypal-and-scams-part-5/
Part 6 – https://onmoneyline.com/selling-online-paypal-and-scams-part-6/
Scam
One day back in 2015 a guy comes and buys 7 products from me at about $5 dollars each. The offers had a 0-24 hour delivery, so I sent the stuff pretty quickly and marked the orders as completed.
The payments were done with Paypal eChecks, and while it looked suspicious to me I was hopeful they were legit – and I also didn’t have a cost associated with providing the products – so I sent the stuff and hoped for the best.
One of the payments:
A few days later I get 7 emails from Paypal that all the payments bounced…
After that happened I contacted the customer multiple times, hoping it was a mistake, or if there was an issue with the products I provided that I can resolve them and receive payments for them.
I never received a reply…
Fun Fact
Some time later I saw many of the products that the guy bought from me being sold online at a pretty famous marketplace. I knew it was the same guy because he used the same username “Mrvanosch” on that platform. He even stole the photos and title and description from my offers and pasted and used them on his offers, and even copied the “About me” text I had used on my profile, and used it on his with one small alteration. Talk about transparent, lazy and unoriginal.
I thought about reporting him to that platform to try and get his gigs removed, but I figured even if I did it and even if I was successful, he can simply make them again… or register a new account and make them again. In any case that would’ve been a waste of time, and I had better things to do!
But I did keep those offers bookmarked for a long time, checking them from time to time, and he never made any sales. Good! Karma is a bitch isn’t it! And by the way, some time before that happened I was selling that same stuff on that same platform, and I made a couple of hundred $dollars within 2-3 weeks.
Paypal and eCheck payments
This happened back in 2015, and I was pretty new at selling online back then. And while the Paypal eCheck payments did make me feel uneasy and looked suspicious, I figured that I had no monetary cost to provide the products so I sent them without waiting for the payments to clear.
But I’ve learned more about these types of payments since and now I’m much more careful when dealing with such payments. I wrote an article specifically about Paypal and eCheck payments.
Check it out if you want here – Paypal – eCheck payment in progress and cleared
Here is a video I made talking about this:
Conclusion
At the end of the day, dealing with scammers and thieves is an unavoidable part of selling online… of life really. But taking precautions and being aware of the potential scams that may come your way can protect you and save you a lot of headache.
What I should have done in this case is waited for the eChecks to clear before sending the products. Now, I may have done that had I had a cost associated with providing the products. But I didn’t, so I didn’t. The result was the guy got the stuff for free, and I wasted a bit of time.
Buyer, and seller, beware! ;)
UPDATE
Some time after I posted this article, the scammer contacted me and asked (threatened) me to to take down the article or he will report me to my hosting provider. I guess he must have found the article here because I mentioned his name – Mrvanosch
Here is what he wrote me:
Dear Sir / Madam,
I happened to see on google under name:
###and came across your website that our name was mentioned:
###and this is damaging to our business and is under extortion,
I request that you delete the page within 48 hours.Otherwise, we are obliged to mention this to your hosting provider, to have your website taken offline and to report this to you.
Hopefully I have informed you sufficiently.
Kind regards.
### Team
Of course, I did not and will not take the article down. Actions have consequences. And reporting the article to my hosting provider should not cause any problems for me, because it’s within my rights to share with the world a real experience that I had. On the contrary, I’m gonna double up and share everything I have on this guy…
Here are some other links that belong to this scammer:
https://www.fiverr.com/mrvanosch
https://vimeo.com/mrvanosch