Fake Horse Buyer Scam

[AgedRider]

I have a horse for sale; she’s listed on a few sites. This week, I received a text from a very interested buyer. The horse was a birthday present and the transaction needed to be completed quickly. Unlike the normal scam, the buyer talked me down on price in exchange for a fast deal. After some back and forth, I got a very official email allegedly from paypal saying the money was in my account. The email said the money would not be reflected in my account for 4 hours because the server was down. I called paypal. They verified no transactions were posted and, in fact, their servers were running just fine. I stayed in contact with the trainer where the horse is currently housed and explained that NO ONE absolutely NO ONE was to remove my horse unless I personally and very clearly articulated that I had released the horse.

Turned out to be a fraud. Here are the warning signs:

1. In a hurry to buy. Sight unseen. Few or no questions about the horse.
2. Need your paypal account and the first name as it appears on your paypal account. (this is for an official looking email)
3. Will not provide contact information.
4. Do not refer to “horse”. Use “it” and “house”

Some variations to the scam I read about say sometimes money will be posted in your paypal account and pulled back immediately after the horse has been picked up. I found out, you can send money online via Walmart.com to anyone in any store. You walk in with a confirmation number and an ID and get cash. The money can not be pulled back like PayPal.

Hope this helps you. Good luck everyone!

[Bluey]

What will they invent next?

Good that you caught it in time, before you became one more scammed.

Thanks for the heads up.

[Laurierace]

But they really are picking the horses up? Not just the fictious shipper that you get extra money to pay? That is unusual, thanks for the heads up.

[ReSomething]

I wonder if they had any idea what they were buying if they spelled it as a house - perhaps the joke would have been on them?

[AgedRider]

According to some other bulletin boards, they contract a shipper and do pick up the horse. I don’t know what they actually do with the horse.

They accused me of trying to scam them and demanded possession of the horse. My return text was: Fine. You want the horse, call me right now on the phone. You have my number. I will conference in the support team at PayPal. Once they straighten this out, you can have the horse. Until then, I will not release the horse.

That was the last time I heard from them.

[HungarianHippo]

sorry, but even if the payment was legit, I can’t imagine selling my horse in that manner. So glad it fell through, for the sake of your horse.

[Long_Spot]

So, you actually sold them your horse before you found out it was a scam?

[LookmaNohands]

So you “sold” your horse to someone who never came out to look at it?

[ThatGirlTina]

very similar thing happened to me.

I was working at a ranch and was contacted about one of our horses for sale via email. Gift for his wife. Asked how much and immediately accepted my amount. So I figured it was a scam. They wanted to send me money for the horse, plus some to pay the shipper when they arrived to pick horse up.Which was odd to me, because why wouldnt buyer pay the shipper in advance? I said I needed to speak to them over the phone, and they complied. Shipper and buyer both had extremely heavy indian accents. (said they were from NY, horse was in TX).

They sent me USPS money orders, had never seen those before, so I took them to the bank and told the bank the situation, and that I felt it was fake. To my surprise the bank (after taking the money orders and looking at them a certain way or checking for certain markers) tells me they are actually real! I feel like an ass for assuming that of a seemingly nice enough buyer.

I cash the money orders, hold shippers money, and had the farrier and vet out for all the horses. A week or so later bank calls saying those money orders were fake after all, and they naturally need me to repay the money they had given me…

I had spent more than half of it already, and im still paying the bank back. Said it wasnt their fault they told me it was legit and I shouldve held the money regardless-which is probably true. But I trusted the bank too much on that one, shouldve followed my gut and waited it out. Lesson learned.

Never came to get the horse of course. They called to ask if all was well and I told them I had contacted the authorities, the hung up, and never heard from them again.

[JanM]

The scammers also send fake checks, and those can take a couple of weeks to be proved fake.

[Guilherme]

I will take checks, including personal checks, for sales where I know and trust the buyer or the buyer is vouched for by someone I know (and trust). For all others my preferred method of payment is wire transfer. The fee around here for a wire transfer is less a certified check fee. I’ve never heard of a wire transfer fraud, but that doesn’t mean somebody might not some day figure one out. But, so far, so good.

If someone offered me a money order, certified check, or cashiers check I might well accept it but not release the horse until I cleared it. Sometimes this can be done by going to the bank or issuer of the item (one reason to say that if somebody wants to pay by this kind of paper the seller can demand it come from a recognized national organization like Bank of America or the Post Office). If it can’t be cleared in person then the horse is held until the check has cleared.

Not to give scammers any ideas, but has anyone ever sold a horse using one of the new personal credit card scanners like Square or GoPayment for a smart phone? What are rules if someone uses a stolen credit card to pay for goods or services?

G.

ETA: GoPro is the camera; GoPayment is the credit card reader. Duh.

[clanter]

[QUOTE=ThatGirlTina;8100925]
I said I needed to speak to them over the phone, and they complied. Shipper and buyer both had extremely heavy indian accents. (said they were from NY, horse was in TX).

.[/QUOTE]

we must have run into their cousin, but they Syrian in our case and they knocked on our door. “Want to buy your horse”

We had no horse for sale.

You think we have no money? (Dude pulls out about $50K in hundreds)
You think this is not real, we go to bank and they can verify its real,

We HAVE NO Horse for sale

This actually went on for a few months.

[Manahmanah]

[QUOTE=LookmaNohands;8100677]
So you “sold” your horse to someone who never came out to look at it?[/QUOTE]

Not terribly unusual. I know a couple of FEI level trainers/riders who will buy horses sight unseen Based on a video.

[Couture_TB]

[QUOTE=LookmaNohands;8100677]
So you “sold” your horse to someone who never came out to look at it?[/QUOTE]

I buy horses all the time without going go see them. In fact it is a joke between me and the shipper that she meets my new horses before I do

[Long_Spot]

I just bought one sight unseen from a different state too, but I actually asked questions and was interested in hearing info about the horse.

[ReSomething]

[QUOTE=ThatGirlTina;8100925]

They sent me USPS money orders, had never seen those before, so I took them to the bank and told the bank the situation, and that I felt it was fake. To my surprise the bank (after taking the money orders and looking at them a certain way or checking for certain markers) tells me they are actually real! I feel like an ass for assuming that of a seemingly nice enough buyer.

I cash the money orders, hold shippers money, and had the farrier and vet out for all the horses. A week or so later bank calls saying those money orders were fake after all, and they naturally need me to repay the money they had given me…

. . .[/QUOTE]

The banks around here won’t take Postal MO, they send you off to the Post office and make you cash them there. Literally cash them too. You’d be surprised how many people around here don’t have a checking account out in the boonies and use the Post office instead so you sell something on CL and get one of those.

[OverandOnward]

I would not under any circumstances accept Paypal payment for a horse. For 45 days after the transaction, at any time, the buyer can open a Paypal dispute using any pretext and reverse the funds to your account. They can also get the transaction cancelled altogether.

There was a COTH thread recently about ways to accept payment for horses that can’t be reversed through the system - and ways that can be reversed. Even cashier’s checks can bounce. Cash is the only sure thing the buyer can’t withdraw without the seller’s agreement.

[gottagrey]

It’s scary now that what used to be ideal protection against bad checks was a MO or cashier’s check are now fraudulent. Similar thing happened to my boss - he was trying to sell a car, was sent a cashier’s check but of course they had sent more $ than the car because it was going to be shipped overseas. As he’s telling me this I’m thinking you better call your bank to make sure its good. Sure enough cashier’s check was bad, and the bank was getting ready to call him. I think G is right - at this point cashier’s checks are just as iffy as personal checks, go for wire transfer - bu then don’t you have to give out personal account information?

[Kwill]

The bad news is now the scammers have some information about your paypal account. You might ask Paypal what you can do about that. I would change the password, regardless of anything else you do.

[Dramapony_misty]

[QUOTE=gottagrey;8101715]
I think G is right - at this point cashier’s checks are just as iffy as personal checks, go for wire transfer - bu then don’t you have to give out personal account information?[/QUOTE]

My DH accepted an almost too-good-to-be-true order from his online wine accessories store (the customer-a British company- wanted a large number of wine racks to be installed on a job site in Dubai.) and wanted to pay via wire transfer since it was the easiest way for international transactions. DH took a leap of faith and set up a whole separate bank account just for the wire transfer. Worked like a charm! The customer was happy with the transaction and the product, and that order helped pay for a decent part of our wedding.