Possible fraud?

Yeah that is a scam.

Thank you for the warning, I already paid the money although I contacted the bank, I also expect some help from Trade Me, as something must have gone wrong from your side to allow his to happen. The trade wasn’t completely "too good to be true", just a good deal.
The sellers been active for 10 years that’s why I did not smell the rat straight away.
Please help me to retrieve the money if possible.

BTW, I did contact my bank asking what possible scam could this be. They said the scammer wouldn’t be able to access any of my info, because they need more info than my name and date of birth. What exactly could they have done with this info, potentially?

Kia Ora Nathan,

Sorry to read this happened to you - I hope your Bank could stop/reverse your payment for you.

It sounds like a personal TM account has been Hacked here - your DOB could potentially be an attempt to hack your account password(s) Or used in identity theft etc.

Did you pay by Ping? - Ping and Afterpay are covered under TM's Buyer Protection.

TradeMe have asked for emails impersonating them to be forwarded directly to their Trust & Safety Team team at abuse@trademe.co.nz – or to use "Live Chat" to report this.

Refer to: Phishing and scams - Cheers.

As another posted above indicated, this is the Community Message Board, I am not Trade Me.

Most likely the account you paid is a "Wise" account, Wise (ex TransferWise) operates a service where overseas people (scammers in this case, but sometimes legitimate businesses) can have a local bank account in a country for people to pay them.  The account number looks just like a "normal" bank account number, and works just like one too, there is no outward sign that it is a "Wise" account to the sender.

Sometimes Wise requires extra information about the sender of funds to an account before they release the funds to the recipient, including I believe the DoB, in order to try and combat scammers using their service.  No actual bank in NZ does to my knowledge (at least not unless the amount is very large), just Wise, which isn't a bank, and can be used by scammers. 

Hopefully you didn't give the scammers this information and double hopefully if it is indeed a Wise based scam Wise will return the money eventually, hopefully.

NB: I think Wise NZ local accounts start with 04, if that's you,

  https://wise.com/help/articles/2978048/i-may-be-the-victim-of-fraud-or-a-scam

Thank you for the info, I have actually contacted WISE with all the screenshots saying that I"ve been scammed from their account. Amazingly, they replied and said that they would look into it. File a police report, but I don't hold my breath. It's $280, might not be enough for them to do anything. TM also replied saying they can't help, because it wasn't PING. PING wasn't an option, but it is still strange that TM doesn't offer any protection from hacked accounts-it wasn't the new trader with 0 trades, their account was 10 years old, so nothing rung the bells till they asked me for details (which was after I gave them the screenshot of payment). Also, there are no articles on TM about this kind of scam-it's all about sellers mostly, but this case was different. Banks also said they might not be able to retrieve the money. But they have relisted the item several times and had other people bidding on it(it did not reach the reserve)-I don't know whether those people were even warned or notified. Been paying success fees for over 15 years now and not protection for me in this case. Merry Christmas indeed...

Sorry to read that Nathan,

You have done all the right things here and I hope WISE comes through for you - Meantime keep your eyes open for further phishing scams coming through your Emails.

If a Listing you are interested in doesn't have Ping or Afterpay as payment options you can ask for either or both to be added to the Listing - the Seller may not be willing to do this though this will allow you to decide whether or not to take the risk to bid/purchase.

I would place a Feedback for the owner of the account notifying them, hopefully TM have stepped in after your reporting to secure the Member's account here - Cheers.

I understand the reluctance of some traders(myself included) to activate PING for my own sales-because of the additional fees. So, I wouldn't hold this against others. TM has disabled the trader already. Yeah, hopefully I learnt my lesson. They told me in the bank that scams are particularly frequent around Christmas time.  Luckily, not a $$$ trade, but I will surely be more aware of this for big purchases.

Unfortunately it has been on a more frequent rise with Black Friday, Cyber Monday & now the Christmas sales.

Yes! the Fee's of adding 'Buyer Protection' payment options is a turn off for some Seller's - with this in mind one can always offer the Seller to include the additional Fee to the purchase price if it is a 'Must Have' item - I have seen this contract being formed in the Q&A section of Listings - Cheers.

So, I contacted both my bank and the receiving bank (04 could be either WISE or ANZ, as they are WISE's partnership bank)-neither were very helpful. ANZ isn't going to even look into it, telling me to contact the sending bank. I am also ANZ customer, but this left them unphased. My bank told me not to hold my breath either. So, despite me discovering the scam only a few hours after the money transfer and ONLY because I posted the question here), no one seem to be able to do anything. I contacted WISE as well, they were the only one who said that they will look into it. This is how easy it is to rob someone through the bank in NZ. This is ridiculous.

an update: the scammer contacted me again and said that they refunded my money, but nothing came trough, of course. I asked if they needed my shoe size, they replied(quote )"Really?
I refunded your money , so can you close this deal ? Thanks"  I don't know what "deal" they mean and they obviously don't have any sense of humour. ASB and ANZ basically told me to get lost, as they said it was ME, who paid the money. WISE were the most helpful and they just replied saying (quote) "We’ve looked into your claim and done everything we can to prevent this from happening again. When a recipient scams you, we’ll block them from receiving money through us."  It is sad to get the most help from the bank abroad and not from anyone in NZ, despite of me shopping on a respectable platform and using a respectable bank, the scammer has more rights than me. May this be a lesson to you all. Even a trader with 10 years on TM and 100% feedback can be hacked and suck money out of you. Merry Xmas to you all.

This is the most hilarious fraud, as the scammer keeps emailing me back!  here is the latest(after they told me that they refunded the money yesterday, and nothing came through of course): 

"My account was closed due to your payment and I cannot log in to the account to refund the money to you. I am not a thief. If you make the payment correctly, I will ship your product. 

When an account is closed on Wise, the funds suspended on it are recovered within two to three days. 

I use their bank for online buying and selling services Finally, do not accuse me of fraud as long as I did not receive your payment and did not extract it. is that clear ? " They seem to be genuely offended(still not providing any proof of the "refund". I have a question for TM-how was it established that the listing was fraudulent? Was the email address hacked? They keep replying from the same email address as the original one, which gave me their bank account details. Why would the scammer stay in touch? This is really weird.

and another one from the scamer (the last one as I sent it to spam, it's too hilarious) 

"When the Wise account was closed, I wrote to them and they assured me that all withheld payments would be refunded. Secondly, the information that was requested from you is part of verifying your payment to Wise Bank, and you can verify this by writing to them and they will confirm it for you. They ask for full name and date of purchase on some transactions in order to verify the order before I receive the money 

I will reconfirm that I am not a thief, and I only want to sell my product. "

Since it's confirmed that it's a Wise account and you didn't give the details they needed hopefully it was never released to the scammer and will be refunded to you eventually.  Keep your fingers crossed!

Hi Nathan, I almost got scammed. See my thread in this forum. Luckily the scammer had not changed the email address in TM, so my email to them bounced back which made me suspicious.

I reckon the account that was hacked had been inactive since 2017 and used a xtra email so had clearly been compromised. TM need to up their game, they are facilitating fraud in this country.

If they cared, or were forced to care, about their "members" they would routinely deactivate accounts which have not been used for years. Also they are now too stingy to pay the postage for address verified so we really are in the wild west.

Hopefully you will get your $ back - mine could have been $2k but being a larger amount I was just a little more cautious - Xmas rush and all that :(

Glad that you avoided losing your money, David. I think AV should be a must(even then you can get burned, but at least TM would provide that). I just got a reply from WISE which contradicts what scammer said. Unfortunately, not much hope from either side: "Unfortunately we have no confirmation that this money can be refunded. Your transfer has been sent out from our side, so the money has already gone through, and for this reason, we can’t guarantee you’ll get it back."

What I learnt from this-BE SUSPICIOUS if the seller gives you WISE account for payment. If they do-pay out of your WISE account, this way you have more protection. WISE's been communicating with me in the most professional manner throughout this whole situation. Wishing everyone a safe and scam-free holiday season.

Here is a thought. TM received $22.12 commission (from $280) trade. It was deducted off trader's account after I made a purchase, even before I paid. Effectively, they were paid for facilitating the fraud on their platform. Would be good if they refunded this to me, at least.

My guess is that they will not have received their commission because the hacked account would have had a zero balance, and your payment did not go via Ping etc. Still it is worth asking.

Kia Ora Nathan,

I am Sorry to hear whilst you were onto this fast you have been let down by all accounts in NZ.

"My guess is that they will not have received their commission because the hacked account would have had a zero balance, and your payment did not go via Ping etc"

The hacked account would have had enough credit to cover the Listing Fee - otherwise the listing would not have been allowed to proceed - therefore TM may have their Success Fee However this should be re-credited to the Hacked account.

I would ask WISE how the payment was released to the fraudulent Seller when you hadn't verified any of the questions for this to be released. - It will be a long shot though as I believe not every purchase does receive verification questions, though may be worth asking. - Cheers.

"The hacked account would have had enough credit to cover the Success Fee - otherwise the listing would not have been allowed to proceed"

Not  my experience, normally when I am selling the success fee will make my account overdrawn which blocks me from creating further listings. At that point TM do not have the cash, just an accounting transaction which they will reverse. I cannot see them crediting it to the scammed member.

FYI, the private equity crowd (Apax) that bought TM in 2019 are looking at floating it on the sharemarket in 2024 so they will have iron tight control over costs to boost their return.

Trade Me credit is used for listing fees and success fees therefore accounts need to have the listing Fee's in their account in order to be able to List items in the first instance.

Yes! I expect the Hacked account doesn't get refunded either - Cheers.

I have no idea what the comment above means.

> The hacked account would have had enough credit to cover the Success Fee - otherwise the listing would not have been allowed to proceed

The success fee isn't known until the auction closes, so that is not possible.  As long as your account is not negative you can create a listing, it might well go negative when the item is sold depending on the value you sell it for.

This is getting pretty off-topic now.

Yes, the account should be in credit in order to list. The scammer account’s been disabled by TM, if there was any money on it, I am unsure who it went to. Certainly not to me.

I've been scammed in the same way this week. I "bought" a Benq W5700 projector from a Trademe member of 15 yrs 100% positive standing, but only 7x trades with feedback. That was on Wednesday, and I contacted them on the email address that a hacker had installed after hacking their account. They responded, and I paid same day,  to a "04" account, which I now know to probably be a Wise account. Suspicious that they didn't respond to questions I asked after paying, I did my research today, and on contacting Trademe, they very soon emailed me back to state that this was a scammer at work. They then re-installed the original owner's email address, which is very clearly visible now, and then disabled the account. I also have screen shots. Why the hell didn't they pick this up before I contacted them? Trust is something that's earned, and easily lost. If ASB or Wise can't get my $820 back, I'll try Trademe, followed by the Small Claims Court. This is my only bad experience in 24 years using Trademe. 

I am telling you now that TM will be of no help. Despite me having a WISE account, WISE people couldn’t help too. I have been scammed again the same way, but paid by PING. It took TM nearly 3 months to refund, they sent numerous automated messages which showed to me no one was reading my messages. I also did not received any newsletters warning about scams on the rise.
Do not waste your time and go to small claims now. Please let us know how it went. In my case it was $300, but after several months of inaction, I will probably do the same.

Forgot to say, I am also with ASB and they were useless, only said that since *I* transferred the money it’s not their problem.

That's not good news. I think being the weekend isn't going help either. Despite making the payment on Wednesday afternoon, and being exposed as a scam on Friday morning and contacting ASB and Wise, then, I think nothing happens over the weekend, giving more time to the scammer to clear funds from their account. I'd be interested in talking to you further if I don't get anywhere with this.

I discovered a scam 4 hours after I transferred the money, only because, as I said in the first post, the seller asked some additional personal info which they really did not need. Called ASB immediately, money's already gone. Weekend or not, they must have their fraud team working, but you transferred money VOLUNTARY, so this is not on the bank, but on TM for not spotting it. They suggested to go to the police and I did lodge a claim and got a case number, please consider doing this just so that you would go through the motions. Depending on where you are based, maybe lodging a joint claim would help. I bet there are more people like this, not being able to do anything. Apart from collecting their success fees, TM doesn't seem interested.