Warning to Rockford Facebook Sellers: Scammers Posing as Buyers with Venmo Trick

Scammers are now targeting Rockford-area Facebook sellers with a convincing Venmo payment trick. Here’s how to spot it before it’s too late.

Warning for Illinois Facebook Sellers

My husband and I have a small side hustle making laser-cut wood signs, ornaments, home decor, etc., and we often post available items for sale on Facebook and in local Facebook groups. We've never had an issue selling items like this...until today.

Within the last hour, three different people have tried to scam me on Facebook using a clever Venmo payment twist. Luckily, I've sat through hours of online security training, so I was able to pull the plug before we lost hundreds of dollars.

How the Facebook Selling/Venmo Payment Scam Works

I'm going to try and summarize this scam experience the easiest way possible...with picture proof.

Basically, three different people sent a message asking if certain items we were selling were still available. We said yes, told them the price, and then they asked us if we would ship it. We said yes, told them the price, and then they provided their shipping address. One of them was in California, the other in Texas. (RED FLAG #1)

It's not unusual for us to ship items outside of Illinois, but something about the conversation had me on alert.

Here's a screenshot from the weirdest of the conversations...

Please notice the misspellings made by the "customer"...there were several more in the entirety of the conversation. (RED FLAG #2)

I was willing to forgive some bad spelling errors, so I sent them the link to our Venmo account, and then things got REALLY weird.

The "customer" said they "forgot" they were using a business Venmo account and that to send the money they needed the email associated with our account to "confirm" the transaction.(RED FLAG #3)

Stupidly, I sent them the email address, and then noticed this pop up in my junk folder..(HUGE RED FLAG #4)

Why would I need to send money to someone that is supposed to be paying me?!? Sorry, I was not born yesterday.

I then apologized and told the "customer" that their payment didn't go through and to have a nice day...then they started calling me via Facebook Messenger!

I didn't answer any of their THREE calls, nor their messages until I said, "send me your credit card info, I will run it through our machine instead". What was their response, you ask? Crickets. Obviously.

Just to make sure I had cracked the dirty scamming case, I headed to Google and found this on Reddit...

I just fell victim to a scam through both Venmo and Facebook Marketplace that I thought I'd put out there for anyone unaware.

The person will contact you about an item on marketplace and ask to send you the money ahead of time through Venmo so their relative can pick it up. They will then claim to need your email, and tell you you need to set up a business account and that in order to do so they need to sent you enough to reach $500. You will then receive a fake email from Venmo telling you to refund the buyer the extra money out of pocket before they'll credit you the total amount. If you do, they'll send another wanting a "certificate fee" and then another asking for a repayment due to an "incorrect description" on the transaction. They will promise to credit the money shortly, then ask for a $200 cancellation fee before crediting everything because there was an unnamed issue and the business account couldn't be added.

I'm obviously not very tech savvy, but luckily I wised up and thought to check the actual email address before wasting my last $200. If the email is from a Gmail address, it is a scam. The initial transaction is designed to create guilt over potentially backing out of a suspicious situation.

My situation was slightly different, but the end game is the same...three different people tried to scam me out of at least $500 today. Oh, and the address I received the email above was from "venmopaycustomerservice342@gmail.com". (RED FLAG #5)

Be careful who you sell things to, and ALWAYS do your research about customers before you exchange any money or private info! Today could have been a very bad day for me.