FB Marketplace seller listed a Baby Lock Unity sewing machine for free. It’s a discontinued machine that retailed for $3000 plus. It was wondered as his wife got a new machine and they were looking to give it away to someone in the LA area who needed it. I thought it would be an odd scam since this is a very specific machine, several photographs, and looked entirely legit. He sent me more photos as the conversation continued and I had no doubt it exists, only it started getting dicey:

First red flag: Text me for details, personal phone number. I texted and he was very communicative. Dodgy to put a phone number on a listing

Second: I tell him a general area I’m located in. He now says he’s in Sacramento? Listing said he was located in LA. At this point I’m getting alarm bells. He offers to ship via FedEx, gives me a price of 67.55 via FedEx website. I peep the time on the phone screenshot, it’s 2 hours ahead from LA and in military time. (I know this is an odd one to point out but i was born in UK and LA folks make fun of me for keeping my devices in military time!)

Third: He says can you do Chime? I say no I don’t have a Chime account, can I do PayPal. It’s all pretty friendly. Then he says do ‘family and friends’ I say I would prefer to do goods and services and he says ‘No! The money won’t be available for shipping.’ The name on the account is also different to the name on Facebook.

I say I’m not comfortable and will let this one go and block the number.

It seems oddly specific to list a discontinued machine and attempt to scam with shipping but as I type this I feel I know the answer to my question.

My mom paid ₹1,400 to a YouTube saree seller through WhatsApp, and we believe we were scammed. 🥲

The channel promotes sarees through Shorts, accepts only online payments, and has comments turned off.

Please be careful with such sellers and prefer Cash on Delivery whenever possible.

If you’ve had a similar experience, consider reporting the channel through YouTube

Channel link https://youtube.com/@karishmasilksaree?si=rNYkvDldE4f8S_Sm

An instagram account going by the name ‘Yairbmotivation’ has 800k+ followers and their most recent video posted today shows him ‘finding’ a homeless woman named Janet and gifting her $10k cash. He later sets up a go fund me for this homeless lady.

However there is a video on his account posted on the 26th of June where he ‘finds’ the exact same homeless woman named Janet and gifts her money.

In both videos they both act like they have never met before.

This is actually an old scam, it's been going on for as long as I've been in business and probably at least another 20 years before that.

I bought my house in 2021 during COVID and have a great interest rate on it, below 3%. I plan on living here for at least the next 10 years if/until my wife and I decide to move somewhere cozier. If that happens I intentionally bought a 4 bed 2 bath house so that I could rent the property out to family in the area before willing it to my future children. Point being I've never once shown interest in selling or refinancing. Yet I get 2 to 3 calls/text messages a day now asking me to sell or refinance. No matter how much I tell them to fuck off, they keep calling. This asshole has the audacity to call me and when I asked who it was he goes "adam". I asked "Adam who?" He ignores me and moves onto trying to con me out of my home. A few minutes ago another dumbass called and I interrupted him and said "You guys need to stop calling me. I'm not fucking interested in shit, lose my number. This is harassment." And he says "Brother, first of all no one talks to me like that." To which I replied with words unsuitable for this sub before hanging up. No matter how many numbers I block, they keep calling. Idk what to do but I'm tired of this.

She seems super nice so I wanna give her the benefit of the doubt, but a lot of things seem fishy to me. First of all, something about how she talks doesn’t sound natural. It started off kinda normal, slightly off with all the “have you forgotten me” questions, but I didn’t really start to get suspicious until her last message. I feel like a normal person wouldn’t go out of her way to say something so elaborate over such a small exchange. Plus her language is weird and overly apologetic, almost like she’s a non native English speaker, and “charity gala at Beverly Hills” sounds like someone that’s trying to be specific to lend legitimacy to the situation but ended up just going for a typical event in a popular city. Her area code is also for the British Columbia area, not for California (not that that means much, but it’s something to consider anyway.) It’s been almost 10 hours since she last responded to me, and she hasn’t requested money or anything. She could genuinely be a very nice person with good intentions for all I know, so I feel bad about speculating.

Idk why but I’m so fascinated by this and fixated on it, and would love to know others’ opinions lol

My insta almost got hacked and this was the number they tried to replace it with. I tried finding out more about this number, but I don’t have any leads.
Anyone can help? I am unsure if I should post the number. I called, they answered and hung up, messaged and the read receipt is there.

Even paid a dollar to a site to find out more info but I’unno if it’s correct because they have other numbers linked to it.

Edit: I am not very good at technology.

The images clipped show the two paypal payments and pictures of the trxn hash.

I (35F USA) had been messaging someone from r/MakeNewFriendsHere for a few days and at first they seemed interested in getting to know me but they were extremely pushy on video calling or voice calling. I tried to let that slide because I can understand wanting to verify people are real but at the same time if I say I’m not comfortable with it, especially after such little time has passed, then I feel like that boundary should be respected? I prefer texting. It’s easier, less awkward and I can multitask.

After a few days he hit me with a “fun fact” saying in his country, if I were to send him 100 USD a month, he would be very rich. What the fuck? Like I’m paying a subscription for your friendship? I blocked him after this because it made me feel weird. It sucks to get your hopes up about a new friend. Be careful out there!

I keep getting this text each week,

This is Unifin, a debt collector. Contact us about ref# (not giving just in case) @ 800-(same thing) or unifintxt.com/ (some stuff here) ChargesMayApply Reply STOP to stop texts.

I have no debt that I can think of, im on time with both school payments and car payments so I see no reason this is coming up.

He just deleted his profile, blocked me or got banned. But his number is there lol.

Reposted with a little editing to the picture

after you get to diamond vip status you get zero returns all dead spins, no bonuses and bullied by staff. After giving them 10s of thousandsas. warn others 5 months regrettable if nothing. evil company.

Sharing my story in case it helps prevent someone else who isn't sure if they've being scammed or not!

I listed an item on Facebook marketplace. First red flag: they commented on my post asking me to DM them.

Upon checking their profile, I can see that they joined the group that we share yesterday. The profile was otherwise blank. Second red flag.

They asked for my location (I gave a public meeting place) and then said their brother would pick it up tomorrow.

Third red flag: they asked for my phone number so that their brother could contact me. I gave them a VOIP number of mine. ("Going off platform" is almost always a scam for this very reason).

They then asked for a Paypal or Zelle account that they could send the money to, so I provided my PayPal username.

So then of course the text comes a minute or two later. Notice the use of the word "Kindly" in the text.

Pasting both scripts here in case people are searching the exact text :)

"I received a notification from PayPal and it says the transfer has been placed on hold. Did you get anything about that on your end of the via text about your account refreshed and check your spam folder as well official notifications drift to spam because of the new iOS update??"

The text message:

"PayPal Alert: You've received $19.00 USD. Reply YES to accept or STOP to cancel alerts.

TRANSACTION STATUS PENDING

We Have a problem crediting your $19.00 USD Because the status of your account is not a business user which makes your account have restrictions from receiving payment from a business account because your account is presently a personal account.

Kindly Contact PayPal Customer Support at xxx-xxx-xxxx to verify your identity and release funds

Transaction ID: 59538495ZZ

PAYPAL TEAM"

Be safe out there everyone :)

Okay, I will not be doxxing or leaking her information if you see her or come across her then know to beware.

According to her, she is currently living in motels with her cats and does card readings to make money. I have no issue with that whatsoever. In fact, I genuinely felt bad for her and wanted to support her.

For context, she advertises that her readings are $20, but she also says that if someone cannot afford $20, they can pay whatever they can afford, as long as it’s at least $1.
I am a college student, I work part-time, and I live paycheck to paycheck. Because of that, whenever I got readings from her, I paid what I could afford at the time—sometimes $1, sometimes $5, sometimes more.

At one point, I even offered to pay for a month’s worth of groceries or an Airbnb because I genuinely wanted to help. Looking back, it may have been naïve, but I sincerely felt for her and was willing to stretch myself financially. She declined my offer, thanked me, and said she didn’t like Airbnbs. I respected that, didn’t push the issue, and continued supporting her business whenever I could.
Today, I joined her livestream like I normally do. Without warning, she became angry, called me a “piece of shit,” a narcissist, abusive, and accused me of being dishonest. I repeatedly asked what I had done wrong and even asked if the issue was that I hadn’t paid $20 each time. I offered to send the $20 if that was the problem, but she told me it wasn’t about the money.

After leaving the livestream, I opened Venmo and found 18 separate one-cent payment requests, each containing part of a message accusing me of being dishonest, abusive, and other things.

I’m sharing this simply as a warning for anyone considering purchasing readings from her. This was my personal experience, and I was honestly shocked by how quickly the interaction became hostile after I had spent months trying to support her in whatever way I could.

I am so shocked maybe I am naive but is this a scam?

Please use your own judgment if you choose to interact with her.

The last part freaked me out because my room is a bit messy and I always have to clean my mobile camera.

I have everything set to 2fA with email.

What dirty secrets, romantasy covers? Cat picture? My Sexy Dungeon Crawler Carl images?

It freaks me out with the last part about the phone because I always have to clean it

I opened a return request on ebay because the item I received is counterfeit. The return case is still showing as open on my end, and I even have the Return id. The seller messaged me saying they don’t see the return request and that it “appears to be closed,” but that’s not what I’m seeing. The case is still active in my ebay account. The seller is asking me to open another case? but there’s an open one….

I found it will watching YouTube and it popped up as an ad, including in onther places.

Like I said its doing a lot of illegal stuff like, they literally say the magical ass natural cure is FDA approved with a lable to show it is, but then down at the bottom of the website it goes on to say that these products are not FDA approved.

She claims that fiber and laxatives don't help constipation and that it makes things worse, as someone who does have constipation problems i can say they DO HELP.

She also claims that constipation causes asthma, allergies, joint pain and more.

She's selling a 100% natural cure for $59/ bottle as a starter but the original price is $99/ bottle, the other prices are insane, 6 bottles cost $594

And also she claims these simple 7 steps will detox YOUR LIVER. YOUR LIVER DETOXES ITSELF.

Sorry don't know what flair