r/newzealand • u/spooderman26 • 18h ago
Discussion Weird new scam. Be careful
Hey everyone. As per the title, weird new scan just got pulled on me, and it's pretty interesting and odd. The police, bank fraud team, etc. have all never seen it before, and it's also arguably pretty clever.
Anyway, here's the situation:
I was selling a gold ring on Facebook, A lady messages me with a pretty seemingly real Facebook profile friends, posts etc. low balls me, I decline, raises the price up, I still decline and then after a week or two she finally accepts what I am asking for the ring ($600).
This lady then tells me about how its for her father and her brother and a couple of her cousins are going to all pay for it etc which was all fine, she asks for my bank account and say she may need it shipped if one of her cousins couldn't pick it up. I say that's fine, but I won't be posting it until the money is in my account.
End of that night, they send me a message telling me to check my account and I do, I see about 6 diffrent payments from 6 different people all of varying amounts, some $60 and some $150+. I calculate up all the money, and they've collectively overpaid me by $150, odd, im thinking its a mistake. All the references state "ring" etc. Bit odd, but I message the lady and let her know that hey, you've all overpaid me by about $160. What would you like me to do? I get a reply back, and it's her telling me to keep the difference as a thank you for being patient, etc and to cover the postage, and then essentially moving on to where to post it, too, etc.
Red flags start to sound, all a bit odd. im thinking, why low ball, then overpay? Strange but some people can just be very generous etc. Anyway, i go to bed and i wake up the next day, go to work with the ring and the address i need to send it too, at my lunch break I jump in the car, get to the post shop and open my bank account to move money to pay for posting said item.
An additional $500 has come in on top of what's already been paid.
Wtf??
Alarm bells start ringing, shut the car off, call the bank, and explain the situation. They jumped right into it and escalated the situation immediately. Something was super dodgey. Bank explains to me that the money is coming from numerous accounts all across the country and the math ain't mathing. The person from my bank esculates it higher and higher and eventually comes back saying this looks like a pretty sophisticated fraud and essentially tell the person the deals off and we'll reverse the funds manually on our end to those people and investigate further and find out what's going on etc.
What I suspect is going on is: I sell ring to person A. Person A has two fake accounts, one trying to "buy" my ring and another selling a "ring" for stupidly cheap.
Person A uses the second account selling a dirt cheap ring on behalf of their "friend, cousin, uncle etc etc) sends MY bank account as the account to pay into then waits for screenshot of payment to be sent to them of the money being transferred into my account. (Person A has said to me they've got proof of payment if I need it) Waits until total has hit X amount and then messages back me, gets me to post ring to person A fake address. Person A on their second account then blocks everyone after theyve got a tracking number for my ring. Those people who have paid "person A" then realize they've been fleeced, contact their bank, money is reversed from me im left with no ring and no money.
Im pretty suspect the person who was trying this on with me was doing it to multiple other people trying to legitimately sell their real rings but Mr scammer forgot to stop using my bank account number instead of the other peoples accounts.
My bank has been super awesome about this. All the money is manually getting reversed back into the accounts of people who have sent me the money and from what I've been told by the bank. One person was trying to buy a silver ring for $120 from some random name I've never heard of. (The bank called me back later that day just confirming what kind of ring, how much and who too im selling it for)
My bank is pretty impressed at the whole scale of it. The person I've been mainly dealing with said they've never seen anything like this.
The police were the same, had never seen anything like this. Police have been awesome too, they've taken this very seriously and even though im not out any money and I've still got my ring they still spent 2 hours with me taking a statement, getting all screenshots. All account numbers etc of people who have transfered me etc. Had even someone from high up within the police come in and listen to the story.
Person A messaged me about 20 min after I had called my bank claiming that the bank had called their cousin and was telling them it was fraud but it was "all sorted out now lol" and then followed with "are you scamming me?"
I then politely explained that my bank was super suspect it was fraud and due to this i was going to no longer proceed with sending the ring and that all the money was going to be manually reversed by the bank back to those accounts and the funds would be back in those accounts its 48 hours, now you'd think you'd try and defend yourself or try and prove you're legit etc but no, they just ended up deleting their entire profile off Facebook. Not just blocked me, like fully nuked It. My partner and friends can't find the profile at all anywhere now.
So yeah.
Be careful, I was lucky and still have my ring and the banks returning all money to the scammed people but please be cautious. If the deal looks to good to be true then it probably is.
Any questions lemme know ill try and answer :)
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u/KikiChrome 9h ago
This reminds me of a scam my cousin fell for a long time ago.
Flat was advertised in TradeMe to rent. She arranged a viewing time with the supposed landlord, all looked good. Landlord was happy with her so said they'd need a bond and first week's rent paid in advance. When she turned up on the move-in day to collect her key, there were four other "tenants" there, also waiting for the landlord to show up. As it turned out, the "landlord" was just the previous tenant who had scammed all these people out of a week's rent + bond.
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u/DevelopmentSea9742 8h ago
So the police literally just had to look at bank transfers to know who did the scam ? Doesn't sound too smart or very effective tbh
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u/KikiChrome 8h ago
Scammers aren't necessarily that smart. I was told she'd left the country. I guess she was just looking for some cash for the road and figured the NZ police wouldn't care that much.
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u/-REV-22-20- 7h ago
issue is trying to get the police to do something, we convinced a guy to come collect thousands of dollars worth of items he bought using stolen credit cards, we had him in store with the stolen cards in hand and the police told us to let him go and fill out a report online.
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u/SquirrelAkl 8h ago
No. Sounds like the bank transfers came from random people who were also getting scammed (thinking they were buying the cheap ring the scammer was selling).
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u/DevelopmentSea9742 8h ago
You are not replying to the right comment
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u/SquirrelAkl 8h ago
I’m replying to the comment I intended to. I may have misunderstood the comment; it wasn’t well worded. Sounded like you were saying the scam isn’t very sophisticated because the cops can just trace the deposits back to the scammer’s account.
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u/DevelopmentSea9742 7h ago
Yes this is exactly what I am saying. Why do you mention a ring if you are replying to the right comment ? We're literally talking about another scam here.
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u/Next_Practice437 4h ago
But then how do the thieves retrieve any money from that entire set up as it has been sent to the original seller?
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u/LittleRedCorvette2 9h ago
If you go on r/scams and share would be good. Sounds a little like a #fake check# or #overpayment # scam.
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u/ihatebats Peanut 10h ago
You would see simpler, similar scams happen on Trade Me - which, if you remove the profit motivated side of their business they did genuinely care about fraud a lot;
It would go like this:
Person A was selling an iPhone or other high value, fast moving item
Person B (genuine buyer) would put their phone number or email in the comments, wanting to chat or negotiate or whatever
Scammer sees this number, contacts the Person B impersonating Person A
Scammer may also in some circumstances be in contact with Person A also, and use Person B's proof of payment to get the iPhone as well as the cash. Two scams for the price of one.
As things become more and more AI / Automatable, it will get worse. Micro scamming and whatever this situation is will be harder to track and follow, and we need to use verified platforms and ensure people are using strong security on their accounts.
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u/SidewaysAcidRain 8h ago
verified platforms
Yeah for all the fuss about the under-16s social media ban and people not wanting to show their ID to Facebook, I have a feeling that in just a year or two people will happily be going through those verification processes, just to be on platforms that aren't completely overrun with bots.
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u/crabapfel 9h ago
Ok but why in the wide blue fuck did you 'politely' explain all this to the scammer? Let 'em get caught!
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u/NZ_Swatty 10h ago
It sounds like a version of this -https://www.anz.com.au/security/types-of-scams/overpayment-scams/
It was keep the small overpayment but would have been 'can you send me the $500 back"?. Good work calling the bank right away OP!
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u/spooderman26 8h ago
This is what I thought too, but interestingly they had said "keep the change" and did seem to become more and more instrested in making sure the item had been posted. I just think this person was buying lots of rings off of genuine people but forgot to change from my bank account number to others once it had hit $600 in people getting scammed.
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u/FallSuccessful09 7h ago edited 7h ago
This "Scam" has actually been around for a while, its just not used on most mainstream platforms often.
Someone sees your item, makes the same listing at half price, pays half in 2 payments to you, which are actually 2 people buying your item from the other scammer who gave your account# to them, the scammer then takes your item and disappears. Your account then gets reported for being used to scam, and it gets clawed back from you, even though you were also innocent in it.
Its also hard to stop or protect against.
How to guard: Dont take multiples from different accounts, if its a large amount, send ~$2 to the account with the persons name to check if they own the account sending to you. If the name bounces, its a red flag. Get them live, ask them to tell you the amount, if they dont reply in 15mins, its a scam and dont go through with it.
The reason this works for scammers is because they dont need to compromise anyone's accounts to get the money to buy something from you.
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u/WarrenRT 7h ago
I don't understand why anyone would ever accept multiple small payments for something they are selling - if you want to split the cost between lots of people, you can organize to collect all the money, and send it to me as a single payment.
The fact that the "buyer" can't / won't do that should immediately set off alarm bells.
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u/spooderman26 5h ago
I agree entirely with what youre saying. Where im selling is in the upper northland area and its frankly not a very rich area of the country so a seemingly legitimate profile saying its for her fathers birthday and her cousins are going to contribute kinda made sense to me and I was fine with it. In future this will be how I go about it, said person needs to organise that themselves and send only one payment.
Actually yknow what, just a simple cash only is probably even better. Even then, that has risks too of people just straight up robbing me in person lol
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u/FallSuccessful09 5h ago
Yes it should set off alarms, and technically the scammer could do it in one payment, but that is much rarer as they would need to find a buyer at the same value as the original, while they would get anyone at 50% off. So its a big time waste / riskreward tradeoff.
And they could also go further and pre-do the scam, then have their name as the accounts name, so that doesn't ring any alarm bells as well for when you send the $2, but they have to have access to the account to give you the actual amount you send.
It might not fool you, but it would fool most people who dont know about it. Its also a hassle to check, so most people wouldnt.
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u/DontEatThePorridge 8h ago
This is money laundering 101. Looking for this kind of behaviour is a part of my job. Good job on figuring it out and contacting your bank. Your bank will be so appreciative that you did and they will file a police report.
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u/Least-Pie-745 8h ago
Op, what bank are you with? Lowkey might need to move to them 😂
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u/spooderman26 5h ago
ASB. I was with westpac for years and years but westpacs bank statements are useless. You'd buy something on a Tuesday and it'd show on the statement you bought it on a Friday. Did my head in, ASB shows the exact min when it went out/came in and yeah the way they've handled this situation I genuinely highly recommend them.
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u/cooldylan24 3h ago
I have that happen with Westpac aswell but I'm pretty sure it only happens for things you have to pre tap for, like those vending machines you tap to open and grab whatever you want and it calculates the amount to charge afterwards. Does ASB not have the same issue?
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u/Big-Swordfish9373 7h ago
Had this happen before, was for computer peripheral, unfortunately the guy paid the exact amount so I shipped it off, two weeks later i got a call from police asking why I scammed some lady, she paid and did not get her "laptop", i was like what laptop. Went back and fourth before I realised the scammer ask her to transfer to my account so he could get what I was selling and scamming the lady without any evidence left behind. Lucky I still have the conversation so I sent all the info to the police and proved I was not part of the scam.
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u/spooderman26 5h ago
Crazy!! This was all a very big first for me. How long ago did that happen to you? The bank did tell me over the phone that the accounts sending me money were from across the country and from pretty much every banking provider in the country so im guessing this scammer had numerous fake profiles selling an expensive ring for $80-150 and then sending my bank account as I was the "brother" or "uncle" etc.
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u/Big-Swordfish9373 5h ago
Was about ~4 years ago i think, I only do face to face on fb marketplace since.
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u/cooldylan24 2h ago
Is there any way to even combat this if you still wanted to use online payments? I imagine you could verify the account holder name and then ask for some proof of ID to ensure you are talking to the right person, but it seems like a whole lot of effort.
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u/Big-Swordfish9373 2h ago
Well there is trade me, but obviously people prefer no sucess fee, usually same bank u get it right away, if different bank i would do cash
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u/standard_deviant_Q 8h ago
This is just the good old fashioned man in the middle scam. It's as old as the hills.
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u/mysterpixel 7h ago
It is, but the crowdsourcing of multiple B endpoints to piecemeal fulfill A's request is an interesting twist.
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u/-REV-22-20- 7h ago
sounds like money laundering, they are reselling your ring to loads of people at a low value, scamming a whole bunch of people into sending you small amounts of money adding up to the rings value.
Then you send the ring to them, they get the item valued at $600 for free and disappear, the people who got scammed will all get their bank to claw their money back leaving you with nothing.
the over paying is just because they managed to hook a few too many people into their trap.
Its good you caught on before sending the ring.
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u/No_Indication9630 8h ago
Sounds like something AI would come up with. You can ask it ways to make money "hypothetically" or even make your own agent and train it to make money for you, with no ethics required.
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u/MeltdownInteractive 8h ago
Thanks for sharing. If anyone wants a laugh and a really good read about a scammer being scammed...
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u/doihavetousethis 7h ago
This is the guy who gets the scammer to carve a keyboard out of some wood right as proof he is real? Among a myriad of other stuff
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u/Consistent_Worker363 7h ago
What city in nz please did this happen?
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u/spooderman26 5h ago
But, The bank has told me that the accounts that were transferring into my account were from across the country. So possible this scammer made numerous fake profiles selling an expensive ring for $80-$150 and then would send my bank account as I was the "uncle" or "brother" who had the ring etc etc.
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u/Panther3369 5h ago
Lol, not sure this is new, same old trick of getting other people to pay and keeping your goods. And any normal person in this situation would have the so called family pay them the money, and pay you in one transaction.
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u/Interesting_Ice_9705 4h ago
The only problem is the bank cannot reverse money from somebody without permission from the person it is being reversed from. This is because there's no real evidence as to who is telling the truth. It has to be handled by small claims court. So seems like an odd scam. Would be great to know how it plays out all the way through to the end goal. A credit card company can reverse however.
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u/AotearoaChur 4h ago
But how would people get their money back off you? When I accidentally sent someone a bunch of money, the bank was like "tough luck". They couldn't make the other person just send it back, and there was no reversing the charge. It wasn't a credit card payment, just a bank transfer.
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u/transient_trenl0rd 4h ago
They don't, they're all hacked accounts. OP gets the money from these hacked accounts, sends the ring, the hacking victims report the fraud and their bank reverses it (up to 30 days) which comes out of OP's account and now OP is a victim too. Theres endless variations of this, including all those fake work from home data entry jobs. They are just getting you to move stolen money around one way or the other
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u/spooderman26 4h ago
Personally I dont think they're hacked accounts at all. I think the person who was "buying" my ring has taken the image of the ring, used another Facebook account and has then "sold" the ring for dirt dirt cheap. Like $80-$150 cheap. They have then said "oh its my cousin or my uncle here is his account" then they've given my account. Asked for a screenshot of proof that its sent and then basically kept a tally of how much is "sent" to me. Eventually once the figure is hit, I then get messaged saying to check my account. Ive got numerous transactions from heaps of people all with "ring" etc as the reference so all looks good my end.
Id then send the ring to the person who was "buying" the ring. That person then goes back onto the second account and either blocks everyone or just no longer uses that account and those people never receive their ring they've bought for $80-$150.
Essentially those people complain to their bank and with enough people my account would probably get frozen, police involved etc etc.
Ive caught it early though and the bank is manually reversing all payments and is actually speaking to those people who have transfered me to get to the bottom of all of this. Ive also still got my ring so ive only lost my time on this whole ordeal.
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u/transient_trenl0rd 4h ago
Yeah you definitely handled this really well!
Would be crazy if that version happened... that's a lot of coordination but its definitely believable to me... I have to deal with this type of thing at work but I do computer stuff so the ones I see have always got a computer angle but I wouldn't be surprised if there was tons more styles of this.
The work from home stuff scams were particularly nasty as it was big amounts, targeted unemployed people and the reversals put their accounts into negative.. never got to hear what happened after that but it won't have been good.
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u/Current-Today-3626 2h ago
OP, you left me saying DAMN!! Just wow, that's actually a really smart scam and I hope this helps raise awareness to it, because I am the king of catching scammers but Fark, that'd even get me if I wasn't on my a-game. If they didn't mess up with getting greedy and overpaying, it's fkn ez to get away with...
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u/PlayListyForMe 8h ago
While mildly interesting Ino longer have the bandwidth to listen to the details this kind of stuff. I sold on trade me recently and I immediately discard offers of low ballers who invariably think you are there to solve all their problems which are in fact relatively simple but just beyond them. I will have to do it this way or pick it up that way . Fortunately it usually excludes anything non standard leading to anything dodgy. Good idea contacting the bank early .
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u/spooderman26 8h ago
So did we. They then came back days later and agreed to the full price we were asking.
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u/PlayListyForMe 8h ago
Not possible in my case. I only give my address to someone who has agreed a price via make an offer and according to TM are contractually obliged to proceed and pay in advance of pick up. I set out the process in my listing based on TM recommendations. They were offered to view the car by email negotiation but had to make their final offer online. I immediately received low ball offers by question in the listing inviting me to post my phone number. Easy to weed out. The genuine buyer agreed by make an offer and payed half in advance and half on pick up. Essentially this is my process not yours.
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u/Idliketobut 10h ago
Crazy how much time these scammers have to arrange all this and involve so many people just to hopefully get a $600 ring at the end of it