"Wow, that's a great deal!"
"That price is too good to be true!"
Far too many times I get onto a social media site such as Facebook and a marketplace ad or and ad from a local group shows up.
Or I get into one of my groups such as Fountain Pens, and see a pen that looks great.
At first glance the prices are awesome.
Rather than pulling the trigger on the sale, I do my due diligence on the seller - check the profile and the pics - and then determine if there is a scam.
One ad had a whole bunch of household items and included laundry machines, a dishwasher, and tons of furniture for sale. I had recently searched out washing machines and dryers as my 20+ year old dryer had stopped working and I was not sure if they could get parts for it.
The comments on that post in a local group had been turned off. The seller was taking "deposits" to hold the items.
Odd, lots of reponses and the person turned off the comments.
I decided to reverse search the pics. I then really paid attention to the pics and saw that none of the furniture pics matched - they all looked like they were from different houses!
The image search proved me right.
The scammer copied pictures from other ads and put together one ad that was phishing people for deposit money.
In one of my fountain pen groups, people regularly join to attempt to scam members.
Pictures are copied from eBay and other sites, assembled into an ad and fake profile is created and then the scam is posted.
An examination of the profile, five days old and four friends, and a reverse search of the images posted in the ad prove that the product is real but the seller is a scammer.
So, what do we do?
Prior to reaching out to a potential scammer, check their profile on Facebook and their seller profile on the Marketplace.
If it looks to good to be true, it usually is.
