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4/09/2007

eBay Nigeria Scam Exposed

It’s easy to focus on the $6 billion money train that is the eBay “digital marketplace” (or auction site in everyday language – “Internet Marketers, Are you on the eBay Money Train Yet?” But if you’re not careful, you could fall prey to scam artists.

With a worldwide audience, that set of Pez dispensers could evoke a fierce bidding war between collectors in Belgium and Thailand, and the tussle could boost your sale price quite substantially. But again, beware the sharks out there.

Last week, I put up a cell phone for auction on eBay and within 4 hours, a buyer took up the “Buy It Now” option, purchasing the phone at the price I specified. This certainly was a bright prospect for my eBay plans. What’s more I got a PayPal payment notification from the UK buyer, along with an email that read:

Hello,
I just sent the payment for the item. I also included
an estimated cost of shipping to Nigeria for my son
company. Please let me know when you get a
notification from ebay that Slong Girl sent you a
payment. Send me the tracking number via auspost as
soon as you ship the item. I am having difficulties
getting across to my son that manage her father
company over there. I gave his address to paypal for
verification and it has been confirmed so it should be
in the payment notification.
His correct mailing address again is:

Atolagbe Agbede
03 Ijaiye Road
Opp Mobil Filling Station
Ogba, Ikeja, Lagos
Nigeria 23401

Thanks and I hope to read from you as soon as possible
cos I want this to get to him at the shortest period
of time.
Slong,
girl

–

A UK buyer asking for a cell phone to be sent to Nigeria?

Plus the PayPal “payment notification” looked dubious. The payment amounts were all wrong and it came from “Services@Paypal.com” instead of the regular “service@paypal.com” (a hallmark of scam artists = poor spelling).

Even better, the email was sent from: “pp.notification.status@post.com” and “pp.notification1@gmail.com” – pretty poor email spoofing if you ask me.

-

As if these weren’t bad enough, the “bidder” had the audacity to send more fake email:

Dear andrew wee,

We hereby notify you of the transaction that was effected by Slong Girl for the

payment of the item(s) purchased from you on eBayand provide guidelines on how your funds

would be released.

A notification of this transaction on PayPal as been sent to you immediately the payment

was effected, and we are yet to read from you. Please be informed that the money has

been deducted from Slong Girl account and is pending on PayPal database.

This money will be released into your account as soon as the tracking number for the shipment

has been sent to us at pp.notification.status@mail.com for verification. You are adviced

to ship this item and send the tracking number you recieve from the post office to us at the

above email address.

We will send you an email as soon as the funds has been released into your account, until then

we wait for the tracking number for the shipment. Ship the Item to the address included in the

email used to you notify you of the payment for your item(s) ONLY!

Thank you using PayPal.

Chris Campbell

PP Email ID 936

This was sent from the same mail.com and gmail.com emails.

-

So the scam works in this way:

  • They do a bait and switch on you: A US or UK eBay buyer will request for the item to be sent to Nigeria.
  • They’ll mail you saying the payment is “held” pending shipment of the item and for you to send them the tracking number.
  • If you fall for this, you’ll ship the item.
  • They’ll disappear.

If you’re unsure, mail eBay’s customer service and get assistance.

Other telltale scam artist signs:

  • The account was created a few hours or a few days ago
  • Yours is the first item they have bought (they seem to like cell phones, PDAs and small electronic equipment they can presumably offload into the black market easily)

Checking the eBay site a day later, I found the person’s account had been suspended.

They are persistant though, here’s a followup email I received:

Hello,
I just sent the payment for the item. I also included
an estimated cost of shipping to Nigeria for my son
company. Please let me know when you get a
notification from ebay that Slong Girl sent you a
payment. Send me the tracking number via auspost as
soon as you ship the item. I am having difficulties
getting across to my son that manage her father
company over there. I gave his address to paypal for
verification and it has been confirmed so it should be
in the payment notification.
His correct mailing address again is:

Atolagbe Agbede
03 Ijaiye Road
Opp Mobil Filling Station
Ogba, Ikeja, Lagos
Nigeria 23401

Thanks and I hope to read from you as soon as possible
cos I want this to get to him at the shortest period
of time.
Slong,
girl

—

If you’re newer to eBay, do realize that the protocol is to receive payments BEFORE you ship items to the buyer.

PayPal provides some level of consumer protection for buyers, but you need to be savvy if you’re a seller.

-

Update: A buddy who is an eBay powerseller recommends listing items at the Bidz marketplace (which has some similarities to eBay – take note, it’s primarily focused on jewellery auctions).

If you’re interested in checking it out:

« Older Comments

430 comments on eBay Nigeria Scam Exposed

  1. Playenexy
    November 19, 2012 at 10:28 am (182 days ago)

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    December 18, 2012 at 7:43 am (153 days ago)

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  4. Riglet
    December 29, 2012 at 4:05 pm (142 days ago)

    I wish I’d found this site sooner. I have just been caught out.
    She said she was a missionary and wanted to send to her Pastor in Nigeria. That it was a gift and didn’t want it to arrive late. As I like to think everyone is as honest as me, foolish I know. I have sent the item.
    Lessons learnt

  5. Anonymous
    January 18, 2013 at 8:29 am (122 days ago)

    That is pure gold! Definitely gonna try this next time some dodgy prick tries to scam me!

  6. Me being me
    January 21, 2013 at 12:30 am (120 days ago)

    I’ve got a new one for you…
    I was trying to sell my iPod on eBay last night with a buy it now of $125. Someone picked it up within 4hrs. I was pretty shocked because the bid started at 50. I went on, really happy someone picked it up, especially for that amount. They needed an invoice of the final payment, so I sent it to them for $130 (including my 5 for shipping.) they quickly write back and say that this is for their grandson in Nigeria, and the nature of their job will not allow them to ship it (ummm….). They also said my paypal email was incorrect, and to send them the new one. So I wrote back and said that I can’t ship outside of the US. Within 10mins, they wrote back saying they’ll pay $50 for me to ship it there. I quickly filed a buyer report with eBay, stating it was a scam, opened a case for the transaction to be cancelled, and I wrote back saying that it was going to be cancelled. They replied to me this morning with, “okay.” Now, I will feel extremely bad if this was a legit sale, but reading these sob stories on here, I pretty much doubt it. (I didn’t even know they could get packages in Nigeria lol) by the way, I did go back to check my Paypal information…it was correct all along…
    I was thinking that when I do relist this item, ill take away the buy it now option, but as I read on here, they bid extreme amounts of money, so I guess that won’t work. :P
    Thank you so much for having this page up. It saved me and a lot of other people!

  7. Anonymous
    January 21, 2013 at 7:43 am (119 days ago)

    you should be shot,you can’t even write fucking English you all should go to hell,as if you all are not ex cons. some people mess up you blame it on all, and same goes to stupid james and the rest

  8. http://tinyurl.com/gamaneil55859
    January 28, 2013 at 7:03 pm (112 days ago)

    I really blog also and I’m publishing a little something very close to this posting, “eBay Nigeria Scam Exposed | Andrew Wee |
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  9. Alejandro Gallo
    February 2, 2013 at 11:37 pm (107 days ago)

    Tell me about it! I already had it packaged and was headed out to send it and I got curious about where in Nigeria this was. How lucky am I that I came across this. x)

  10. Alessia
    February 8, 2013 at 9:29 pm (101 days ago)

    Hi, I’m Alessia from Rome (Italy), they sent to me the same email!!! He said that wanted to send a telephone in Nigeria for his son…

  11. Alessia
    February 8, 2013 at 9:30 pm (101 days ago)

    thanks for this post!!! :-)

  12. Shelly
    February 22, 2013 at 10:48 am (87 days ago)

    the same exact thing happened to me. They called themselves Linda and sent me an email saying:
    Dear Shelby ,

    I want to notify you that payment for your item has already been made and the necessary funds have been deducted from my PAY PAL account.i want you to send the item to the address below,am buying it as a birthday gift for my Son,who is currently working with the UNICEF and he is on special duty in Nigeria at this moment.
    I have provided 80.00 USD available for the shipping USPS or DHL (United State Postal Service international Express Mail sign for 3-5 Days) So endeavor to get the item in post ASAP,so that it can get to my Son on time for his birthday Gift,coming up next week.
    I want you to get the item to my Son as soon as you receive notification from the PayPal. Because I want my Son to receive the item before his birthday.

    Name…….Ibrahim Dickson
    Address….No 42 Morocco Street,
    City…….Shomolu,
    Zip code…23401,
    Country….Lagos,Nigeria.
    Many Thanks and God bless,.

    Linda

    It so sad because it’s believeable luckily my boyfriend told me to look up how much it would cost to ship to Nigeria or i would have sent away my 145$ blackberry. I also got all the fake emails from their “paypal” what a joke this really makes me mad.
    i just wanted to thank this website!!!!!!

  13. cheap hotels booking
    February 24, 2013 at 6:58 am (85 days ago)

    Very descriptive article, I enjoyed that a lot. Will there be a part 2?

  14. Anonymous
    February 27, 2013 at 12:37 pm (82 days ago)

    So what do you do? just not ship the item and relist it and leave the payment as pending?

  15. Will Power
    February 28, 2013 at 11:45 pm (81 days ago)

    28th Feb 2013
    This scam is still going. Seller beware.
    Will

  16. Lewis Chapman
    March 12, 2013 at 1:36 am (70 days ago)

    This exact same thing has just happened to me whilst selling a Blackberry. After 12 hours a seller bought the item, and their eBay account stated they were from Britain, yet they asked to have the phone shipped to Nigeria. Furthermore the exact same instance with the email address occurred – it came from a ‘@post.com’ email instead of the proper PayPal email address. Amazing to think scammers are still around 6 years after you originally posted this!

  17. Grace
    March 14, 2013 at 11:54 pm (67 days ago)

    Gosh, I can’t believe this is still happening.

    Almost happened to me just then.
    Luckily I googled the address and it brought me here.

    Thank you so much for this post.
    You’ve saved me from about $1000 worth of loss…

    It’s so weird though, I went to this buyer’s profile and he had about 10 positive feedback comments.
    But I’m certain it was the same scam as everyone’s above.

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    May 9, 2013 at 10:52 pm (11 days ago)

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  19. Anonymous
    May 15, 2013 at 2:10 pm (5 days ago)

    hy please who can help me out on how to perform online business transactions. am a nigerian

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  3. Scam Warning | Mr Bunny Chow
    December 1, 2011 at 4:39 pm (536 days ago)

    [...] Oh lookie here.  Someone else has mentioned the scam on the web. [...]

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