How to get scammed when you sell things online (UPDATED)

4 min readMar 23, 2021

Within one week of putting some camera gear online, I was contacted no more than 4 times by scammers. How they scam surprised me a bit — and I hadn’t experienced that in Denmark before.

Here’s their approach:

They want you to contact them off the platform where you are selling the item. Either email, text or WhatsApp.

2. They will usually pretend they are interested in the item and ask stupid questions that are already mentioned in the ad:

I’m already getting ahead of myself with the questions here, because I know it’s a scam 😂

3. They will sometimes like to purchase even more than what they were initially interested in. In this case I just came up with a random and outrageous price that is 4x what I have for sale.

Had to set a ridiculous price to see if they would buy..

4. They will suggest bank transfer or PayPal as the way to pay and they will ask nicely for your bank details.

Usually they “support” fake PayPal emails too, but not in this case 🤷‍♂️

5. They will ask to have things shipped to the UK (typically, if they are scamming Danes).

I sent him a bunch of random information

FUN FACT! It’s the second time this address is showing up, out of four scammers so far. Let me type it out so it shows up in search results online..

David Hyde
19 East Cliff Folkestone
Kent
CT196BU
United Kingdom

7. They will send you a fake email (and sometimes fake text messages from their gateway) to convince you that the money has been transferred and that you should ship the package.

From: barclayonlinetransferbankplc@mail.com

But what do they get from this?!

That’s the most ridiculous part. Assuming it works something like these examples below, they have mules in the country where they ask you to send the package. Mules that are in many cases unknowing of the actual large scale operation. Here are some examples:

Jim Browning’s Catching Money Mules ft. Mark Rober

Mark Rober’s Glitterbomb Trap Catches Phone Scammer

When the package is scheduled to arrive, the mule will wait outside the house, or they will have actually booked an Airbnb in that house. From there they will pass on the package to the supervisor and will get paid. I assume that the organisation behind will then sell the goods and cash in. That’s a lot to go through for some older camera gear..

So, hopefully some of you will be saved by reading this, and some will help spread the word. The only thing that’s left is to send them a giant 💩 in a box..

Scammer wishes you a good night:

UPDATE:

Over the last couple of days I have kept receiving more and more inquiries from these scammers. Most of them even use the same freakin’ address and must therefore be part of the same scam organization. I will list screenshots emails, phone numbers and adresses here so that people who search for these hopefully come across this information.

The last name is even Hyde David, like the other address is for a David Hyde 😂

“Elizabeth Hyde David”
+44 7418 323480

19 East Cliff Folkestone
Kent
CT196BU
United Kingdom
(again, the same address… 😅)

Screenshots that didn’t make the cut:

Another scam, using the same address but “supporting” fake PayPal emails

Me trying to teach them how to make fake emails.. probably shouldn’t..

Just typing things out again for the search engines to be able to find them:

Name: Sharon Williams (sharonwill6465@gmail.com and lisaroberts6465@gmail.com)
Address: 101B High street,
Leyton
City: London
Zip code: E15 2DE
United Kingdom
+447440048388