Fake Escrow Site Scam Widens

from the catching-people-with-their-guard-down dept

It used to be, in order to make sure that you weren't being scammed in an online auction, you would use an escrow site that would guarantee the product or the money before passing either one on to the buyer and seller. It seems that some scammers have picked up on this and are creating elaborate and very convincing fake escrow sites to scam people out of millions of dollars. A fake escrow site is very hard to detect compared to the real ones, apparently. There's also little recourse for people who sent money or goods to a fake escrow service, as many of them operate overseas. The scam works particularly well because people let their guard down - thinking that they're being extra secure by using an escrow service. There's a site, SOS4auctions.com, that tracks these fake escrow sites, but the scammers even created a fake version of that site to confuse people and throw them off.

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