Beware! Paypal/Craigslist Scam Alert!!

Beware! Paypal/Craigslist Scam Alert!!
I want to warn everyone of this new way of a Paypal scam. I had someone offer to buy my most expensive item for sale on Craigslist and they wanted to pay me through paypal if I shipped it to them because they're in IL. Because I've had some successful sales this way to some out of town mamas, I sent them my paypal address. I then received a bogus Paypal confirmation of a pending payment email that looked kinda official but had some variances from real Paypal emails (it didn't say, "Dear Mrs. XXXX XXXXX", it only listed my email address, it had the wrong fonts and all of the links had alternate info if you clicked on the "view link"). It looked suspicious to me, so I forwarded it to Paypal's [email protected] address and this is their reply:

Dear Mrs. XXXX XXXXXX,

Thanks for taking an active role by reporting suspicious-looking emails.
The email you forwarded to us is a phishing email, and our security team
is working to disable it.

-------------------------
What is a phishing email?
-------------------------
Phishing emails attempt to steal your identity and will often ask you to
reveal your password or other personal or financial information. PayPal
will never ask for your password over the phone or in an email and will
always address you by your first and last name.

Take our Fight Phishing Challenge at
https://www.paypal.com/fightphishing to learn 5 things you should know
about phishing. You'll also see what we're doing to help fight fraud
every day.

-------------------------
You've made a difference.
-------------------------
Every email counts. By forwarding a suspicious-looking email to
[email protected], you've helped keep yourself and others safe from
identity theft.

Thanks,

The PayPal Team

_______________________________________________________________________
This email is sent to you by the contracting entity to your User
Agreement, either PayPal Inc, PayPal Pte. Ltd or PayPal (Europe) S.à
r.l. & Cie, S.C.A. Société en Commandite par Actions, Registered Office:
5th Floor 22-24 Boulevard Royal L-2449, Luxembourg RCS Luxembourg B 118
349.
_______________________________________________________________________


I am STILL getting emails from the fraudulent person claiming they've sent me the money, but nothing has shown up in my paypal account (always open a new browser window and NEVER click on links whenever you have a suspicious email), either pending or received. This person is slick, claiming that I must ship the item first, then Paypal will "release" the money into my account. They have sent me 3 different shipping addresses from 2 different email addresses. I am putting this info here so that everyone can be made aware of the scammer and hopefully not be scammed by them!

Scammer's names:
Phaleshia Gregory
Carol Hamm


Scammer's email addresses:
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]


Scammer's shipping addresses:
Carol Ham
4640 bancroft st. #7,
San Diego,
CA. 92116
Canada

Phaleshia Gregory of deerfield illnois central

Phaleshia Gregory
606 n 26 st.
milwaukee wisconsin 53233.USA



SO BE AWARE AND CAUTIOUS!! This is the weirdest scam I've ever come across where they want you to ship something to them first and supposedly then Paypal would release funds to your account after verification of shipment. I've been doing ebay & paypal almost since they've begun and I've NEVER heard of anything like this - AND Paypal says the emails are Phishing, not real. So please be careful out there. Scammers are getting more weaselly by trying to convince you to trust them (as I type this, I've received another email from this fraud - a total now of 12 emails - trying to convince me to ship it to them again).

I've posted this on my Xanga site which has had tons of replies of similar emails from these scammers, all with various email addresses and physical address. You can see their comments (about 34) here.

Hi, AnnoyedByFakers, and Welcome to Scamwarners!

Thanks for posting this information, including PayPal's email to you. It would appear, however, that PayPal views the scammer's email spoof as a phishing attempt, which it is not. The scammer is trying to get your item for free - and he will sell it for a high price in his country.

The addresses given are probably people in the US who have fallen for a "reshipment" scam. They either think they are doing a job or that the scammer is in love with them and they are helping him out of a jam. In either case, the scammer is creating yet another level of insulation between himself and law enforcement authorities.

If you could post one or more emails from each of these scammers, the actual words they use will then be searchable by internet search engines.

San Diego,
CA. 92116
Canada

Somebody needs to go back to geography class.

^^^ I'm glad you caught this as a scam. Since Craigslist now has prominent warnings against Western Union and Money Gram, many scammers are now turning to this.

It seems to be getting more and more common, I reported another such case a while back and did quite a bit of investigating on it, you can see by Clicking Here how the scam works.

They may contact you pretending to be from the auction site and threaten you to send the goods as well so be careful of that too.

Futher to this, they may suggest that a refundable fee needs to be paid to paypal for fees on the payment.

The best advice here is to always check your account and never reply to emails directing you to the "official" site, contact them through the actual site using your usual method to log in.

If there is ever doubt, you can always ask here

Unfortunately, I do not have the original emails anymore due to my Microsoft Entourage program crashing and taking with it 5 years of emails. :-/ I did everything I could to retrieve the emails to no avail. The only reason I have that info is because I posted it on my Xanga page after it happened... I wanted that scammer's name to come up when a google search was done.

^^ and now it will thanks to you

I just noticed a question in your post relating to phishing emails, these are emails that appear to be a genuine webpage from a real company that ask you to enter your login and password, whether it be for online banking or your email address, these emails are referred to as phishing