Login Blog


Blog
>
>
Trending Facebook Marketplace Venmo Scams To Avoid


Trending Facebook Marketplace Venmo Scams To Avoid


About 1 billion people use Facebook Marketplace monthly for buying and selling items. According to PayPal, 19% of consumers are also more likely to complete a transaction with Venmo than with other traditional payment platforms.

Scammers know these facts, too—that’s why Facebook Marketplace and Venmo are on their list of favorite platforms for scamming victims. Facebook Marketplace offers a convenient platform for chatting with users and tactfully deceiving them, while Venmo processes instant, often irreversible payments that require only minimal payment information from both parties.

Combined, these platforms create a perfect opportunity for scammers to target customers and swiftly disappear once they achieve their goal. To help protect your funds on these platforms, we explore the latest Facebook Marketplace Venmo scams and ways to avoid them.

Is Venmo Safe for Facebook Marketplace?

Facebook Marketplace is a trusted place for local buying and selling. Its integration with Facebook profiles makes identifying buyers and sellers on the platform easy. Through profiles, buyers can see the seller’s info, such as:

  • Past activities, 
  • Other listings, 
  • Customer ratings and reviews 

Sellers can also review the buyer’s profile for suspicious activity before selling to them.

Venmo also provides security measures to protect users from bad actors. They include:

  • Bank-level encryption, 
  • Multi-factor authentication, 
  • Transaction alerts for early fraud detection 

What makes this payment platform potentially unsafe is how scammers use it to defraud victims. Hiding under the cover of internet anonymity, scammers impersonate legitimate users and deceive victims into sending them money or revealing their Venmo account information. 

If you want to stay safe when using Facebook Marketplace and Venmo, you must understand the different ways scammers take advantage of users on the platform.

7 Latest Facebook Marketplace Venmo Scams 

These are seven FB Venmo scam tactics that can help you determine that you’re dealing with a scammer:

  1. “Pay me upfront” scam
  2. Fake items scam
  3. “I overpaid you” scam
  4. Payment advance scam
  5. Counterfeit invoice scam
  6. Venmo customer representative scam
  7. Business account scam

“Pay Me Upfront” Scam

This scam occurs in a scenario where you’re the buyer, and the seller is the scammer. When you indicate interest in an item they have for sale, the seller asks you to pay for it upfront. If you pay for the item before you inspect it in person, you stand the risk of never getting what you paid for. 

The scammer may even send you falsely generated shipping information to convince you that the items are on their way to you when, in reality, they’re not. As time passes and you try to reach out to the scammer to inquire about the status of your item, you discover that you can no longer contact them.

One way to easily identify this scam is if the buyer refuses to send you live pictures of the item before you pay or if they insist that you must pay via Venmo. 

Fake Items Scam

In this case, scammers list some items that appear genuine, but when you buy them, you receive products different from what you ordered.

For example, you may receive poor or counterfeit products or a different type of product entirely. This scam is prevalent with buyers looking to purchase rare items like concert tickets, designer items, and high-demand gadgets. 

A telltale of this scam is that the price listed for the item is way below the actual price the item should sell for. For example, a scammer may list a designer purse for $450 when, in reality, it costs $2,500. Don’t be enticed by the seemingly huge discount—if it’s too good to be true, it likely is.

“I Overpaid You” Scam

This popular scam happens between you, the seller, and a scammer posing as a buyer. The scammer sends payment for an item via Venmo and claims to have overpaid it. For example, they may:

  • Claim they paid $600 for an item that’s worth $60 
  • Send you a fabricated screenshot to prove that they overpaid you 
  • Pressure you into sending a refund

If you send it without confirming that you actually received the payment, you lose your money.

Another way they carry out this scam is by sending you an overpayment through a stolen credit card, so you truly receive the incoming payment notification and are forced to refund them. However, once the original cardholder reports their card missing and files a chargeback, the card company deducts the original payment the scammer made. You’ll also lose the refund that you previously made.

Payment Advance Scam

Similar to an upfront payment scam, the scammer asks you to deposit a down payment through Venmo to reserve an item or secure your spot. This scam is commonly used on people who want to buy scarce items, like a rare pet breed. Scammers also con people into making deposits for fake rentals or property listings to reserve their spot. 

Once this payment is made, the scammer disappears. If you feel that the scammer is pressuring you to pay the deposit quickly via Venmo, it’s a sign that you’re likely being scammed.

Counterfeit Invoice Scam

This scam is targeted at people who aren’t familiar with how Facebook Marketplace and Venmo work. The scammer, posing as a customer, contacts your business asking to buy an item. They request your Venmo email to pay for the item, but instead of paying, they falsify an invoice and send it to your email as proof that they have paid—but Venmo is holding their funds.

To make the scam more convincing, the scammer sends the email from a fake Venmo email address and designs a counterfeit invoice. In the email, the fraudster, claiming to be Venmo, confirms that they received the customer’s payment and will deposit it to your account once you provide shipping information.

This isn’t how Venmo or FB Marketplace work—they don’t put payments on hold, and any email claiming so is fake.

Venmo Customer Representative Scam

Scammers could trick you by pretending to be customer support. They may call or email you from a spoofed account, informing you that your account needs maintenance or an upgrade.

A warning sign for scams like this is that the scammer may pressure you into sharing your personal account information, like your login credentials, or send you a malicious link containing malware.

They may also include alarming notes, causing you to panic and take unpremeditated action.

Business Account Scam

This scam is targeted at FB Marketplace sellers. The fraudster claims to pay for an item, but instead of receiving the money, you get a fake email. The email states that you need to top up your account with some additional funds to conduct transactions between personal and business accounts.

In TikToker Rachel Blake’s case, the scammer offered to send her an additional $350 to hit a $500 minimum balance. Reaching this minimum balance was supposedly meant to allow Rachel to transact with the scammer’s business account since she had a personal account.

The scammer expected Blake to refund the extra $350 after completing the transaction. However, her alarm bells went off, and she guessed she was dealing with a scammer. As soon as she threatened to involve Venmo in the transaction, the scammer disappeared. 

5 Tips To Protect Yourself From Venmo Scams on Marketplace

You can learn to avoid and protect yourself against Venmo scams on Facebook Marketplace. Follow these five tips:

  1. Research the other party before buying any item—Newer accounts with little to no account history are red flags because they don’t have enough reviews to verify their legitimacy
  2. Be wary of unusual payment methods—If the other party is asking you to make transfers or refunds in seemingly complicated or unusual ways, it’s safer to walk away
  3. Verify items before paying—If you can’t pick up an item in person, ask the seller to share live pictures of the products (not screenshots from a website) before you pay
  4. Set up additional protection on your Venmo account—Keep unauthorized parties out of your account and financial information by activating multi-factor authentication 
  5. Move your savings out of your Venmo account—It’s dangerous to store personal savings or business cash reserves in your Venmo account because if an account breach occurs, a scammer could drain your savings easily. For better protection, safeguard your funds in a high-security digital storage platform like FortKnox instead
Chat Support