Dear Wetpixel members,
Wetpixel has been a safe venue for the buying and selling of second hand equipment since its inception and I have personally enjoyed many smooth and pleasant transactions with other members of the Wetpixel community over the years and continue to do so.
However, there are always those that seek to take advantage of communities like this, so may I ask that everyone be wary of the possibility of fraudulent transactions please?
Specifically:
- Check out the buyer/seller feedback thread: http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=25594&page=13
- Payment needs to be via an accepted mechanism, like debit/credit card, bank transfer or PayPal. Western Union, MoneyGram and the like offer no recourse if the goods do not arrive. I would advise avoiding sellers offering only these types of payment.
- Be aware that meeting in person is not always without risk. Chose safe spaces and environments in which to do so.
- Do not send out goods until full payment is made and in your bank account!
- Find out the address of the seller/buyer and carry out a Google maps search
- Search here on Wetpixel to see how long they have been active and what other posts they have made. Although accounts can be hijacked, active community members are less likely to be fraudulent. If they have been involved in discussions outside of the classifieds recently, this is also a good way to verify their bona fides.
- Google buyers/sellers email addresses. No results would suggest that they have not had the address for long.
- Google any names that are provided. Again, the vast majority of people active in the underwater imaging community have some form of web presence.
- Please report any suspicions you may have to the Admin team. As a community, we can work together to try to prevent these issues, but in order to do so we need to communicate!
I recently removed a seller that was behaving very suspiciously and there were numerous messages in his/her PM system from members of the Wetpixel community voicing concerns about that seller's validity. Please get in touch with the admin team immediately if you have concerns like these so that we can investigate and take action as appropriate. As a community, we can help prevent other members from falling prey to these types of fraud.
All the best
Adam
) and his email address gave me no hits at all which I found highly unlikely. The person asked me to transfer the money using moneygram as he had issues with paypal which already was suspicious to me and next to that I had to transfer to a different name than what that person was called in older posts. After another question from my side he urged me to transfer the money as there were more people interested in the gear. That really made me uncomfortable about this deal so I backed out and got no response to my PM telling him that I did not want to continue the sale. 
