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Beware of Paypal.com Scammers
27/07/2008 - By William Sherman
Beware of Paypal.com Scammers
My Paypal.com Horror Story
Beware of using Paypal.com
I would like to warn people in regards to a very well known scam that has been happening for years to webmasters around the world who provide paid to buy “ebooks” “downloads” “Digital eProducts” “Traffic Hits” “SEO” and other services to your Websites “Customers”
Back around 2003 I had a Marketing Website which provide SEO and Traffic Hits to Clients.
I bought the site for around $3000 and then off I went and the money started rolling in, I was very happy and I thought I had hit the Jackpot!
The websites I ran were iNeedTraffic.com and GoldTraffic.com
From these two websites I specialised in the following:
1. Search Engine Submission e.g. to search engines such as Google.com and Yahoo.com
2. Website marketing and
3. Providing Traffic / Hits / Visitors to website owners throughout the world
To explain this rather simply, people came to my websites, order visitors, or SEO pay me through PayPal.com and then once I received payment I then delivered the visitors to their websites through a Traffic Hits Reseller TrafficHits.com
So what happened?
Once I received the order via PayPal.com, I delivered the Taffic Hits Visitors to the customer websites having checked to ensure that the websites are Legal i.e. do not promote illegal pornography, spam, illegal weapons, illegal gambling and so forth.
Then if their website was legitimate would buy the traffic off TrafficHits.com for a reduced price and TrafficHits.com would deliver the traffic/hits/visitors to the customer over a period of 30 days and I would make a certain percentage as a Profit.
So whats the problem you may ask?
Well usually after about four weeks after the e-product had or has been delivered to the customer, the scammer will write an email to PayPal.com saying that someone has fraudulently used their credit card on PayPal.com... and put in a chargeback request for their money.
So Paypal.com would do a chargeback, I would lose all of my money in my account, plus the money I had already paid TrafficHits.com, and I started making huge losses.
I could not get a refund from TrafficHits.com as the “Product” had already been delivered.
Then I got very suspicious because it continued to happen to me on a regular basis, so I investigated the matter by myself and I found that certain things did not add up.
For Example:
Every single I worked out that every PayPal Chargeback Reversal from my Paypal.com account told me that the customers email originated from a free based email website called www.Another.com to explain this better please refer to the cover sheets on each order I have supplied as follows
A.
Paypal.com reversal from Mathew Bubar
Paypal.com account email: herein@villa-fan.com (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $1050
B.
Paypal.com reversal from Daniel Aguilar
Paypal.com account email: dan@malochen.com (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150
C.
Paypal.com reversal from Steven Loyd
Paypal.com account email: Rob@relightmyfire.com (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150
D.
Paypal.com reversal from Claudia@mullered.com
Paypal.com account email: Claudia@mullered.com (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150
E.
Paypal.com reversal from Charles Bowen
Paypal.com account email: charles@yumlicious.com (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150
F.
Paypal.com reversal from Pete Lloyd
Paypal.com account email: llyod@annother.com (This domain name redirects to Another.com)
Amount Lost: $150 dispute won by my protest to paypal.com, money was refunded back to me
G.
Paypal.com reversal from Richard Hill
Paypal.com account email: retro@phpcoder.ws (unknown)
Amount Lost: $50
So after doing this research I have found that it is quite obvious that the orders above that their email addresses are registered at www.Another.com a free email based website similar to www.hotmail.com so with my websites I have only take around 50 orders in total this year and that means that approximately 10% or my orders came from someone registering their email address at another.com and then signing up to PayPal.com with these email addresses.
To sign up to PayPal.com all you need is an email address, anybody can sign up there for free, simply by registering with their email address, so what I have figured is that these orders what are fraudulent are probably coming from One Person or Individuals working as a team from one main Paypal.com account
To fund these other accounts, all they needed to do is to send money from their main account into these other accounts, and then when they place their orders like they did at my website GoldTraffic.com, after I delivered the e-product to them, they write to PayPal.com saying someone fraudulently used their PayPal.com accounts, thus getting their money refund from my account and then the product for free.
The Scammers got the E-Product for free, their money refunded illegitimately and I lost my money to the scammers.
So all up from this Scam, I lost approximately $5000USD.
Paypal.com did not care and I did not get my money back!
Approximately two to three months laters I was watching the News on television, and they had a special report on two websites that were disguising themselves as legitimate business partners of the following banks: ANZ, Westpac, National bank, and New Zealand banks, ASB and BNZ.
The websites were online as www.Avantyx.com and www.Devancy.com
Quote from this NZ Police website:
QUOTE
New web banking scam targets New Zealanders
National News Release, 10:10, 29 August 2003
A slick new online banking scam is fooling New Zealanders into losing large sums of money says Police E-Crime National Manager Maarten Kleintjes.
The site www.devancy.com, running since late July, has a very professional look and is customised for New Zealand readers. A sister scam site called www.avantyx.com is customised for Australians.
Both sites claim to be business partners with all the leading banks including ANZ, ASB, BNZ, National Bank, and Westpac. Curiously the New Zealand site also lists the old Countrywide Bank which was sold to National Bank 5 years ago.
New Zealand Police has contacted the banks and has confirmed that they are not in partnership with these web sites nor were they aware that their names were being used in the scam.
Investigations by the E-Crime Lab have established that the scam is running from Denmark via USA. An international effort will be required to find those behind the sites.
The scam works by convincing people to accept deposits into their bank accounts which they then forward to a third party minus a transaction fee. The initial deposit is then retracted.
"Devancy deposit, say $10,000 into your account, then you send $9,500 on to someone else the same day. Devancy then quickly cancel their $10,000 deposit. You just sent $9,500 of your own savings to a Devancy associate," Mr Kleintjes says.
"The key to this scam is building a very convincing web site that looks just like a real financial services web site."
Mr Kleintjes advises people visiting the site not to be taken in by its authentic appearance. "It can't be true if they offer money for free," he says.
If members of the public do believe they have been prey to this scheme then they should immediately contact their bank.
The Consumers' Institute compiles information on all manner of scams at www.consumer.org.nz.
Police are publicising the scam as a warning for the public to steer well clear. Given the international nature of this scam the likelihood of Police taking successful prosecution action and recovering money for victims is not high. It really is a case of advising people to avoid being ripped off in the first place, Mr Kleintjes says.
UNQUOTE
Guess What? Avantyx.com bought Traffic Hits off me and I got scammed by them also!
The two Avantyx.com reversals came from the following Paypal.com accounts:
A.
Paypal.com reversal from Todd Sudek
Paypal.com account email: Riviera@credits.com
Amount Lost: $900
B.
Paypal.com reversal from Carol Lutjens
Paypal.com account email: lutjens@thetee.com
Amount Lost: $700
They paid me $900 and $700 respectively and when the money was refunded (Reversed) back into their PayPal.com accounts, they would have most likely withdrawn the money into their Denmark Danish based bank accounts.
So around 5 years later I still see webmasters getting scammed by the same sort of scam, the scammers buy an “E-Product” via paypal, the product is delivered to them, then a week or two later the scammers put in a paypal chargeback reversal and get their money back, plus get to keep the E-Product and the webmaster who sold the E-Product loses his money plus a E-Product Sale and the possibility of loss of his business through Scammers!
People who use Paypal.com … be very careful! 99% of the time Paypal.com wont help you, they don’t care as long as they make money and its all just too hard for Paypal.com to fix the problem and to help you.
Image Soucrce: www.screwpaypal.com
