Fraudsters have learned to deceive when buying prepaid goods

Base told about a new scheme of deceit that scammers resort to. They operate on online flea markets and try to fraudulently take possession of high-value and liquid goods that are easy to resell, such as Apple technology.

Here is one such case. The man arranged with a girl named Maria to buy a MacBook in advance and said that a taxi would come for the goods, and as soon as the car arrived, he would transfer the money to her. When the taxi arrived, the fraudster said that he could not transfer money to the girl’s card in any of the banks whose cards she had. He asked for the phone number of some of her acquaintances in order to send money to him, and lo and behold, the transfer was successful. The pseudo-buyer sent Maria a screenshot from the bank’s personal account, supposedly confirming the transfer, and immediately she received a call from her friend, who quickly said: “Everything is fine, the money has arrived, send the MacBook.”

The girl realized that something was unclean here, because she did not tell her friend that she was selling a MacBook. She compared the facts and realized that she had received a call from a replacement number. Maria immediately wrote to the scammer that his plan had been discovered, and she would contact the police. Instead of being scared, he called the girl on a date, but she decided to scare him and said that she had a husband and he worked in the police.

The actions of the fraudster were calculated on the fact that Maria would believe that her friend had been transferred money for a MacBook, although it is obvious that he did not receive the transfer. A call from a number that belongs to a person she knows should have lulled her vigilance, but the girl turned out to be aware that any number can be faked using special equipment.