A word about Scammers

Joeychgo said
Lately, we have seen several people come to FABO trying to scam our members.

Usually, they will respond to "Wanted to Buy" ads by private message, giving an email address to respond to. They usually have recently joined FABO and have few or no posts.

If you respond they wont want payment by PayPal, and will say their PayPal account or dormant or something like that. They will almost always ask for a money order for payment.

I cannot advice strong enough that you don't send a money order to someone you don't know well. Sending a money order is like sending cash, there is very little you can do in the event you are scammed. This is why the scammers ask for money orders. They are easy to cash and all but impossible to stop payment on or do anything with if you get scammed. Think of it like leaving $100 bill on a bar and going to the bathroom. There is a good chance it wont be there where you come back and nobody will be able to help you.

I cannot stress strongly enough that you should not use Money Orders unless you know the person your sending the money to fairly well. In my personal opinion, the safest way is to use PayPal for all online transactions unless you know the person your sending money to. Its not perfect, but its the safest in my opinion.

We do what we can to protect FABO members, but in instances like this we cannot do a lot without your help. If you get a PM from someone like described above, let a staff member know right away and we will look into the member.

Thank you for listening.

Joeychgo, Admin

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Scammers will usually ask you for the following info from the money order:

Sender's Name:

Reference #:

Amount Sent:

DO NOT GIVE IT TO THEM!

A scammer can take this info and pick up the money from anywhere in the world that sells those money orders. If they live at the address they gave you they don't need this info.

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I went through reading about scammers on this thread. As I tend to be overly cautious, most info I pretty much already knew. BUT... now I think I will have a hard time selling or buying. I do not have paypal. I dont use debit or credit cards. I use cash. Yeah Ima old fashioned old fart anda country hick to boot. I do use computer and internet frequently - high tech redneck?
All of my online selling and buying to date have been in person with cash only.
I have sent money through walmart to family a few times and made an assumption. It would work for here also. After reading this thread and saw where someone said don't do that, I am now concerned I might have made a bad assumption.

When you send through walmart the seller that receives the money has to provide both the buyer and walmart with their name and state where the money goes to. And when the seller picks up the money they have to provide ID to walmart before they can receive any money. Also walmart has security cameras inside and outside. I really really thought this was even better than paypal. Obviously I am missing something.

Please, Please someone tell me what is wrong with my thinking on this.

I am a man of my word, but in todays society that means a man of turds. No one seems to have an ounce of integrity anymore. Makes it very very hard to trust anyone and I can't blame someone for not trusting me because they don't KNOW me. BUT I had to really laugh at someones post that said if this one guy said he gonna send you a bridge you better dam well expect to receive one real soon. That's me also, but how do the rest of you folks ever KNOW this. The suggestion of having feedback for buyers and sellers would be super great........ rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... maybe not... say someone makes 10 accts and post on each one from the others - great seller timely great buyer great person - all bs lies but would look quite convincing. I found a hole in that thinking within seconds of typing it.. so... back to why is sending through walmart not a good idea? I still cant figure out why.

Just had a thought - Can the folks running this place verify ids of anyone wanting to buy and sell? I don't know how hard that would be, ...rrrrr....but dang just realized, they proly wouldn't wanna do that - what if they got a very good fake id and "said" they verified then one of us gets robbed by them,,, not good for the folks running site... i would not want that responsibility and pretty darn sure they dont either..

first few sales and purchases by a member - both money and product - routed through a well known trusted member from here???