The Facebook Marketplace Overpayment Scam: What It Looks Like and What to Do

You list a table for $250 on Facebook Marketplace. Within an hour, a buyer wants it — no haggling, no questions, they'll even send a mover. Then they "accidentally" pay you $650 and apologetically ask you to refund the $400 difference.

Here's the catch: they never paid you anything. The only real money that moves in this scam is the "refund" you send.

How the scam works

The overpayment scam is one of the oldest tricks in the book, updated for Marketplace. It comes in a few flavors:

• The fake payment screenshot. The buyer sends a doctored Zelle, PayPal, or Venmo confirmation showing they paid too much. No money ever arrived, but the screenshot looks real.
• The fake "on hold" email. You get an official-looking email saying the payment is held until you upgrade your account, pay a fee, or refund an overage. Zelle and PayPal never operate this way — the email is from the scammer.
• The bad check. For bigger items, the buyer mails a check for more than the price and asks you to send back the difference. Your bank will show the funds as available within days, but a fake check can take weeks to bounce. When it does, the bank pulls the full amount back out of your account, and the "refund" you sent is long gone.

Every version shares one skeleton: fake money in, real money out.

The red flags in the example above

• Overpaying a stranger. Nobody sends a stranger $400 extra by accident and asks them to fix it. Real overpayers cancel the payment on their end.
• No interest in seeing the item. Instant purchase, sight unseen, with a "mover" or "shipper" — scammers don't care about the table.
• A story that explains the missing money. Holds, upgrades, assistants, business accounts. The more elaborate the explanation, the more certain the scam.
• Payment "confirmed" by email or screenshot instead of your own app. Screenshots and emails are free to fake.
• Pressure to refund quickly. Speed is required, because the whole scheme collapses the moment you check your real balance and wait.

What to do

1. Check your actual balance. Open your bank or payment app yourself. If the money isn't in your available balance, you were not paid. Screenshots and emails don't count. (And remember: Zelle has no holds, no upgrade fees, and no seller protection emails.)
2. Never refund an overpayment. Tell the buyer to cancel the payment on their side. A legitimate buyer can always do this. A scammer will vanish or turn up the pressure.
3. Walk away and report. Block the buyer and report the conversation to Facebook (tap the seller tools on the listing or the person's profile). Report attempted fraud at reportfraud.ftc.gov.
4. Sell the safe way. Meet locally in a public place, take cash or an in-person app payment you watch land in your balance, and never ship to "buyers" who overpay.

If you already sent money or deposited a check

1. Call your bank now. Report the transfer as fraud and ask about recovery. Every hour matters with Zelle and wires.
2. If you deposited their check, tell your bank it's likely counterfeit before it bounces. Don't spend the deposited amount.
3. File reports: reportfraud.ftc.gov, local police (useful for bank disputes), and Facebook's report tools.
4. Watch your account and change your banking password if you shared any details with the buyer.

Don't beat yourself up if this one got close — the fake confirmations are genuinely convincing, and the scam is built on your honest instinct to return money that isn't yours. Just remember the one rule that breaks it every time: money is only real when it's sitting in your own balance.