If you’ve recently seen a Facebook post offering unbelievable deals on cars, tools, appliances and other items, beware — the post is likely a scammer trying to lure people into sending money they’ll never get back.

The posts may read something like this actual post from a scammer:

“Hello guys, we are clearing out items from my Cousin house (he got moved to aged care) and he is no longer in need of these items and he is glad to have the extra money for other expenses on coming holidays. We have a truck and can deliver at a small extra fee. Send a Dm if interested in any item. FIRST COME FIRST SERVE BASIS!

“Well, if you pay a deposit now, I won’t open talk with anyone else about it and mark it sold on your name. So when I’m home, you can come and check it. If you like it, you will pay the balance and take it, if you don’t, I will refund the deposit you paid.”

These posts will then list several items for sale, usually cars, tractors, ATVs, refrigerators, furniture and sometimes pets. The post will likely sound like an estate sale listing and play on emotion, as in the example above.

Beware of the ‘clone’

In some cases, fraudsters have created a clone of a real person’s account and are pretending to be that person. In other cases, criminals have hacked the account, gaining access to emails, passwords, friends lists and other personal information, and are using this information to get people to send money.

While fraudulent posts with items for sale do occur on Facebook Marketplace, scams like this are more often going to show up in regular Facebook feed because they are targeting friends and family members of the alleged seller.

If you try to comment on the post, you probably won’t be able to. Instead, the post will ask you to send a message to the seller, who will then explain how they will “hold” the item if you send a deposit through a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) payment app, such as Cash App, Venmo or Zelle.

These transactions are also known as “authorized push payments,” in which an account holder uses an app (banking or P2P) to send money directly from their bank account to another bank account. These payments are hard if not impossible to reverse, making them ripe for fraud — once you’ve sent the money, you will not be able to get it back, regardless of what the post says.

‘If it sounds too good to be true…’

Awareness is one of the most important ways to protect yourself from being tricked. Remember the old adage: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Even if you “know” or think you know the person selling the item, never send money, either as a deposit or in response to an “urgent” need or emergency, unless you can verify the recipient’s legitimacy (e.g., by verifying the account or confirming that the seller is a local business with a phone number and a physical location you can go to).

If you decide to purchase an item you see online, it is better to meet in a safe location and pay on delivery of the item. If the seller tries to pressure you to send a deposit before you can meet, perhaps because there is “so much interest” in the item or “another person may beat you” to the deal, consider that a red flag.

Credit card payments or transactions made through platforms like PayPal that have some buyer protections offer better fraud protection, which is why criminals will not offer or accept them.

For more information on protecting yourself from online fraud, see the following links: https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/facebook-marketplace/  and https://lifelock.norton.com/learn/fraud/facebook-scams.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was written by Carrie Brown McWhorter and originally published by The Baptist Paper.