Subdomestic Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 (edited) Hey folks, I wanted to raise some awareness about a Discogs scam that almost got me. Earlier this week I was about to buy the Bad Religion box set from a seller on Discogs who looked legit. Almost 300 items sold, high percentage of positive feedback, and appeared to be located in the UK. Price was below average but not so amazing that it was too good to believe. Figured the guy was just looking for a quick sale. DM'd the guy with a few questions about condition and shipping and he got back to me quickly. In hindsight, I should have asked for pictures too. Anyway, I put my order through and go to pay. I get an error. I try again and again over the course of an hour then I get a message from the seller saying "hey, is something wrong with the order?". I told him I was having issues with the Discogs payment at checkout and he gives me an email address to send payment direct via PayPal. Not proud of myself but I almost did it. I actually tried to send the payment through but thank fuck it was flagged by PayPal security as a high dollar value international transfer and didn't go through. I go into PayPal's support chat to figure out what's up. Meanwhile I keep getting messages from the Discogs guy asking where the payment is. PayPal confirmed that they flagged the transfer and asked me to confirm I wanted to send the money. At the time I said yes and they said I was now clear to send at my discretion. This is when it dawned on me that there was no option to send the money Goods and Services - only Friends and Family. Red flag goes up and I messaged the Discogs dude that I am not going to send almost $900 CAD as Friends and Family - we need to figure something else out. I wake up the next morning and my order is cancelled. Discogs guy is no longer responding to my messages. At first I'm bummed that I missed a good deal and I'm mad that the Discogs checkout screwed me over. Then I think about it a little more and start Googling the same type of scenario. I'm pretty sure it's this scam: https://www.discogs.com/forum/thread/951380?page=1&message_id=9630935 People's accounts are being hacked, items are posted for sale, their payment settings deliberately disabled, and then the scammer messages for a Friends and Family PayPal transfer. The other reason I think this is what happened to me is because PayPal customer support told me the guy's name tied to the PayPal account. I googled it afterwards and it's a Ukrainian name. So now I think I dodged an expensive bullet but wanted to share my near miss with others. Be smart about paying for stuff and maybe change your Discogs password. Stay safe out there. Edited July 22, 2022 by Subdomestic Fridge Fox, Velocity of Sound, poweredbytrust and 10 others 3 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HardlineKid Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 This happened to a friend of mine as well when buying a blink box set. It was way below average. Thankfully he didn't bite Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParallelofDeath Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 Happened to me as well. The scammer found a legit account that had been inactive for a few years and took it over. I realized something was wrong when I checked out the other listings after my PP payment kept failing and it was all records in the $150-$400 range. Fortunately wised up in time and didn't send the money directly. Weeks later I got an apologetic message from the distraught original account owner who was left to sort out the mess. Ever since then I've been super careful, to the point where I almost missed out on some legit deals until the seller convinced me they were a real person. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhulud Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 So the scammers are using those inactive accounts...are the records they're "selling" from that hostage account's collections or stuff they're making up? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MCDELTAT Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 2 minutes ago, jhulud said: So the scammers are using those inactive accounts...are the records they're "selling" from that hostage account's collections or stuff they're making up? They often take over accounts selling lots of oldies and just list any random high ticket item. Hope that people with it in their wishlist will jump on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MCDELTAT Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 It’s been covered a handful of places. Subdomestic 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whoa Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 Hello, I'm from the UK and I can legit say this is the type of pikey shit we would pull off. Regardless: Change your password, enable 2FA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParallelofDeath Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 1 minute ago, jhulud said: So the scammers are using those inactive accounts...are the records they're "selling" from that hostage account's collections or stuff they're making up? Stuff they're making up. Highly desirable records that could conceivably come up for sale every now and again, rated NM or better and priced reasonably but not cheaply. In my case it was a rare Axe to Fall variant. But most of the other records listed were totally different genres, just all in the same price range. The seller's original collection was mostly >$40 records, so the disparity was glaring. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Han Solo Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 Glad you didn't send friends and family, I honestly see no reason to ever use that feature. I manage a couple collecting groups on Facebook and despite the "no friends and family" rule people still do it for whatever reason and try to come to us for help. Like my guy what were you thinking lmfao pizza face 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hallowken78 Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 Thanks for posting about this - definitely heightens my awareness. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subdomestic Posted July 22, 2022 Author Share Posted July 22, 2022 13 minutes ago, MCDELTAT said: It’s been covered a handful of places. Same video that convinced me that this was a scam attempt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhulud Posted July 22, 2022 Share Posted July 22, 2022 It may or many not be related, but I have seen a great uptick in the availability on Discogs & eBay of Selena Gomez - Revival LP on red wax. The listings are still hovering in the $200 range...which is relatively low from past but still too much. I've been looking for it but curious as to the sudden uptick on copies being available. It actually may be related to this scam. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vinyl21 Posted July 23, 2022 Share Posted July 23, 2022 Thanks for the heads up! Looks like 13 people got scammed by one guys account Tekwrx Discogs isn't doing much about the situation either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fish Posted July 23, 2022 Share Posted July 23, 2022 This seems to be getting more common. I've noticed a few sellers with great feedback in the past months who were all of a sudden offering a lot of really rare items for maybe 25% below market value. It was too much of a red flag for me. A week or so later on one of them there was a ton of negative feedback and the sellers response was that they were hacked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MCDELTAT Posted July 24, 2022 Share Posted July 24, 2022 Which, IMO is just weird that this many people are even getting hacked. My discogs is through Google, which uses 2FA and a Yubikey to login. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burntwolf Posted July 25, 2022 Share Posted July 25, 2022 does Discogs even have 2FA? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fish Posted July 26, 2022 Share Posted July 26, 2022 4 hours ago, burntwolf said: does Discogs even have 2FA? https://support.discogs.com/hc/en-us/articles/4403461442317-How-Do-I-Set-Up-And-Manage-Two-Factor-Authentication-On-My-Discogs-Account- kylet and ultramidtempo 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burntwolf Posted July 26, 2022 Share Posted July 26, 2022 13 hours ago, fish said: https://support.discogs.com/hc/en-us/articles/4403461442317-How-Do-I-Set-Up-And-Manage-Two-Factor-Authentication-On-My-Discogs-Account- thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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