Scams on Facebook Marketplace
/July 13, 2024/inLife

A Facebook Marketplace Scam Mentioning NZ Post

After a long period of avoiding Facebook Marketplace due to its cowboy nature, I finally caved and have recently been using this platform to sell a few used items from around the home.

For the most part it’s been going fine. No placement fees, no large success fees, and often a quick response time has meant that it’s had a few benefits over the likes of other providers (looking at you, Trade Me).

I’ve had plenty of people just asking the preset “Hi, is this still available?” question and then no longer responding, but those have been a minor nuisance that are easy enough to move on from.

However, today I had my first conversation with a real scammer.

The concerns were that the conversation was with a real person, and the speed of reply and offer of payment was enough to get your hopes up and make you think it was real. I can see why others may fall for this type of scam. Fortunately, I picked up on the warning signs, called the scammer on their nonsense, and reported them to Facebook.

Surprisingly, Facebook responded immediately by removing the scammers messages from my inbox (including their dodgy link) and even immediately banned the offending profile from Facebook. Quite a result.

After this experience, I Googled the specifics just to make sure I had made the right move and hadn’t got someone innocent banned from Facebook. There were very few results for this scenario, other than a single Reddit thread with a couple of responses. So, with that in mind, I thought I’d share more here to help others who may be the victim of this type of scam.

Facebook Marketplace Scammer

How did the scam play out?

I posted a jacket to Facebook Marketplace and a short time later I had a message asking if the jacket was in good condition. This was fairly unique in itself as usually people hit the preset ‘is this still available?’ message.

When I responded, the user added that they were in Masterton – a New Zealand location – and could they arrange a courier themselves and pay through NZ Post?

I actually misinterpreted this – I thought the user was asking if they could arrange an NZ Post courier to collect the jacket from us. I responded in the positive and then, after a few minutes, they provided me with a link, a screenshot of what appeared to be a banking app showing a payment had been made to “NZPOST”, and then a message asking me to follow the link to confirm the payment so that I could be paid.

This was a huge red flag. There is no reason to have to confirm a payment if you’re being paid by internet banking, and the user was all too eager. I then realised I’d mis-read their earlier message; they were saying that they wanted to pay me via NZ Post, suggesting that NZ Post have a service where they handle the transaction, and the recipient of the payment just has to confirm via a link.

I replied to tell them there was no way I was going to click their dodgy link, that this was clearly a scam, and that they should be ashamed of themselves. I felt some joy in seeing their profile image pop-up, confirming that they’d read this. I then reported the conversation to Facebook, and a few moments later the messages were removed by Facebook (interestingly also meaning I couldn’t screenshot them to share with others – Facebook hiding their own inability to stop scams in the first place) and the profile was banned. The fact that Facebook responded so swiftly proved that I was correct, and that scammer was using a common method to screw people over.

NZ Post posted to Facebook about this scam in August 2023.

How can you identify this type of scam?

The tricky part here was that it was clearly a real human I was talking to, not a bot, and that the user’s profile, which had been around for years and had plenty of friends, did also say they were living in Masterton.

They provided a link to confirm the payment via NZ Post and the link preview image was an official NZ Post photo of a courier van. The link title text was also customised to the item that I was selling. I think in the few minutes that it took the scammer to share this link, they were hastily customising a website page to make it personalised to the item I was selling, making it look more legit (I’ll never know for sure as I didn’t click the link at all).

The signs that this wasn’t real were:

  1. Check the profile. While the user’s profile said it had been made in 2017 and that they did live in a New Zealand location, that profile photo and their list of friends were clearly of someone from another country.
  2. Check the website address. The link preview image and title text were accurate BUT the link itself – the website address – was clearly fake. It started with ‘nzpost’ but the rest was junk. It was along the lines of nzpost.ofertopay3809.eu. For those not in the know, the nzpost part of this was the subdomain of the website. Anyone can create one of these to say whatever they like – it would take me just a few minutes to create a subdomain of nzpost.marklincoln.co.nz for example. The main part of the domain – the ‘ofertopay’ part, is harder for people to hide as, of course, there is already a real website with nzpost as the main part of the domain. The numbers at the end suggest that they’ve made this domain multiple times, likely because previous versions have been blocked by Facebook already. The final part of the domain – .eu – shows the domain was registered with a European address, just like .co.nz would show it’s registered with a New Zealand country address. The European aspect doesn’t make a lot of sense for NZ Post.
  3. Fake banking app screenshot. The screenshot of their banking app showed their (fake) bank balance, which someone wouldn’t be likely to share with anyone else, and while it had other transactions in the list with other people’s names on them, the latest was just ‘NZPOST’ and a payment amount of $70, which was the cost of the jacket plus $10 which you’re supposed to assume was the added courier cost. The key issue concerns were that the banking app didn’t look like a real banking app, and my own app doesn’t actually allow screenshots of this particular screen due to security concerns.
  4. NZ Post just don’t offer this service. It sounds like a service that an organisation like NZ Post would offer – acting as a go-between for buyers and sellers, ensuring that the postage part goes through NZ Post – but a quick Google shows that it isn’t. If it was, it would show up pretty clearly in a Google search.

The scam itself would be that, if I did click the link, a fake website would ask me to complete my details and, probably, make “a small payment on your credit card” to somehow prove your bank account details in order to receive the payment. That would, of course, give the scammer your credit card details. Another possible alternative is that the site would ask you to login with your NZ Post, Facebook, or maybe even your banking details, handing over your login and password to a scammer.

Sadly, while I did get the scammer’s Facebook profile banned from Facebook, the truth is probably that the profile was originally the legitimate profile of a real person. The scammer has found a way to get into that profile, probably through another scam that someone fell for, locked the original person out of their account, and is then using the hijacked account to carry out other scams. In this, the scammer has nothing to lose – they’re ultimately getting someone else’s profile banned from Facebook and all they need to do is to get someone else to fall for a similar scam so they can act as that person instead.

Still, at least I managed to get that particular account shutdown.

At the end of the day, if you’re at all unsure, just stop interacting with that person and move on. It’s not worth risking your own Facebook profile or, worse, your bank account, in order to make a quick sale on Facebook.

Anywhere else I can get help?

There are a lot of resources out there for identifying scams, whether they’re under the guise of being through social media, banks, postal services, or elsewhere.

The New Zealand Government has its own resources for identifying scams, which you can find here.

NZ Post which, to be clear, was not behind any of the websites or messages in the scam I’ve detailed on this page, has its own resource which you can find here. As they say:

NZ Post will never:

  • Ask for any of your personal information by email or text (including usernames, financial information including password, credit card details or account information).
  • Send you an email from a domain other than nzpost.co.nz.
  • Send you a text message from a phone number outside of New Zealand.
  • Use a messaging app like WhatsApp to communicate with our customers.

Hints that it’s a scam:

  • The email address is wrong – our emails always end in ‘@nzpost.co.nz’.
  • The website link is wrong – it will always link to ‘nzpost.co.nz’ or ‘http://nzp.st/’ which is the short link we often use to link to our website.
  • The text message is sent from an overseas phone number.

If in doubt, contact a friend or family member that you trust and who is likely to have good knowledge when it comes to technology. They won’t feel hassled, they’ll feel relieved that they managed to help you to avoid being locked out from your own profile, giving someone access to your credit card, or worse.

Photo credits: Silver iPhone by Thought Catalog on Pexels, and man in black hoody by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels.

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2 replies
  1. Samuel
    Samuel says:

    Good overview Mark.
    This post-pay scam has popped up a lot on the scam help groups recently. Your overview adds some useful detail, the better the scammers targets understand how these scams work, the more confident they will be at assessing risk.

    Reply
    • Mark Lincoln
      Mark Lincoln says:

      Thanks Samuel! It looks like I’ve been lucky to make it this far without seeing it! Now that I have, I’ve seen other mentions of it around marketplace. Interestingly the other victim I saw was also in my area and selling a jacket. Could be a coincidence or it could be that the scammer is focusing on similar listings so they can easily respond based on common questions and answers. While I managed to get Facebook to shutdown this particular profile, what’s sad is that it likely wasn’t theirs to begin with – they probably took it from someone else through another scam – and I’m sure they have others lined-up ready to take their place. It’s also interesting that after I reported it, Facebook removed all trace of it from my inbox and history, like they didn’t want you to be able to screenshot it or otherwise share their weakness!

      Reply

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