How To Get Screwed Online
It all started one evening when I should have zigged when I zagged, but that is usually how many stories like this start. I was on Facebook, yeah, I know, I know, I should have known better, but here I was, sitting on the couch, on Facebook, exercising my right pointer finger, swiping upward repeatedly and seemingly endlessly.
I belong to several Marine Corps groups and in one of them, I found this guy under the name of “UCustom’s Signs”, selling custom products like firepits with the Marine Corps emblem on the sides. There were some people talking about the customized fire pits, cornhole boards, and things like that, that they have ordered. I dropped a PM to the seller, who was posing as a Marine veteran and he sent me his prices. I thought I did my due diligence, but I missed a red flag somewhere. This guy has obviously done this before, he had all the right answers.
I asked him how thick is the metal, the dimensions, and, the weight of the finished product. He sent me everything and they checked out, hell he even had the measurements in both inches and centimeters. He talked about his CNC plasma cutter and can customize it with my name and rank if I want. I’m generally not that vane, but it did occur to me that it would be easy to identify if ever stolen, so I ordered that as well.
He asked for my shipping address and after a few minutes said that he could ship to my location via UPS, and told me that he would send me a tracking number once it was ready to ship. The only possible red flags were the price and he wouldn’t tell me how long to build out, he just kept saying that he would let me know when it was ready to ship.
He sent me an invoice and it all looked correct, and then asked me to pay via PayPal Friends and Family (RED FLAG ALERT). Now, I know better, but I was trying to help out a fellow Marine here so I did the transaction using PayPal Friends and Family. I tried and his email address was refused, he gave me another PayPal account to send to, which worked (RED FLAG ALERT).
He asked for a screengrab to verify that I sent it, which I did. It all seemed legit and this scammer knew what they were doing. There were other Marine Corps veterans on the Facebook group that were buying something from him as well. He offered custom firepits, metal signs, cornhole boards, and things like that.
Two weeks later, I’m starting to get a feeling something is wrong, and sure enough, this asshole turned out to be a scammer. I sent a message via Facebook Messenger and didn’t receive a reply, three days later, I sent another one, and it bounced back as the page for this scammer was closed.
I started to dig deeper and discovered that the images were from various other companies like the fire pit that I ‘ordered’ was from PNG Products. I decided to email both email addresses and the one that failed on PayPal, bounced back and was non-deliverable. The second email went unanswered for a day and then someone claiming to be Misty replied.
Her sob story was someone hacked her Facebook account. Okay, sure, but how does that tie into her PayPal account? She claimed that PayPal had ‘limited’ her account and that my money was still there, but she couldn’t touch it. Of course, I did the dumb thing that I knew better not to do, which was send the money to Friends and Family, which didn’t afford me any protection from PayPal. Next time, I will just toss an extra $10-20 into the pot to cover fees and send it the correct way.
This Misty person is claiming that they set up several pages in her name, including the UCustoms that I purchased the fire pit. She included all these screengrabs to include one from PayPal and one from Facebook, yet, something feels off. She claims that she will send me back the money when PayPal allows her access, but I’m certainly not holding my breath on that claim.
Moral of the story? I guess is to really dig deep and if your Spidey senses are tingling, then run away from doing any business with that company or individual. DON’T use PayPal Friends and Family for a business transaction.
Here is the firepit that I ended up purchasing at Tractor Supply and this is the first fire of the year.
