How To Recover From Being Scammed

A visitor recently posted a comment on my blog about how they had been scammed by a Nigerian miscreant who weaseled them out of $137. So I thought I write a few tips on how to prevent and/or recover from being weaseled.

Prevention Tactics:

• Trust your feelings - If it doesn't feel right, its not. Business deals should always be win-win. If not, just walk away.
• Don’t be so “excited” to sell your item that you forget to think!
• When using PayPal as a transaction medium don't trust your email. Always, always, always go to PayPal directly by typing www.paypal.com into your web browser (I recommend Firefox 3). Don’t go to PayPal, your bank or any financial institutions web site by clicking a link in your email. Always type their URL (web site) into your browser.
• Watch for poor grammar – if it doesn’t sound quite right, it’s probably not!
• Often you will get an email that says something like, “I'm interested in your items, you have listed on the craigslist.” This is likely a scammer. Are you selling items or are you selling a specific item. Most “real” people will ask you specific questions about your specific item.
• Some tips from PayPal.
• Can you spot a scam? Take the PayPal challenge.
• Lastly:

Don’t be a bullseye for the scammers – if you don’t know what you are doing ask for help, a friend, family member or neighbor would likely love to help you navigate selling something online.

Recovering From Being Scammed:

• Unfortunately there is very little you can do to recover from being scammed.
• The poor chap that commented here about being scammed out of $137 is out the $137, sorry man!
• If you’ve been scammed, what did you learn?
• Pray for them.