Police in Gadsen, Alabama, have been investigating a multinational PayPal scam that appeared to be based in Alabama. Sellers involved were from the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Great Britain and Ukraine.
Gadsen Police “Sgt. Cole Lumpkin said police received a tip from Federal Express about an unusually large number of packages being delivered to the residence. About the same time, they received the first in a torrent of calls from people who had sold items online and delivered them, believing they’d been paid through PayPal, only to find out later that the PayPal page they were viewing was a fake,” reported The Gadsen Times. “They said they all heard the same story,” Lumpkin said, of how the buyer had to have the item sent overnight because it was for his daughter’s birthday present. The items had to be sent quickly so they would clear the Fed Ex, UPS or U.S. Post Office distribution center before the seller figured out the payment site page was fake. ‘If it didn’t happen quickly, (the seller) could call and tell Fed Ex to hold the package,’ Lumpkin said.”
A woman at the suspected address told police that a man “she met on Facebook about three years earlier had communicated through emails and phone calls” and “had asked her to receive packages for a friend of his, relabel them and ship them to a New Jersey address to ‘Ship Africa,’ a holding company for things that ultimately were bound for Nigeria. At the residence, detectives found packages containing several electronic items with no proof of who shipped them or where they were shipped from. There were cellphones, cameras, tablets and laptops, among other items. Detectives also found that a number of packages were awaiting delivery to the address,” the story said.
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