My experience almost getting scammed through these classifieds

So I was in the market for a thermal camera and was hoping to save a few bucks and get a used one. I saw a post by John winkler (an actual member I’ve confirmed) so I responded. The respondent claimed to be his daughter (heather winkler) saying her dad was out of commission and she was in charge of selling his stuff. she received all responses to PM’s sent to the john winkler account so that too lent her some credibility. At any rate I asked for photos and received some. We then agreed on a price and she invoiced me through paypal via her company:

http://www.environmentalequipment.com/

so after sending the money and waiting a few weeks I got in touch with her asking for an update–the email bounced back. It appears she had vanished. I then filed a dispute and claim with paypal and was refunded all my money 1 week later.

I’m not sure what her angle was since I thought paypal was linked to a bank account–maybe she set up a bogus account somewhere and used that. At any rate I will never buy anything without paypal or credit card protection. Happy ending for me but it could have went the other way…

Moderators–I would suggest deleting the john winkler account as it seems to have been compromised…

Glad you got your money back. It does look suspicious when a person joins the forum and their first post is about retiring and selling their equipment. That membership was solely set up to scam somebody.

Jeff