The founder of a popular skincare company is warning Aussies to watch out for a sneaky scam on Facebook that has become all too common and easy to fall for.
Kayla Houlihan, who owns Victorian skincare business Tribe Skincare, took to TikTok to warn her 237,000 followers of fraudsters abundant on Facebook Marketplace.
She had been trying to resell her television through the social media feature when she received some strange responses just hours after posting her advertisement.
Four separate people reached out to her with uncannily similar messages saying they were unable to pick up the item themselves, but would send someone else in their place and give her the money for the TV through PayID.
“At first, I didn’t really understand how it was a scam if I was getting paid,” Ms Houlihan told her TikTok followers.
“But everyone saying the exact same thing to me was really suspicious.”
Ms Houlihan said the scammers “all used the same script”.
News.com.au has previously reported on the scam, after a journalist received six of these messages over the space of two hours, also through Facebook Marketplace.
For those unfamiliar with PayID, it’s where you use a piece of information like your mobile number or email address which you can link to your bank account to receive payments.
Once linked, you’re able to provide this information rather than distributing your BSB and account number.
These Facebook Marketplace fraudsters often will try to convince vendors to send them their email address so they can “pay” them.
They then send a fraudulent email to the vendor, which looks legitimate, where the PayID account says you need to pay money to “release the funds”.
The fake email will say a problem was encountered “while crediting your PayID account” because the buyer was trying to deposit more money than what the vendor’s account can receive.
Then the false email encourages the vendor to raise their account limit by sending the buyer funds so the “account limit can be expanded”.
Ms Houlihan’s words of warning have been viewed more than 200,000 times since she posted the video last week.
Australians lost over $9 million to online shopping scams last year, according to Scamwatch.
Of those, Australians lost $260,000 to the PayID scam specifically.
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