A dude who probably should have done more research on his purchase was apparently conned out of nearly $500 from an unscrupulous seller on Carousell. Really though, all the signs were right there.
Facebook user Inaa Jane made a post detailing how her boyfriend was allegedly cheated when he attempted to purchase a PlayStation 4 console that comes together with 10 free games and two free controllers — all at the attractive price of only $250. It’s a deal that sounds too good to be true because the console itself usually retails for about $350 in stores, and video games are at least $50 a pop.
Not only was the deal amazing, the seller promised to deliver the items within five hours of transferring the money over. If the buyer’s suspicious wasn’t aroused by the miraculously cheap deal, he really should have noticed that some of the games promised don’t even exist right now. Spider-Man will only be released in September, while Red Dead Redemption 2 will only be out in October.
After the payment was happily made, the seller then came up with some bullcrap about some extra fees for insurance and GST (Goods and Services Tax). So on top of the $250 paid, the buyer had to fork out another $197.
Pressured by the scammer, the dude actually transferred the amount over. That’s a total of $447 gone.
Then the scammer requested for even more money to “clear customs”, using an array of jargon to confuse the buyer. A fake invoice was even crafted, complete with a fake address, made-up invoice numbers, and fees.
Finally, the buyer wised up and demanded a refund. Of course, the seller refused, citing some made up delivery requirements that don’t make sense. The buyer tried to appeal to the scammer’s emotions by saying that he needed the money to purchase necessities for his baby. But honestly, that’s on him — the dude really should have prioritized the needs of his child first over a gaming console.
The scammer even sent over a copy of her identity card as a form of reassurance and gave a time limit for the buyer to transfer the funds. Eventually, he was blocked.
Identity theft
The story took a deeper turn when a friend of Inaa’s did some digging and found out that the scammer had used someone else’s identity card to carry out the sales. Turns out, the identity card had been used a couple of times by scammers to “verify” their “authenticity”.
Inaa’s own attempts to reach out to the scammer failed to get any refunds.
Moral of the story — take some precautions when dealing online and do some proper research into the background of the sellers and the product being bought. Carousell is a pretty great platform to purchase things for cheap, but one has to be savvy enough to spot a shady scammer trying to pull some tricks.
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