Recently the staff team has been made aware of multiple accounts, perhaps run by the same individual or bots, attempting to scam people through PMs.
These users have little to no forum engagement (i.e. very low/zero post count) and will pm you and offer you a card you have posted a buy thread for. They will ask to deal off E4 via email, and then ask for payment via unprotected means (cashapp, paypal f&f, etc). We are banning these users as we are made aware of them, however it may be difficult to keep up with a coordinated and repeating effort.
Thankfully, it is very easy to defeat these scams. As with all deals, be sure to:
Make sure your trading partner actually has the card in question. Ask for timestamped photos or other proof of ownership. Check to see the pictures they’re sending aren’t lifted from eBay.
If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Make sure the price they’re asking for is largely in line with current market values.
If you decide to make a deal, pay via a service that has buyer protection and ask for tracked shipping.
Exercise more caution with people who are not established and trusted members of the forum.
If you’ve received a message that sounds similar to what I’ve outlined above, do not respond to it. If in the future you receive a similar message, or you suspect someone is attempting to scam you on the forum, message a moderator and we can help out.
Someone by the name of durandk22 did the same thing to me. He asked for my email to do a deal there and sent me pics of cards that weren’t his. When I asked if he could write his name on a piece of paper next to the cards, he ignored me. The pics he sent also were of two different psa cert numbers.
Yeah he messaged me, said he had a TRR booster, sent me a bad picture of 3, so I asked for more and he sent me a picture of a psa 10 reverse dark Tyra I tar and the back of a psa booster. Needless to say I stopped messaging him after that
Have suspicion that pokespeed200 may be doing this as well. No evidence but his posts are only in buy threads saying that he may have a card they are looking for, or stupid posts in other threads
Hadn’t received any scam messages yet, but considering my current wanted cards are niche enough that I’ve only seen one or two (or even zero) pictures in 5+ years, that doesn’t surprise me at all.
Thanks for the heads up, and hopefully you’ll be able to catch (and ban) 'em all.
If have met this situation 2 hours ago. I have a bad feeling about this, I can be wrong but my guts say big red flag.
E4 account: Rosemorrison852
This is a New account from a week or so.
This person contacts me saying he has a card that i’m looking for, he sent directly an email to continue the chat: smithbretton08@gmail.com
As this continue, he mentioned that he only accept cashapp payment.
Reviving this thread as we have new recent reports of attempted scams following this pattern. Please keep in mind the recommendations in the OP and message the mods immediately if you have any concerns about a possible scam.
