A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents
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Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents
#2[deleted]
Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents
#3Badass
Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents
#4I don't do these sort of trades but if I did I'd try:
Buyer sends 1/4 of the BTC
Sellers sends 1st card
Buyer sends 1/2 of the BTC
Seller sends 2nd card
Buyer sends 1/4 of BTC
That way the risk is shared, and both parties stand to lose at most 1/4 of the value (if seller defects after receiving the first payment, or buyer defects and fails to make the last payment).
Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents
#5[deleted]
Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents
#6I don't do these sort of trades but if I did I'd try: Buyer sends 1/4 of the BTC Sellers sends 1st card Buyer sends 1/2 of the BTC Seller sends 2nd card Buyer sends 1/4 of BTC That way the risk is shared, and both parties stand to lose at most 1/4 of the value (if seller defects after receiving the first payment, or buyer defects and fails to make the last payment).
Or use an escrow service / middleman that people trust.
Bitcoin transfers aren't the problem here. Its transferring money to a trusted 3rd party, and then that 3rd party transferring the money forward (or back) once the items are confirmed to be transferred.
The problem then becomes dispute resolution. Even priority mail can be faked. Close the envelope with fake cards or whatever... so no matter what, dispute resolution becomes the limiting factor.
But a trusted middleman using a protocol that is hard to fake with harsh penalties on the scammers that do break the protocol is the answer.
Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents
#7The buyer assumed ebay feedback was good enough, but even veteran ebay buyers with good feedback will try to scam sellers by transacting outside of the site to save the transaction fees... and of course that's how you get scammed. The transaction fees are partially insurance for these things: if you buy and get scammed, ebay will eat the cost of it, much like credit card companies do in cases of fraud.
Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents
#8> I think he won't be scamming anyone for a while
Yeah, maybe. You can never really tell. He got away with this one really, by just returning the cards. It might convince him he was the skills to keep going.
I would have told his mum.
Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents
#9The buyer assumed ebay feedback was good enough, but even veteran ebay buyers with good feedback will try to scam sellers by transacting outside of the site to save the transaction fees... and of course that's how you get scammed. The transaction fees are partially insurance for these things: if you buy and get scammed, ebay will eat the cost of it, much like credit card companies do in cases of fraud.
> if you buy and get scammed, ebay will eat the cost of it, much like credit card companies do in cases of fraud.
This is not true unless things have changed in the last few years. eBay will try to get the money back by flagging the fraudster's account. But if that account has been emptied there's nothing they can do and eBay does not refund your money from their pocket.
For the credit card comment. I don't think this is true either since I worked in retail before (family owned). Credit card companies are really quick to credit the account in case of fraud (I deal with this with my own CC every year). Thinking through this it makes sense since it doesn't come from the CC's pockets, they freeze assets in the merchant's account and forcefully refund the money from merchant's account if it was determined to be a fraudulent charge (in some cases merchant still pays the transaction fee for the CC charge).
Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents
#10It's the fact that the author paid in bitcoin that made this work. Most other online payment methods can be easily reversed with evidence of fraud.
We deal with this sort of stuff all the time running cardforcoin.com. Social evidence is a great fraud deterrent.
Edit: My mistake, I reversed the payment direction. All the author needed to do was call Apple to have the cards cleared and replaced.