Why talk about eBay scams on HeLives.com? #1: It’s personal. #2: Stewardship. I recently decided to sell a nice video camera which was owned by our ministry. We weren’t using it as much as we previously thought, so I decided to sell it on eBay and have the money go back into the ministry. Four times so far, yes four times, I have been the target of Nigerian scammers. The scammers were good enough that if it weren’t for my ten years of Internet design and development experience I could have easily fallen for their deceptive tactics.

All four times they tried to deceive me into thinking they had already deposited all the money into my PayPal account and the only thing left for me to do is to ship the product. They disguised their emails into making it look like they came from eBay and PayPal.

Tips to avoid being scammed:

1. Don’t ever end an auction early to sell it on the side. Even if they make up a nice story about it being a birthday gift.
2. Don’t ever agree to ship an item out of the country.
3. Always work through eBay (emails, requests for payment).
4. Make sure the money is verified to be in your paypal or bank account before you ship the item. If not you have just shipped someone your item for free.

If you get scammed on eBay you are, unfortunately and unknowingly, being a poor steward of what God has entrusted to you. Please be wise when selling online in order to keep that money under your own stewardship so that at least a portion will hopefully be used for the Lord’s work.