Sellers on ad sites: detect and avoid the Mandat Cash scam

There's no point beating about the bush: the Money Order scam is extremely popular with scammers. In reality, it's a clever mix of a discreet approach, fake payment tracking sites ("phishing") and psychological pressure. Fortunately, many of these scammers can be clearly identified by the evidence and mistakes they leave behind. You'll also find that they forget to include a Bescherelle in their "perfect little scammer" kit.

This is undoubtedly one of the most common scams on Leboncoin and other classified ad sites, along with the PayPal scam. The scammers are going to hijack a payment method well known to the French, the Mandat Cash, and as a general rule the mandat postier via La Poste, which allows you to receive a cash payment without having to go through a bank account, as the Service Public explains.

You should also be aware that since 1 January 2018, La Poste no longer offers the national Mandat Cash! So if a potential buyer makes you such a proposal, you'll know straight away that it's either someone who didn't know about it (although you do ask for a minimum of information when you demand a means of payment...), or that it's inevitably an attempted scam that you can very easily get round with this information. However, some branches of the La Poste network offer transfers via another payment system popular with crooks, to which we devoted an edifying article on Western Union scams between private individuals.

Making contact, the first stage of the scam

The approach is often the same: a text message. If you leave your mobile phone number available for consultation on classified ad sites, you will probably have received a message of this type:

The first clue should tip you off: very often, a mistake in French will jump out at you when you read the message. What's more, if you ask, the potential buyer will always find an excuse not to speak to you directly on the phone, but to ensure that all exchanges take place by email.

The most common excuses given are that the SMS credit has run out (a rare occurrence in 2019), a disability (the buyer claims to be deaf or dumb), or a temporary trip abroad that prevents them from using their phone to make or receive calls.

As you know, to be on the safe side, you should always have an opportunity to talk on the phone during a transaction between private individuals. But if you take the bait, the rest of the scam takes place in your e-mail inbox.

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On the hunt for personal information

Once the seller has sent an email to the address given in the SMS message, the scammer will put his plan into action. But here too, some people go so far as to put forward extremely dubious arguments!

For example, some people say that they work in another country and cannot make a payment in person, but that their employer reimburses 50% of their expenses if they buy from their place of work abroad! They then give you a date when they will be in your area, and offer to pay in advance and collect the item when they get there. Isn't that generous?

What happens next is almost always the same: the email ends with a request for information about how to proceed with payment by Money Order, i.e. your full name, address, telephone numbers and the final price of the property you wish to sell. These details will enable the scammer to create a fake website using this information. So far, this has not cost the seller anything, apart from their personal details. Here is an example of an e-mail you could receive:

Time to pay and surprise tax!

The scammer calls you back to tell you that everything is fine and that the mandate has been registered. Brilliant! To prove his bona fides, he then gives you the number of the money order he made and a link that takes you to a web page that looks very similar to the La Poste interface.

If you enter the code sent to you by email, you will be taken to an interface containing all the information requested in the previous email. But there's a catch. Being abroad, the scammer tells you that there is a compulsory tax in his country, which you must pay in order to release the money from the Cash Mandate, as well as the contact details of the person supposedly responsible for payment, who should explain to you how to pay the tax.

The seller, reassured by what he has seen on the fake La Poste website, will contact the person indicated and pay the tax. But, as you can imagine, it's all a fake and the money order will never be collected. The loop is closed and the scam is complete.

Securing your payment is essential

The Cash Mandate is anything but recommended if you want to benefit from a secure transaction between private individuals. Choose to be paid by Obvy for total protection, so you can be sure the money exists and avoid all the scams that are commonplace on classified ad sites.

Obvy is the only secure payment solution between private individuals that can prevent all payment defaults, whether your transactions are concluded by hand delivery or by delivery.