Fraud and scam, how many of you are victims?

I think everyone got scammed this year. I was going to sell an amp on FB marketplace, and next thing you know, someone in Asia taps into my account and starts creating ad campaigns under the FB account which is charging my Paypal, which is directly pulling money out of my bank account! Luckily, I got my money back and shutdown the facebook account.

I've sold lots of stuff on Ebay with no issues, but even there, someone recently tried to pay double for an item I was offering. That scam bets on your greed and involves them sending you a bad check. Buyers and sellers have to be really careful these days. 

Odd, all these complaints are tied to the US legislation, "Communications Decency Act" section 230. This particular section relieves the web sites and providers from responsibility for material posted on or through their products. As a result a 2018 study by the GAO found 47% of the items purchased by GAO in the research of eCommerce web site were counterfeit, fake, or look a likes and the products may be dangerous. Bet you can not guess who made it to the top of the eCommerce web site list of bad actors. The actions and policies of some eCommerce web sites is blatantly supporting criminal activity.

I ran into a scammer this year on usaaudiomart.  I'd placed a wanted ad for a particular model of speakers.  I got a response from someone offering to sell them.  There were a number of red flags.  His account was two days old.  No feedback.  No photos of the speakers.  When I questioned the price, he immediately offered to reduce the price by 50%.  He referred to the speakers as "it", something no audiophile I know would do.  When I again questioned him he then asked how much money I'd be willing to send him.  Obviously, I passed. His account was closed a few days after by usaaudiomart.  They're not all this obvious so those offers that seem to good to be true usually are.  

Years ago somebody paid me for a couple of guitars selling on Ebay with Postal Service money orders...seemed a little weird as they wanted to overpay me...I held onto the guitars until I was sure the checks cleared which they initially seemed to...a few weeks later they didn't. Never sent the guitars as I kept getting different addresses from the barely intelligible thick Asian accented buyer. Note that if a deal seems shaky, it likely is.

Paypal came through for me on a used $6500 speaker purchase, accidentally sent double payment. I puckered up when I saw $13k rather than $6500.