Kevin Klop had blonde hair, a motorbike, and slightly blurred features. He looked like Ryan Gosling if Ryan Gosling hailed from Chapel Street. His lounge room was cold and depressing, except that it contained the perfect couch, one that would fit in the awkwardly shaped section of my presently couch-less lounge room. My partner and I knew we might be getting scammed. We were on Marketplace—Facebook’s scam-riddled platform for buying and selling second-hand goods—and Kevin Klop’s Facebook account had only been created in 2024. But I had reverse-image searched his profile picture and nothing came up, and, judging by his chat, which was idiosyncratic and easy-going, he was definitely at least human: not ChatGPT, not running a script. Besides, we really wanted that couch, so we did it—we transferred him $50 for delivery.
The next morning, the delivery time came and went with no couch and no update from Klop. Then he messaged us a couple of hours later: “Hello. I’m so sorry! [crying emoji]. My son has been sick this morning but I can come now.” Another few hours passed. “My son is still sick and I’ve run out of money for medicine, could you please transfer me some more? [crying emoji, prayer hands emoji].” My partner wrote: “You’re a scammer!” Kevin left the conversation and the listing disappeared.
We called our bank and spoke to a customer service representative named Leanne. We had been under the impression that, in the event of a scam, we could simply “reverse the transaction.” But it turns out one cannot simply “reverse the transaction.” Obviously, everyone would be “reversing the transaction” all the time if it were that easy.
“You can lodge an application, but it has to get approved,” Leanne told us. “It looks like his account was only just set up. You should have seen a warning that it was a new account when you went to transfer.”
“Yes, we saw the warning.”
“Mmm.”
“And it also said his name and bank account didn’t match.”
“Mmmmmm.”
What else had we ignored? Kevin had set his location to Melbourne CBD, but when we’d asked to come and have a look at the couch, he told us he actually lived in Cranbourne. He seemed fine with us collecting it, but we were sick of driving out to various ‘burbs to get the odds and ends with which we were furnishing our apartment. In his ad, he said he could deliver, so we offered him $50 to drop it off. What else? The measurements of the couch seemed weird—too big for the petite sofa on screen. What else? He said that we should transfer his brother the money because he didn’t have an account, and yet a) the account name was Kevin Klop, and b) in the ad, he said he was moving house; how could he be renting/paying a mortgage here without a bank account? “Maybe he just moved to Australia and has been living with family,” I said to Kat. I peered closer at his smiling face. “He looks Canadian.”
*
Klop-style Marketplace scams—getting someone to transfer you money ahead of time for a good or service you’ll never provide, then dropping off the face of the earth when the money comes through—are simple, effective, and hard to trace. Recently, a friend seeking a sublet found a Marketplace listing for a one-bedroom apartment for $300 a week. The seller asked for a $50 deposit to secure an inspection. When she asked for the address, the scammer said they’d tell her only when she transferred the money. Luckily, she clocked it as a scam quickly—she’d seen this kind of thing repeatedly during her house hunt.
Paying a dodgy deposit is one thing; you may just never get your item. But the process of paying offers ample opportunity for further scamming. The scammer may send you a link to a dupe payment platform, in which you will enter your details, which they will then steal from you. Sometimes, scammers convince marks to send them pics of identifying documents, like a passport or driver’s licence, or even login details. These can be used to set up or log into a bank account, with which they can conduct further scams under the cover of someone else’s identity.
The most common Marketplace scam going around (although it seems to have peaked last year and dropped off a bit since) is the one where you list an item for sale and someone wants to buy it. So far, so good. The buyer claims they’re out of town, busy, or don’t have a car, and that they’ll send their cousin/nephew/son to collect the item. They insist on paying you via PayID. If you say you don’t have PayID they’ll send screenshots guiding you through the setup process. They will then claim to have sent money that you can’t access because you don’t have a “business account,” and that they have had to pay extra to upgrade it for you. They will ask you to reimburse them. You may also receive an email or message (they have your email address/phone number because PayID works off email address/phone number) purporting to be from PayID telling you the same thing. If you pay that money, it will go directly to the scammer. I spoke to someone who lost $2,000 this way while trying to sell a pair of humble black Asics.
Really, though, there are as many possible scams as there are people. In Darwin, I heard about someone who bought a dehumidifier off Marketplace during the wet season that turned out to be a humidifier. A friend overheard teens on a bus in Sydney talking about buying fake AirPods from AliXpress and reselling them on Marketplace. This bait-and-switch practice is increasingly common; I strongly suspect that some design-fascist homewares stores based in Melbourne source their Noguchi knock-offs and curvy chrome-and-glass table lamps from Temu.
In this vein, the best low-stakes scam I heard of is as follows. Helen (not her real name) bought a “fancy seeming, ‘hand tufted’ rug off a millennial who claimed to be moving overseas.” In the Marketplace ad, a large, irregularly shaped rug is listed for $800. It’s a tragic piece of hipster funkadelia, patterned with splotches, zebra stripes, and bold colours. The seller claims she “paid a fortune” for the “organic…wool” item “a few years ago” in “NYC” and is “selling due to relocation.” Helen picked up the rug from the seller in her studio. Her profile picture matched her real-life appearance, and she had a public presence online. It all seemed legit. Then a month or two later she saw the rug listed again on Marketplace, by the same person, then a month or two later, there it was again. Each time, the ad was exactly the same. And at the time of writing, the ad is up again; I sent an inquiry and was assured that the item is “completely unique” and a “one-off.” So the rugs are real, as is the seller—the scam is the story. “I still have it and I like it,” Helen tells me, “but I also feel like a dumbass when I look at it.” (Would that all our purchases humble us in this way.)
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