Another scammer allert, another day in the hellsite
Someone tried to fish my paypal info and scam 200 USD from me by pretending to want to commission art from me. The blog name is @/drew68635, but it's obvious burner account and this person likely has much more.
The fact that it was a burner account with no profile pic, posts, likes etc made me suspicious from the beginning, but I gave them a change. They asked for my cheapest most simplest commission option (20 USD), and was very short on details for what they wanted. Then they asked if they could pay me 200 USD instead. At this point I was pretty sure it was a scam, but I decided to play along and act if I wasn't suspicious. When I asked for their paypal email to sent them an invoice, they instead asked to sent the money themself and asked my email. This was obviously suspicious, but after considering the risks of what they could do with my email, which is not my very public email, but not exactly private either, I decided to keep playing along. Then they sent me a supposed photo of a confirmed paypal transaction and asked me to check if I got the money. I didn't of course. So they asked me to check my email.
Now this is not PayPal. With a quick glance it might seem like it, but PayPal has different formatting in their emails, their address is verified by google and it has paypal logo as the profile pic. This is the email address where you'll get all your email notifications from PayPal: [email protected] As you see PayPal uses it's own email service, they don't use gmail accounts. Then this email itself is all red flags. The steps it asks me to take are nonsensical. Why would it expand my account limit that the person would sent me the money again?? It doesn't make sense. It also says you have to do this "urgently", which is very clear sign of a scam.
The scam here is very classic. It's two fold. If I would've clicked that link, it would have likely taken me to a not-paypal website, which looks like paypal log in and it would have stolen my account info if I would have logged in. Then they would have tried to take any money they could via my paypal. The second part of this scam is that if I would have believed this, I would have gone back to "Drew", told them paypal sent me this email and I have to either ask them more money or sent their money back. They would have either tried to pretend they sent more money that I'm in dept even more to them and then try to scare with more emails to get me panic and sent them the money back they supposedly sent me, or just asked me to sent "back" that 200 USD and hope I'm panicked enough to not think about it too much.
I have reported this account and the email, but I'm sure this person more of them, so they are probably trying to scam more people. So be really careful. Look for red flags (like a burner account, not giving their email, offering much more money than you asked etc.). If you go along as far as I did, check the email address, if it's not verified paypal address from paypal's own servers, it's not paypal. Compare the email to your previous paypal emails to see if there's something of with the wording and formatting. If there's anything suspicious about the email, do not under any circumstances click any links in it. If you're still unsure about the validity, go to your paypal account via the browser, not any email link and see if there's any notifications for you by paypal. You can even contact paypal via your account and see if they can help. Don't send money back to anyone before you have gotten word from that you can verify comes actually from paypal.
Always take a big breath before you do anything when you feel you're under pressure to "fix" some money mishap. Don't do anything rash and inspect all the information you have carefully. I hope no one gets scammed by this person, stay safe!
