RCMP Alert Public against PayPal Scam

Halifax Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canada, have warned about an online scam to anyone planning to sell or purchase products through websites, as reported by Metronews on November 27, 2009.

RCMP officials state that a woman (victim) has recently posted a camera and many watches, inviting potential buyers on a well-known classified ads website - Kijiji.

But the person interested to buy the items suggested that he would make payment through PayPal to which the woman agreed.

Soon an e-mail came to the woman, which apparently from PayPal, said that the money from the sale had been transferred. PayPal will deposit the sum to her account only when she gives it the items' tracking number so that they could be shipped to a Lagos (Nigeria) address, said the e-mail.

The woman did so and waited for sometime to get the money transferred in her account. But when she couldn't find the funds, she contacted PayPal, which told her that neither any fund had been received by it nor did it send any e-mail to her.

Cpl. Joe Taplin, Spokesman of RCMP/HRP (Halifax Regional Police), said that their fraud investigators had found PayPal didn't have any connection with Kijiji, as reported by Thechronicleherald on November 25, 2009.

The Spokesman further said that they were receiving many complaints of this kind wherein people were dispatching product or money following interactions with strangers via the Net for selling items. Thus, Taplin suggested to the general public to do such business locally where it would be possible to contact people physically.

Because of the current scams, RCMP is recommending that people use minimum e-mail or phone to contact PayPal or similar facilities for online payment separately and find out if they have actually received the sale money prior to shipping the products.

This, stated security specialists, is one way for terminating PayPal scams that seem to have grown significantly as people illegally access others' e-mail accounts for monetary gains.

Meanwhile, PayPal has said anyone apprehending a hack into his PayPal account can e-mail the company on servicepaypal36@yahoo.com.

Related article: RCMP Warns Netizens of Tax Refund E-mail Scam

» SPAMfighter News - 12/5/2009