A woman says she got tricked by a man who she thought was going to buy her car through Facebook Marketplace.
She was selling it for her son’s college tuition money, but now she’s out a lot of the money.
“It was in good shape,” Katonya Douglas said.
She said she’s a single mother of five with one going to college. She planned to sell a car she didn’t need and use the money for her son’s tuition.
“I had several bites. (I) Wish I had taken the first one,” she laughed.
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Instead, she went with another offer. She said they met at a DMV office and that he paid her some cash.
“So then he sends me a Zelle for $2,800. And I receive a message from my bank that says payment received,” Douglas said.
“I trusted that and I gave him my car and my keys and my title,” she said. “The next morning, it says ‘payment failed.’”
She said he ended up giving her a few hundred dollars more, but then ghosted her.
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So she filed a police report and is trying to raise the money back for her son’s tuition.
“I am typically a very smart person. I think I’m just a little trusting. A little bit too trusting and everything is easy to scam nowadays,” she said.
Usually, when you transfer money with Zelle, it’s a done deal. A lot of scam victims have found that out the hard way when they get tricked into sending money.
But the company behind Zelle said if you’re the one receiving the money through the app, always check your bank account to make sure the money is there before moving on.
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