No one likes to think they’ll get scammed online, but the truth is, it can even happen to people who consider themselves pretty tech savvy.

OP wanted to treat himself to some new and expensive shoes. Thinking he’d save a couple of bucks, he decided to message an online seller about a pair.

First off I would like to state that I am in fact an idiot, who has learned his lesson.

My birthday is coming up and I decided to treat myself to a new pair of sneakers (been having a good year at my job and I don’t really spend much on myself).

I’ve always wanted a pair of Yeezy’s so I got online and found a pair at a really good price.

They made a deal, OP was convinced he was legit, and he transferred the money using Zelle.

When I was messaging the seller, he asked if I would be willing to not pay through the site, to avoid seller fees and he would sell even cheaper.

He even offered to take the payment through Chase (which I assumed would have me protected), so we used the Zelle Quick Pay feature.

Before I sent the money he even sent me a pic of the sneakers and pics of several receipts from the UPS/USPS, showing that he sells several pairs of sneakers and actually ships them.

I agree and we begin and conversation on IG, guy seems pretty legit, doesn’t look like he needs to scam people, he seems legit enough, so I send him the funds thinking I just got a deal.

The guy immediately disappeared and of course, never sent the shoes.

No response after the fund are sent, a day goes by with no answers. At this point I chalked it up to a loss and learned my lesson, should have spent the extra $40 and got it from a verified site.

Also, do not use Zelle, Chase told me because I used quick pay, there is nothing they could do except contact the police, they had no fraud protection for Zelle, even though I paid it through Chase, turns out Zelle is a scammers best friend.

ONLY TRUST PAYPAL.

OP did a little detective work, and found the person’s name and phone number. When he called, neither he or his mother had any idea what he was talking about – but it turns out he had been getting similar calls from angry people recently.

At that point I’m more pissed that I allowed myself to get scammed, not so much about the money, I’ll survive. This is when I go into full 007 mode and start my revenge. I find the guy on FB and put his name into the White Pages, and find his home number and I call it.

The kid still lives with his parents so I figure they should know what’s going on. I speak with his mother and she has no idea what’s going on but that he isn’t home, I said unless you want cops at your door he better call me.

5 min later I get a restricted call, it’s him. He has no idea who I am and had not been speaking with me at all, actually turns out his phone was stolen on NYE and didn’t have his IG account locked, or his Venmo account.

The guy who stole his phone used his Grailed account and IG to post shoes, and then never sent any of them.

Happened to a bunch of people in a few days.

The kid had tracked down the seller’s actual social media accounts, though. OP took that info and sent it to the guy he’d been talking to, letting him know he knew who he was.

This is where the guy messed up.

The real guy tracked the Venmo account and matched it to a very similar FB and IG account name.

I decided to throw a dart in the dark and sent a pic of the FB account to the guy who scammed me.

First response, “Where did you get that?”

For whatever reason, the scammer decided to text me from his real number at that point, now I have his number.

Over the course of a conversation, he convinced him he knew a lot more, so the guy sent his money back.

I now decided to BS and told him that the Chase Fraud Specialist is waiting for me to send the pictures of the receipts he send me, I told him they could use the very visible tracking numbers to find the seller and their billing info since it was a debit transaction, and that I now had FB photos of him and a name and number.

I told him that the real person told me their was an active police investigation and this was the info they needed.

I started demanding my money back or I would turn everything over and in 5min I had all my cash back.

He made me “promise” to delete everything if he sent it all back, I even gave him some “answers” about the fake conversation I had with Chase, he was trying to find out what I/they knew, which was everything.

Best part was he also used his personal account to send me the money back, which shows his real name, had a slightly different one on FB.

The account would also have all of his billing info.

He wasn’t a very good scammer.

OP, of course, still turned over everything he had to the fraud department.

All of the accounts were deleted and I’ve been been blocked. Doesn’t matter, I sent everything to the poor guy this scammer has been destroying.

The poor guy said it’s been the worst 4 days of his life, constant calls and emails about being scammed.

Luckily Venmo covered all the money that the scammer transferred out of his account, but he also wants revenge.

Hopefully he will get it now, since we now know exactly who it is.

I did go through a verified site and purchased the shoes for real with no worries, I had to have them on principal at that point lol.

Revenge and helping out strangers? This guy is a hero!

The top comment says it only takes one stubborn victim to put a stop to things.

Because nobody likes scammers.

This is your PSA to be super safe sending money online.

Apparently not even Amazon is safe anymore, at least not all the time.

Everyone is happy to hear he got his money back, though!

I’m so glad this story has a happy ending.

And OP learned something, so maybe this wasn’t so bad, in the end.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.