Online marketplace scams: the complete guide to buying and selling with strangers

Buying and selling on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, or OfferUp means doing a deal with a stranger, with no store, usually no escrow, and no referee. The platforms host the listing and step back — they aren’t running the scams, and outside their own checkout and payment flows, they aren’t standing between you and one either. Here’s the whole game in one sentence: every marketplace scam, buyer-side or seller-side, works by separating the item from the money. Your first move is just as short: for local deals, insist that the item and the payment change hands in the same place at the same moment, and treat anything that pulls them apart — a deposit, a screenshot, a shipping label, a courier — as the scam announcing itself.

The scale is worth knowing. The FBI’s IC3 counted 56,478 complaints of non-payment/non-delivery fraud in 2025 — payment sent and goods never received, or goods shipped and payment never made — with reported losses of about $503 million, making it one of the FBI’s top five cyber-enabled fraud crime types by complaint count that year. That’s the reported slice of exactly the trade this guide covers: strangers, stuff, and money.

If you’re buying: the item is the fiction

The buyer-side cons are all variations on selling you something that will never reach you.

• The ghost listing. Photos lifted from someone else’s ad, a price well under every comparable, and a story — moving this weekend, divorce, a relative’s estate — that explains the price and the hurry in one breath. The item doesn’t exist; the listing is bait for the next move.
• The deposit to “hold it.” Other buyers are supposedly circling, so a small payment now reserves it. Once the deposit lands — usually by payment app, which moves like cash — the seller and the listing evaporate. Between strangers, a deposit on an unseen item is never legitimate.
• The shipping pivot. You answer a local listing, but the item suddenly needs to ship — the seller left town, or a “courier service” will deliver it with a refund window. Now you’re paying for a box that never comes, backed by a tracking number that’s fake or belongs to someone else’s package. The FTC’s marketplace guidance is blunt about paying strangers by wire, gift card, or crypto: it’s “like sending cash,” and once it’s gone, you generally can’t get it back.
• The stolen or not-theirs item. Some real merchandise is being sold by people with no right to sell it. A seller who can’t answer basic questions about where the item came from, or won’t meet anywhere traceable, is telling you why the price is low.

Big-ticket versions of this get their own machinery — fake escrow sites for used cars, for instance. And if the “deal” is a storefront rather than a person, that’s a different animal with its own tells: see how to spot a fake online store.

If you’re selling: the payment is the fiction

Flip the table and the con flips with it: now the goal is to get the item, or your money, before any real payment exists.

• The fake payment confirmation. A “buyer” sends a screenshot or an email that looks exactly like a transfer notification. The FTC describes the play: the scammer sends a fake payment notification hoping you’ll send the item before you realize nothing arrived. A notification is not money. Open your own bank or payment app and look at the balance; that’s the only confirmation that counts.
• The overpayment. They pay — or send a check for — more than your price, then ask you to return the difference. The BBB’s September 2023 Facebook Marketplace advisory describes scammers overpaying with a fraudulent payment method precisely to get sellers sending real money back. The original payment bounces; your “refund” doesn’t. The FTC’s rule: never deposit a check for more than the selling price. The full mechanics are in our fake-check overpayment guide.
• The verification-code “buyer.” Before they’ll commit, they want to “verify you’re a real person” — so they text you a code and ask you to read it back. The FTC documented this as the Google Voice scam: the code lets them create a Google Voice number linked to your phone number, which they then use to run scams that trace back to you. The same request aimed at your email or bank code is a straight account takeover. No buyer needs a code from your phone, ever.
• The upgrade fee. A twist the BBB flagged on payment apps: a fake email claims the buyer’s payment is stuck until you upgrade to a “business account,” and the buyer asks you to cover the fee — to be reimbursed, of course. The payment was never real; the fee you send is.

Notice what all four have in common: each one asks you to act on a picture of money — a screenshot, an email, a check that hasn’t cleared — instead of money itself.

Meeting in person: make the handoff boring

In-person exchange kills most of these scams at once, which is why scammers work so hard to avoid it — and why the meeting itself deserves two minutes of planning.

The BBB’s advice for sellers is to skip your home address and ask to meet somewhere safe, “such as outside your local police department.” Some police departments go further and offer designated exchange spots for online sales — call your local department’s non-emergency line and ask whether yours does. Beyond the location: don’t meet an unknown buyer alone (the BBB says bring a partner or friend), go in daylight, and for local sales, take cash in person rather than a payment-app transfer whose reversal rules favor whoever is lying. A buyer or seller who refuses a police-station lot has told you everything.

Vet the person before you vet the deal

Two free checks catch most of the rest. First, price the item against comparables before the story reaches you — a listing far under everything else isn’t a bargain, it’s Too Good = Gone bait. Second, keep the entire conversation on the platform. The BBB’s Facebook Marketplace advisory recommends staying on the platform and withholding personal details; a counterpart’s first priority being your phone number or an off-platform chat is a tell in itself, partly because the platform’s records disappear from the scammer’s trail the moment you leave.

If it already went wrong

Move fast and by rail: our guide to getting your money back by payment method walks through what’s recoverable on each one. Then report it — to the platform, to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and to the FBI at ic3.gov; those 56,478 complaints are what federal cases get built on.

Then make the habit permanent. The Pause on Money is the whole defense in one move: same place, same moment, real money, seen item — and a hard stop on anything that tries to pull those apart. Browse the rest of the free defense moves, or see how fast you can spot the separation trick in the 60-second quiz.