THIRD PARTY DEPOSIT SCAM: My Story

[Earl]

Hello everyone,

Last week a random dude sended me a friendrequest on steam.
I looked at his profile, he was level 80 and he had an almost endless list of good reps, It also said he was a trader.

I accepted him cause i thought he was legit and after a few days he texted me on steam and told me he was interested in my knife (FN gutknife fade).
He asked which other knives i liked and sended some links of knives from his inventory.
I said there wasn't one i really liked so he said he got nicer ones (more expensive) but then i'll have to add some other skins with my knife.
We finally agreed to trade his WW karambit blue steel for +/- 100 dollar of gunskins and my knife.

After that, he said he wanted to check the fade percentage of my gutknife and floats of all my skins on OPSKINS before we could trade. I know that fade percantages are real and OPSKINS is a legitimate website so i didn't think he was going to do something wrong.
He asked for my skype name and shared his screen with me and talked trough the mic.
He showed me how i could depoist a skin on OPSKINS, price it 9999 dollars, and then withdraw it back to my inventory. After that he asked me if i wanted to share my screen, and because he did it first i didnt suspect him to do something wrong so i shared my screen.
First he asked me to depoist my cheapest skin (0.03 dollar) on OPSKINS to see its legitimate, i knew OPSKINS is legitimate but i thought 'why not' so i did it and got it back with no problem, after that i depoisted my skins on OPSKINS that i would've traded with him.

I looked at the trade offer and the botprofile, it was the same type as the previous one (the bot for the cheap skin) but just another number, so it looked legit. I accepted the tradeoffer for deposit on OPSKINS and nothing showed up.
The guy acted confused and after half a minute he left, blocked me on steam and skype.

I never heard of him after that, as i would expect. I knew i was scammed but didnt knew immediatly how.

But now i know the second bot from OPSKINS was just a fake account of his, and he just timed to send the tradeoffer.

I reported his fake OPSKINS bot account, thats all what i could've done at the end.

I just wanted to tell my story to warn people for the same type of scams.

And i will never just accept random friendrequests on steam and think they are legitimate people.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

All 3rd party sites are "use at your own risk."

No one you are trying to reach out to will see this. It is pointless to try to warn others.

Remove the name of the user from your post.

[Earl]

I know they are at your own risk, i don't blame anyone exept for myself. I just wanted to share it. Maybe it can help someone who knows.

[Vizzik]

None of those third party gambling sites are legit. In future use the steam trade window to trade your items.
You keep saying how that site is legit, yet you was scammed through it.
We see users daily, complaining how they was scammed through the exact same site you keep claiming is legit.

[Earl]

I understand your point but the scammer and myself agreed we were going to trade through steam. After that he wanted to use OPSKINS to check the fade percentage of the knive, i'm fully aware that there must be a safer way to do that but i didn't suspected him to be a scammer.

I'm sure OPSKINS has nothing to do with this, only their way to deposit skins on the website is just like all the other third party websites not safe. I just wanted to make people aware of that because the scammer definetly was and i wasn't.

[Vizzik]

That is one of the most common type of scams around.
And that site is a well known scam site. You're clearly in denial.
Also, rep means nothing, infact it's usually a sign of a scammer and there is no reason to "check" your items.

[Azza ☠]

If you have screenshot proof...

Search up their profile and report them on: SteamRep.com
(That will warn others)

[Earl]

I only have a screenshot of the trade to the scammers fake bot account
I didn't suspect him to be a scammer so i don't have one of his main or the conversation.

But thx for the comment, i didn't knew that site.

[Hodman]

Well, at least now you know rep means nothing.

[Earl]

I did learn a lot from that incident

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Silver Surfer:

I only have a screenshot of the trade to the scammers fake bot account
I didn't suspect him to be a scammer so i don't have one of his main or the conversation.

But thx for the comment, i didn't knew that site.

This site doesn't mean jack. Profiles with good reputation there can still scam you and in fact, ive seen exactly this happening.

[Pawnstar]

Honestly anyone who gets scammed can only blame themselves. Valve provided you with a secure method of trading within the trade window and you chose to bypass it with your own methods due to your own greed.

[Azza ☠]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Originally posted by Silver Surfer:

I only have a screenshot of the trade to the scammers fake bot account
I didn't suspect him to be a scammer so i don't have one of his main or the conversation.

But thx for the comment, i didn't knew that site.

This site doesn't mean jack. Profiles with good reputation there can still scam you and in fact, ive seen exactly this happening.

It's a reputation checker. Much like how a rep checker for websites works.

Lets say the website is new, it has no reputation yet (unknown). However, if customers X, Y, Z, all claim it's a scam phishing (impersonating) another website. Then shows some proof in that fact. The next customer looking up that rep, sees the pattern and avoids being the next victim.

You don't even have to report on it yourself, it's an optional extra (it's more ideal to report the profile on steam either way). However, you could use it to lookup before making a trade/invite deal.

Best practices however: Keep trade within the Steam rules (trade item for item inside the steam trading window, never gifting items to so-called bots, or for a key, paypal, steam wallet code, etc - anything which can't be tracked via the Steam trading history log)

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Azza ☠:

Originally posted by ReBoot:

This site doesn't mean jack. Profiles with good reputation there can still scam you and in fact, ive seen exactly this happening.

It's a reputation checker. Much like how a rep checker for websites works

Except it doesn't mean jack. A neutral profile on SteamRep means "Practice safer trading with this profile". A negative profile means "You sure as hell want to practice safer trading with this profile". A positive profile means "Well, in theory, this Steam profile is trustworthy but in practice, you should practice safer trading anyway". If all SteamRep has to offer REALISTICALLY is "Practice safer trading", then you can just forget about SteamRep and practice safer trading anyway.

[Azza ☠]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Originally posted by Azza ☠:

It's a reputation checker. Much like how a rep checker for websites works

Except it doesn't mean jack. A neutral profile on SteamRep means "Practice safer trading with this profile". A negative profile means "You sure as hell want to practice safer trading with this profile". A positive profile means "Well, in theory, this Steam profile is trustworthy but in practice, you should practice safer trading anyway". If all SteamRep has to offer REALISTICALLY is "Practice safer trading", then you can just forget about SteamRep and practice safer trading anyway.

Well just as an example, say you looked up:
https://steamrep.com/profiles/76561197962146232

It popups with:
"Careful

This user is impersonated by scammers.

Never trust links sent on Steam about someone's identity. Thieves will copy this profile to scam people.

Please follow this guide to confirm who you are dealing with."

Then confirms that user's profile is actually:
"Valve Employee"

In this case, he's a game developer.

If someone was impersonating him, you will be at least warned as the profile doesn't match.

Sure, I agree it's enforcing the idea of "Safe trading", but can still be used as an optional double check.