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.

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 ac...

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. "

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...

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...

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 i...

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.

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 ...

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?

Thank you for the insight. They listed item in the wrong category and when I pointed this out to them, they told me to move on. Not a great "promise" there... I guess TM will get their commission, so that's OK ;)