I’ll clarify that the word “escrow” wasn’t mentioned in the screenshot, but the concept was. The email from “eBay” (obviously fake, not only because of the disguised origin that faked the actual email address, but also the language and content) addressed the seller as “esteemed seller”, included something along the lines of “good news! The buyer has paid” blah blah “payment will be held and won’t appear in your payment summary until you send us a photo of the gift card and the receipt” and then reiterated in bold “we will give you your payment only when you send the photos by replying to this email … we know your time is valuable so send us the photos as quickly as possible”. I’m paraphrasing from memory.
This clearly isn’t the sort of hold made by eBay. It’s the old “payment held in escrow” trick - a classic scam.
The screenshot also included text messages between the “buyer” and the OP. The “buyer’s” text messages basically said the same thing - PayPal will give the money when the seller emails the gift card info / photo and receipt.
The scammers cover the fact that the seller won’t see any record of a sale in their eBay summary by saying this information will only be provided by eBay once they’ve received that email. A moment’s clear thought exposes the ridiculousness of this, but scammers have their script all ready to pressure victims into accepting their scenario. Psychologically it works more often than one would think.
This is a multi-pronged scam.
• the eBay item (pressure seller into sending even though not a cent has been paid, but fake payment email sent to seller);
• the funds on the gift card (siphon out as soon as the code is known, with the receipt info proving the gift card was purchased by the seller who believes “buyer” has paid for this)
• seller’s email address and name and phone number known - all information is useful for scammers (identity theft, future scams, mobile phone number porting, sell name and email address on the dark web)
• any other information which the scammer can winkle out of the seller.
Seller will be on a list of potential victims for future exploitations, including what triggers might make him suspicious do as to work around them or avoid them in future attempts.
Hence why I say “say nothing” and “neither confirm nor deny anything”. Even a refutation gives information.
Seller has made some mistakes, including giving his email address to the scammer in the first place, giving scammer his name and also his phone number and communicating with the “buyer” off-eBay. It’s possible that in the process of negotiations and communications, he divulged some banking information (so he’d need to be wary about so-called emails or text messages or phone calls supposedly from his bank).
He at least didn’t buy this wretched gift card and send his item… so that’s some comfort for him.
