Woman's warning after she loses out to scam

Hamish Hutchinson • Published 7 Apr 2010 14:25 1 Comment

A DISABLED Sauchie woman is warning others to be on their guard after she fell victim to an online fraudster whilst trying to sell a mobility scooter.

Elizabeth Jackson - who uses a wheelchair, is profoundly deaf and has moderate learning difficulties - placed an advert on a free ad web page selling the mobility scooter.

She thought she had a buyer - only to discover that it was a scam to trick her out of money.

Elizabeth told the Advertiser, "He was going to pay the money for the scooter into my 'paypal' account but then emailed me afterwards saying that he was having problems transferring the money to the shipping company.

"He asked me if I would transfer money via Western Union to the company and he would put that money into my account as well. As I had received an email supposedly from 'paypal' saying the same thing I had no reason to doubt it and I did as he asked.

"After I had told them that I had transferred the money, I received another email from 'paypal' saying they had made a mistake and put too much money into my account, and would I return it to them via Western Union. Again I had no reason to doubt it so went ahead with it.

"I emailed 'paypal' with the details but it seemed they were taking too long to reply. So I phoned PAYPAL to discover they knew nothing about the emails and that the address wasn't theirs.

"I quickly called Western Union to cancel the transfer payments to find out that the first payment had been collected but I managed to stop the second payment with 10 minutes to spare.

I received an email just after that from 'paypal' saying that they were going to complete the transaction then another email trying to find out why they couldn't get money from the agent."

Elizabeth was shocked when she discovered that the 'paypal' she had been receiving emails from was not the real PAYPAL and wants to ensure nobody else falls victim to this kind of scam.

She added, "I would like to warn people about these fraudsters and, in particular, to get people with any form of disability to get a friend, family member or carer to double check any emails about items they may be selling or buying on the internet.

"I was caught out and I don't want anyone else to be caught out as well."

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• 

  Lorrraine
  Unregistered User
  May 6, 15:03
  Report comment

  Please remember, anytime a transaction involves sending money through Western Union to a stranger, do not fall for it. It is a scam. Never send money through Western Union to a stranger. Western Union tells us that all the time. It is written on the back of their forms in fine print. It is usually an African scam! Sorry for your lost.
  
  Recommend?   Yes 0     No 0

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