One of the recurring scams you’ll run across on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and anywhere where a scammer can operate is the free PS5 or free high end notebook. Substitute any free item really, the scam is the same.

There’s usually a backstory on the gaming systems about how either their kid died and they want someone to get enjoyment from the thing, their kid is terrible and they want them to suffer. The backstory on the notebook is usually cheating husband/wife/whatever and now it’s time for revenge in a fashion in which you actually are agreeing to be part of an illegal transaction (you can’t give someone else’s stuff away, that’s called stealing).

But illegalities aside, you know it’s a scam but what is the scam?

Comes down to it costing $20 or so to ship because even though they’re local somehow this laptop, gaming system, etc requires shipping and possibly an insurance fee against damage and you have to pay it to the scammer. Now, $20 or so for mailing doesn’t seem like a lot for them to gain, but they’re doing it to a whole lot of people simultaneously. Quite often you’re paying a compromised Paypal/Venmo/cash app that the owner isn’t aware yet they’re involved in scamming people.

In my neighborhood we had people offering to purchase homeless people’s identity for use on Cash App / Venmo / etc to use as a “legitimate” looking cash app tunnel for a few hundred dollars. It’s fairly easy to get a formerly legit identity and when you go after the person, well, they sold that to someone else and what are you going to take from them?

Short of it becomes are you going to spend 8-12 hours fighting with PayPal or Mastercard over being scammed $30? File a police report? At least some people are not, saying something to the effect of they didn’t get that much and I’ll be smarter in the future, and thus we have a thriving scam running barely checked until the end of time.

It falls under Advance Fee scams although that page (run by the US govt evidently,) doesn’t address it exactly.

How to identify a scam – what is that free dead kid PS5, or cheating husband Mac notebook? by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

One of the recurring scams you’ll run across on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and anywhere where a scammer can operate is the free PS5 or free high end notebook. Substitute any free item really, the scam is the same.

There’s usually a backstory on the gaming systems about how either their kid died and they want someone to get enjoyment from the thing, their kid is terrible and they want them to suffer. The backstory on the notebook is usually cheating husband/wife/whatever and now it’s time for revenge in a fashion in which you actually are agreeing to be part of an illegal transaction (you can’t give someone else’s stuff away, that’s called stealing).

But illegalities aside, you know it’s a scam but what is the scam?

Comes down to it costing $20 or so to ship because even though they’re local somehow this laptop, gaming system, etc requires shipping and possibly an insurance fee against damage and you have to pay it to the scammer. Now, $20 or so for mailing doesn’t seem like a lot for them to gain, but they’re doing it to a whole lot of people simultaneously. Quite often you’re paying a compromised Paypal/Venmo/cash app that the owner isn’t aware yet they’re involved in scamming people.

In my neighborhood we had people offering to purchase homeless people’s identity for use on Cash App / Venmo / etc to use as a “legitimate” looking cash app tunnel for a few hundred dollars. It’s fairly easy to get a formerly legit identity and when you go after the person, well, they sold that to someone else and what are you going to take from them?

Short of it becomes are you going to spend 8-12 hours fighting with PayPal or Mastercard over being scammed $30? File a police report? At least some people are not, saying something to the effect of they didn’t get that much and I’ll be smarter in the future, and thus we have a thriving scam running barely checked until the end of time.

It falls under Advance Fee scams although that page (run by the US govt evidently,) doesn’t address it exactly.

How to identify a scam – what is that free dead kid PS5, or cheating husband Mac notebook? by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.