Fake sellers are targeting a particular group of people on Facebook Marketplace, with one woman losing more than $600.
A woman has been scammed more than $600, while others claim to have also been tricked when buying bicycle parts on Facebook Marketplace.
The keen cyclist, who wished not to be named, transferred $600 for the component for a bike she was building and $25 for postage, only to have the seller, who was posing as a family man from regional Victoria, delete their profile and be wiped from the internet.
“I was really annoyed with them and I guess with myself that it had happened,” the woman told news.com.au, adding that she was a regular buyer on the platform and considered herself cautious.
“It just shows it must be pretty easy to do, to set up a fake profile … their profile is there and then it’s just gone and you have no trace of them.
“Usually we go onto the person’s profile and see if they’ve sold anything before on certain groups, how many friends they’ve got, just to make sure they’re legit. It seemed like this person was legit so we thought it would be OK.”
It wasn’t until a couple of days after the money had been paid that the woman and her partner realised the seller’s profile and ad had been deleted.
At first she said she thought there may have been another reason the profile was deleted, until they found the same pictures of the component, a groupset, on Gumtree selling for double the price.
“That’s when the penny dropped and it…
