Marketplace Scam Risk Calculator

Marketplace scams run in two directions, and it's worth understanding both, because the tactics — and who they target — are mirror images of each other. In the fake-seller version, a scammer lists an item (often something in demand and priced just low enough to be tempting without seeming impossible), collects payment, and never ships anything, or ships an empty box. In the fake-buyer version, a scammer 'buys' a real seller's item, sends a fraudulent overpayment (often via a fake check or a payment that later reverses), and asks the seller to refund the difference before the original payment is discovered to be fake — leaving the seller out both the refunded amount and the shipped item.

The push to move off-platform is common to both directions because it strips away exactly the protections that make marketplace platforms relatively safe in the first place — buyer/seller protection programs, dispute resolution, and a paper trail the platform itself can review. A scammer suggesting 'let's just deal directly, it's easier' is often engineering exactly that removal, even when the suggestion sounds reasonable on its face.

Payment method is where the two scam directions diverge in method but agree in effect: wire transfers and gift cards both share the property of being difficult or impossible to reverse once sent, which is precisely why they're disproportionately requested in fake-seller scams. Fake-buyer scams instead exploit payment methods that look cleared before they actually are — a check that shows as deposited but hasn't fully cleared, or a payment app balance shown as available before the underlying transfer is confirmed, both of which can still bounce or reverse days later after a seller has already shipped an item or refunded a portion.

Price functions as a lure in the fake-seller direction specifically because it's calibrated, not accidental — priced low enough to feel like a genuine deal worth acting on quickly, but not so low that it triggers obvious suspicion. This is why 'too good to be true' works better as a description of the psychology than as a hard price threshold; a scammer pricing something at 90% off is easy to dismiss, but one pricing something at a plausible 30-40% below market, with a story ('moving, need it gone today') that explains the urgency, is calibrated to slip past normal skepticism.

The most reliable protection in both directions is the same: keep transactions inside the platform's own tools, and don't let payment or shipping move faster than actual confirmed funds. A platform's buyer protection program exists specifically to unwind exactly this kind of fraud — it only works if the transaction happened inside the system it's designed to protect.