service@paypal
Complaint 341643 Details

Just recently I bought a new camera so I wanted to sell my older camera equipment that was still in mint condition. I very naively put it up on Craigslist and got persuaded by a buyer who offered me $750 to buy my camera, which was the highest offer I had gotten. This is because he wanted me to ship it, and urged me that the extra was to pay for it to be shipped the very next day. He said he was going through PayPal and I have a PayPal account and figured it must be legit. So I followed the "instructions" in the email from [email protected]/[email protected], packaged up my camera set and shipped it out to the international address in Nigeria. The email said that once I shipped out the package and sent back the USPS tracking number the money would cease pending and be released into my account. It all looked 100% legitimate in the email, at least since I had never done this before.

It told me that the funds would be released within 6-12 hours. After the 12 hours I emailed the assigned "verified paypal [email protected] and she/he alerted me that the funds were still just pending and should go in shortly. After 24 hours I got very worried and the "agent" stopped emailing me back. I tried calling PayPal and the phone line sent me to an automatic voice thing telling me the hours that you can speak with a customer service representative.
I called the next day and the customer service lady from PayPal told me that there were never any funds pending into my account and that the person I talked with was a professional scammer.

I was immediately confused as the email that I thought I was dealing with was "[email protected]" and I couldn't understand how that wasn't their official address. She said that because it was my first time selling something online I may just not have been as aware as I should of been. She said that a 100% legitimate PayPal email would always address my first and last name where as the email I dealt with did not. Ultimately its hard to distinguish between a fake and legit PayPal email and the company said that there is nothing they can do. That alarms me as these scammers are representing their company and loosing potential customers this way. I don't ever want to use PayPal again, or sell anything online after this dramatic loss.

The package has left the United States and is on its way to: Anderson Jessica
84 Century Close
APapa
Lagos
Nigeria
23401.

USPS said that there is almost nothing they can do since it has already left the united states (and we actually went to the local postoffice right after we realized we got scammed and they lied and told us the package as of that day was already out of the country when in fact it just officially left today July 20, 2015... a week after realizing we were scammed).
So, as of today it has officially left the country and as of right now it looks the scammers are getting their way unless I can somehow stop the package and get it back to my home.


If there is anything you can do for me,
Please let me know...

-Brian