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Report: Baton Rouge siblings lose $3,000 in PayPal scam

5 years 1 month 2 weeks ago Wednesday, February 06 2019 Feb 6, 2019 February 06, 2019 2:15 PM February 06, 2019 in News
Source: WHNT
Photo: WHNT

BATON ROUGE - Scammers are reportedly using fake PayPal accounts to target people trying to sell things online.

According to CBS News, two siblings from Louisiana were scammed out of thousands of dollars while trying to sell nearly two-dozen pairs of sneakers on an app called Bump.

"We pay a lot of tuition," Indica Mosley explained. "So we figured we would give our parents a break and kind of try and help out with groceries and gas and stuff."

A potential buyer apparently contacted them willing to pay $3,000 for all of the shoes. However, the buyer advised them to use PayPal instead in order to avoid Bump's $180 service fee.

After the transaction, the two said they immediately got an email declaring "You've got money."

"They said they would send the money right over and they sent it," Indica said. "So we shipped out the shoes and we pretty much waited for them to get there and waited for the payment."

Indica repeatedly tried to reach out to the buyer but got no response. Soon she realized the payment confirmation she received from PayPal was fake.

Cybersecurity expert Eric Chan-Tin told CBS that the fake was nearly perfect, with the right logo and no misspellings. There was only one clear sign that the email was forged.

"You can see the blue side here at the very end, it says @mail so that should have said @paypal," Chan-Tin explained.

Mosley shipped her sneakers from Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Crete, Illinois, where someone signed for them. Mosley contacted PayPal but the company said there was nothing it could do for her since the transaction never actually involved PayPal.

The company did say that it will vet suspected fake emails. Those can be sent to spoof@paypal.com, where PayPal will "take a look and reply shortly."

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