Scam noticed

Tyrolean was lured into a rip-off trap by “PayPal”

A Tyrolean will be even more careful in future when buying and selling via the payment provider "PayPal".(Bild: Birbaumer Christof)

Instead of 440 dollars for four soccer shirts, a 41-year-old Tyrolean man received a dubious message from the digital payment provider "PayPal". The intention was to cheekily rip the man off, but he recognized the brazen scam.

Things couldn't have gone better for the Tyrolean: A soccer fan from the USA had allegedly taken a liking to four jerseys that the 41-year-old had offered for sale on the internet. "We agreed on the price pretty quickly," recalls the seller, who often "hangs around" on classified ad portals such as eBay, Willhaben or Vinted.

440 dollars (around 405 euros) should have arrived in the 41-year-old's account within a few minutes thanks to "PayPal". "But I didn't get anything at first and just thought that it would probably take longer for money transfers from overseas," says the Tyrolean.

Deceptively genuine-looking message
But then the presumed prospective buyer pointed out to him that the delay was due to the fact that the 41-year-old was not a "business user". "Before I could even ask myself what that was, I received a supposed message from PayPal to my email address."

560 dollars demanded from the seller
However, the Tyrolean quickly realized that it was a scam and that he had given the crooks his email address himself. After all, this was needed for the bank transfer. "The letter asked me to transfer 560 dollars to the last buyer in order to switch my account to 'business'." After that, he would receive a total of 1000 dollars. "I stopped falling for such scams a long time ago," smiles the 41-year-old. However, he can well imagine that fraudsters will be successful with the scam, especially because of the deceptively genuine-looking email.