Acquitrans John Sand & Mike Sand Fake Paypal Payment for Online Purchase Ann Arbor Michigan

I was selling my Nikon D80 camera set in Los Angeles Craigslist when a Mike Sand contacted me via text from telephone number 314-763-3075 on  March 13, 2015, asking me the usual questions about the item such as availability of original boxes and final price etc; he also asked if I was willing to ship, and I said yes if he paid through Paypal. 

I have sold other camera items before online, taking Paypal payments, so I thought everything was fine when he asked me to send him a Paypal invoice. He asked me to send it to company name Acquitrans, C/O his son John Sand at 308 S. State St, Ste. 31 in Ann Arbor MI 48104. I shipped the item the next day on Saturday, through USPS, when I received an e-mail confirmation from what Paypal - or so I thought.

When Monday came and went, and I still did not get change on the status activity of my paypal account for the invoice I sent him, I started to get worried. I checked the e-mail he sent me for the Paypal payment, by forwarding the e-mail to myself to see if it was actually using a Paypal e-amil address, and was horrified to find out that it was not! The original e-mail showed it coming from service@paypal.com® but when I forwarded it to myself the e-mail was actually from help_desk@techemail.com. The e-mail looked like an authentic Paypal e-mail, but when I read through it again, I noticed some small grammatical and typographical errors as well.

I immediately went to my USPS account and did a package intercept online on Tuesday early morning. I called USPS Consumer Affairs and called the Michigan Post Office to notify them that I was a victim of online fraud. USPS was very helpful, and thank heavens I was able to intercept a very expensive camera set that would have otherwise have been stolen from me, but this ordeal has still cost me over $120 in shipping and other fees.

I tried to call the scammer on the telephone number he texted me with, but it says the number can only accept text messages. Googling the company Acquitrans also resulted in me finding out that it was a Nigerian shipping company, so beware of this Nigerian scamming company and its affiliates!