What Are Purchasing Scams?

[Roxy]

Purchasing scams, also typically known as non delivery purchase scams, work by offering to sell you something but then never delivering the goods after payment is sent to the scammer. These scams can involve serious financial harm and often overlap with money laundering and money mule schemes (explained in more detail below), where victims may unknowingly move or spend criminal proceeds and expose themselves to bank fraud and other legal consequences.

The item being sold in these types of non delivery scams can be almost anything. Most purchase scams involve products, pets, automobiles or other types of valuables.

Many non delivery purchasing scams make use of fake shipping websites that are also controlled by the scammer. These fraudulent sites provide victims with fake tracking numbers in an attempt to convince them that the item has already been shipped to them.

Often, after the item appears as shipped on the fake shipping website, the scammer will contact the victim again and claim that the shipment has encountered a problem and that additional fees must be paid to continue delivery. This request for more money may continue until the victim realizes it is a scam. By that point, the scammer may have already collected payment for the item along with multiple additional shipping charges.

Another type of purchasing scam occurs when you place an advertisement online to sell something that you own. In these cases, the scammer offers to buy the item, often at the full asking price and without any negotiation, and then sends a fake form of electronic payment.

The fake payment may appear as a spoofed email from a digital payment service company, a fake check, an email from a fake bank, or a fraudulent bank transfer using a fake banking website. In some cases, the scammer directs the victim to log into a fake payment website to supposedly confirm receipt of funds. These fake websites are also commonly used for phishing and can result in identity theft.

The purpose of the fake payment is to convince the victim that payment has already been made so that the victim ships the item to the scammer. The victim then loses both the item and the cost of shipping, while never receiving any real payment. These scams often involve expensive watches, smartphones, and other small but valuable items that are easy to ship and easy for scammers to quickly resell for cash.

Another common but very different type of purchasing scam involves unexpected emails from fake companies claiming to seek raw materials for the pharmaceutical industry or other types of manufacturing. In these scams, the target is asked to act as a purchasing agent and to buy materials as a middleman on the company’s behalf. The emails often appear legitimate and may direct the victim to professional looking but fraudulent company websites controlled by the scammer. These schemes are extremely dangerous and frequently involve money laundering and money mule activity. Victims can lose substantial amounts of money and may unknowingly commit serious criminal bank fraud. Many of the purchasing scams recently posted on this website also fall into this category. Click here if you would like to gain a more detailed understanding about how money mule scams operate.