Need advice after eBay scam!

[BennyAndBjorn]

My nephew sold his Xbox on eBay and subsequently received an email saying the funds had been received and so he sent it to the buyer, however this turned out to be a scam email and no funds were actually received. The buyer now has the Xbox and the money.

My nephew is completely gutted, it’s been a hard lesson as he’s now down £450. Can anything be done about this? EBay have advised us to report to the police but I’m not sure this would high on their list of priorities!

Report to the bank or PayPal. Fraudulent transaction should be repaid.

I’m not sure he can report it to the bank as he’s not sent any money.

Paypal should be able to help.

It's been a while since I sold anything on ebay, but I don't think sellers are given the buyer's address until payment is received. Who was the email from?

I’ve just spoken to him and he said he didn’t use PayPal at all. I’ve only ever used eBay with PayPal so I’m not 100% how the funds were meant to have reached him.

@TheJRTwontLetMeBe the email was a fake sent from the buyer/scammer, it was designed to look like an email from eBay and said the funds were received/processing and he had to send the Xbox to the buyer.

As pervious poster mentioned, eBay don't release the shipping address until funds are with them. So it's not possible to ship out through eBay.

Unless the scan email also asked him to dispatch.

I always go through eBay. Any emails I close rather than clicking the link and go into the eBay app to confirm.

Very hard lesson learned. Has he contacted eBay to ask for help?

As far as I know the email said the funds had been sent and he needed to post the item along with the buyer’s address. I’m not sure how they got his email or if it went straight to his eBay inbox.

ebay have essentially said there’s nothing they can do and report it to the police.

Report to police. Keep the email. Police will want details from the email header. Also keep all details for the scam eBay account.