We’ve been trying to sell an old ShopVac on Facebook Marketplace recently.  We didn’t have any hits on it for weeks, then Sandy gets a message from a guy named “Darren Knowles” the other day, interested in the item.  I blocked out our personal details in the screenshots in this post, by the way.  Here’s the conversation:

At the point where Darren started a Facebook call, Sandy answered it and spoke to him.   She was pretty confused with what he was saying, and since the Paypal e-mail address was mine, she gave the phone to me to talk to him.  I was confused already, wondering why she would give her phone number to this person, but she didn’t, he started a voice call on Facebook.  I learned that afterward.  I took the phone and he said he sent the $50 payment to my Paypal address and was asking if I got the e-mail or the money in my Paypal account.  I checked both and said no, I don’t have either one.  He insisted he sent it and asked me to check my junk and spam folders.  Nothing there either.  I had previously received money from other people through Paypal in the past, so this normally isn’t an issue at all.  I repeated my Paypal e-mail address to him, but he read it back as a gmail.com address instead of my personal domain e-mail address that Sandy had given him.  I corrected him, then he said yes, that’s the address he sent it to, and he asked me to check again and keep checking.  Eventually, shortly after that, an e-mail came in.  I started smelling a scam at that point, knowing he’s only send an e-mail and isn’t actually sending money to my PayPal account.  Here’s what the e-mail said:

At this point I was confused for a few moments, as I read this e-mail, first to myself, then out loud over the phone conversation with “Darren” (who I also now realized had a pretty odd accent for a guy named Darren, by the way), and I told him I was certainly NOT going to pay $300 for a “Paypal Business Account” or have him pay $300 for this and re-imburse him for it.  I said I’d figure this out and get back to him, then I hung up.

So next I looked at the “Paypal E-mail” a little closed and then it got pretty clear as a scam:

Oh sure, payservpalbuss@gmail.com must be Paypal alright, yessir, I’ll buy that for a dollar!

So I’m sure he had some pretty interesting plans to somehow convince me that he paid the total of $350 to Paypal, and now I need to send him $300 to pay him back, minus the $50 for the shop vac… Then what?  Does some contact of his located nearby actually come and get it??  I just wonder.

We reported him to Facebook, but I’m sure he has plenty other accounts to use to keep scamming.  Unfortunately he got our actual address and my Paypal e-mail address, which we’re not too happy about, but at least he didn’t get the ShopVac or any money from us.

We definitely won’t take anything other than cash for anything else we ever sell, if anything.  And even with that we can’t be sure we won’t get counterfeit bills or robbed at gunpoint when the buyer shows up.  It’s pretty crazy out there these days.  Stay safe!