My Life as a Pop-Up Book

I made a private ad on Craigslist Central NJ to sell a Blackberry Bold 9700 smartphone on May 8, 2012. I was contacted by “Daniel Wilson” who offered to buy the phone by Paypal verified transaction for $150 which included the Express Mail International shipping fee.

We initially agreed that I would send a Paypal invoice to his email address wilsondaniel087@gmail.com for $150 in exchange for my Blackberry. He made the excuse that he wanted to send the phone to his nephew for a school project in Nigeria. 

I later received three email messages from a fake service@paypal.com email disguised as CustomerAgentServiceCentre@accountant.com with the subject headings: “**Notification Of An Instant Payment***” 

with the information: 

Unique Transaction ID #098234541674357F39E

”***You’ve Made A sale - Please Ship Out The Item Sold To Daniel Wilson On Craigslist.org!!!***”

***SHIPPING REFERENCE NEEDED***

Shipping Address - Confirmed

Name: Lawal Yusuf.

Address: 208 old Ojo road,Agboju,

City: Amuwo Odofin.

State:Lagos.

Country:Nigeria.

Postal Code:23401

I was told that I had to ship the order to the aforementioned address in order to get payment disbursed to my Paypal account.I proceeded to ship the phone to the address and the witness noted below, informed me of a prior incident of someone sending a valuable phone to an address in Nigeria. I then had my suspicions about shipping the phone out and I chose not to ship it to Nigeria.

I am afraid that my Paypal account and/or personal e-mail account associated with my Paypal may be compromised and my personal information may be subject to spam messages or harassment. 

I immediately cancelled the Paypal invoice to “Daniel Wilson” and I am in the process of removing all credit cards and bank account information associated with my Paypal account. I have not received any other correspondence from “Daniel Wilson” after this ordeal.