Beware Of The Nigerian EBay Scam

There are a lot of scammers prowling the Internet these days and EBay is one of their favorite nests. EBay has encountered a lot of scams over the past few years like the PlayStation 3 scam, Xbox 360 scam and lately the Nigerian EBay scam. 99 percent of bids that claim to come from Nigeria are scams.

One sign of the Nigerian EBay scam is that a buyer will contact you and will ask you if you can ship your item to Nigeria. There have been a lot of instances that a seller has been scammed when they agreed to shipping their product to the said country.

To avoid becoming a victim of the Nigerian EBay scam, you should also beware of elaborated and long stories from the buyer. Most victims of the Nigerian EBay scam received complicated stories on why the buyers need to have the item shipped to Nigeria as soon as possible. One victim said that the scammer who was at that time posing as a customer said that he really wanted to have the Sony PlayStation 3 shipped to Nigeria immediately before the birthday of his grandfather. Not only that, the buyer also asked the seller to include a birthday card in the shipment. Be aware of such stories because this is what scammers do to get the trust of sellers.

We know that we can never really tell if a check is counterfeit until we have it cleared from the bank. However, there was one victim who advertised a vehicle and received a check amounting to $7500 from a buyer living in Nigeria.

The following day the buyer decided that he no longer wants to proceed with the transaction so he asked the seller to return only $4000 through money transfer and the rest he can keep for himself.

The seller went to the bank to check if the funds were cleared and it did. So he returned the agreed amount of $4000 to the buyer from Nigeria and after a few days, the seller received a notification from the bank telling him that the $7500 check was counterfeit and that now he is in debt.

The Nigerian EBay scam victimized a lot of people. If you received an email or a bid from a potential buyer that is suspicious, report it immediately to the authorities to conduct an investigation.

Always remember that you should be careful and not to be so trusting. Another sign of Nigerian EBay scam is an offer from a buyer that seems to offer everything. Sometimes, you do not have to look for too many signs. Just use a lot of commonsense to guide you. As they always say, "if seems too good to be true, then it most likely is".