11/07/2024
Been busy with life, haven't had a chance to post in a while, but figured I'd give a quick update.
Haven't had the chance to do any craft sales lately and was reachout out to about an old piece of mine which is no longer avaliable. sent pictures of ones that are available and was excited to possibly be making a sale.
when it came time for payment, the person tried to send it and I got an email stating payment was on hold until they sent me an additional 300 to "upgrade to a business account"... seemed super fishy to me, so I quickly changes passwords and email and got on the phone with venmo customer service cuz I wanted to confirm what was going on. they assured me they would not have a fee like that, ever, and that I should report it to their phising email so they could investigate.
i informed said person what I was told ans advised them to also change passwords and stuff, and to go into their transaction and try to cancel it because I can't see it in my account at all.
they were very pushy about sending me the $300 extra and then I coukd send it right back, I told them multiple times to wait that I was not comfortable with that, amd that I'd rather just send them the art piece regardless of if I actually received the money. trying to have benefit of the doubt and that they themselves are not the scammer and maybe got hacked or something.
they responded saying they got off the phone with venmo and was given the same instructions as the email, to send the extra $300 and ask for it back.
Everything about it is screaming at me that it's a scam and weather the person was hacked, or they themselves is the scammer I couldn't say. I then went to Google to see if this is a common scam, and I've seen several stories with way to many similarities for it to be a coincidence.
I know a lot of my crafter friends follow me on here, and use venmo, so I wanted to make sure everyone is aware that there is a scam going around, if you weren't already aware. I'm just glad my gut told me something was up and I was able to change the email on the account before were able to send anything extra.
With that being the case I will be being extra cautious with online sales, not that I've sold hardly anything online recently anyways, but better to be safe than sorry!
They responded saying it was weird. and I mentioned that I talked to family who know about scams and what not and was also advised that this was a scam and not to fall for it.
And now suddenly the person is no longer avaliable.
