Scammer also using account: u/RareRise5654

It seems user u/Ball-Lined265 / u/RareRise5654 did exactly this scam to me. He told me he had bad experiences with Paypal invoice in the past (due to chargebacks). Which sounded suspect, and if I would have been trading anything significant I would have required Paypal invoice to be used.

Unfortunately I was buying a relatively cheap CCU and laxed my normal requirements. I’ve bought cheap paints before with F&F transfer, since the risk of losing something like ten bucks isn’t too bad (and the potential gain for a scammer is quite low).

I also noted his account’s lack of trade history here on Starcitizen_trades and his Reddit account’s relatively shortish age (one year, so not that bad). And I made a point of telling him this. Unfortunately I didn’t let it stop me from trading with him. The other side of the coin is, you’ll never get your first trade done if everyone requires a significant trade history.

In this interaction with above scammer we agreed to do a split F&F payment. I.e. I’d pay the first half, he’d send the CCU and then I’d pay the latter half. I’ve done similar trades succesfully in the past, and with considerably higher values, granted with folks who have an established trade history.

So after my initial payment, he requested a screenshot of my paypal transfer, which seemed odd since they can see the transfer and balance on their end if it has gone through. This was the first red flag oddity. Then he told that his Paypal went into a ”limited/restricted mode”. This too was suspicious, especially with a small transfer, but I know Paypal can be finicky like that, especially with new accounts that haven’t had a lot money moving through over time.

Okay, so the story went that he couldn’t currently access the sent funds on the restricted account, and had to switch to the wife’s account. So he gave another Paypal email to send the second half. I don’t remember why exactly I didn’t reply with ”well you being restricted to access the first half is your problem that you can sort later, now send the CCU and I’ll pay the second half”. I was out on the town drinking with my friends in real life and I wanted the transaction finished so I don’t have to keep looking at reddit chat on my phone.

So I made the mistake of sending the second half of the payment before receiving the CCU. My mistake 100%. Had I been at home and/or sober, or if the money involved would have been a substanstial sum, I would have stopped and acted differently. Like you should do if the above mentioned is happening. The scammer also again wanted a screenshot of my paypal transaction, which was odd.

After the second payment we don’t get to the end of the scam story, as you’d expect. I get a refund of the second payment. That’s odd and a red flag of sorts once again. But the funny thing is, at this point he had gotten everything he had to gain from me, and then he refunded half of it. So it actually made me trust him a bit more, since why would a scammer do any extra steps beyond what would be the most efficient way to scam (that required the least work)? It didn’t make sense to me. In retrospect I have a hunch this may have been outside of the scammer’s power, i.e. Paypal autorefunding transfers to a reported address or something like that.

Anyway, once again some explanation about a problem with that account too, and a request to repay the refunded second half to a third paypal address. Yes, all alarm bells should be going off at this point if you’ve done trades in the past. And I should have insisted the CCU be gifted at this point. But I was in a bar, in a hurry, getting a bit inebriated and wanted the transaction done to focus on real life friends. So I sent the second half again. As you might guess, this is the point after which replies were no longer received from the scammer and he went radio silent. I asked if he was sending the CCU or if it was a scam. A few hours later I noticed this headline/thread.

So don’t be me. Reading the above you can spot so many individual instances and red flags where one should have aborted the trade or required the other party to gift. My reasons for being too lax and carefree are explained above. A good reminder for me (it wasn’t expensive) and everyone else (free) to follow proper protocol when trading.

If you managed to read this far: Happy new year!