Invalid Report: 76561199540402039 - ([TF2] Team Fortress 2 Items)

Scam Report

Report Type: [Rep Fraud] Impersonation with intent to defraud
Virtual item type involved: [TF2] Team Fortress 2 Items

Accused profile: 76561199540402039

Victim profile: 76561199118800434

What happened? Description:

The accused scammer in question attempted to scam both me and a friend of mine with the promise of high value items and unusuals. They claimed they had an inventory worth over $130,000, and attempted to send evidence through screenshots that they had fabricated from an entirely different TF2 inventory. The screenshots from the inventory, after further inspection, rightfully belong to The Nervous Pyro, fabricated to appear as if they were his own. They also sent a link in the chat log which possibly may have been to phish information from me to "confirm my collector's value". They had no reasonable response to the most basic of questions I had asked, and when prodding them to even prove they had a shred of credibility by trading an item to me, they had evaded several times. I had no prior connections to this individual, they added my friend and I to a message to group, from which my friend immediately left.​

Provide Evidence:

1. The first screenshot is the profile of the accused in question.

2. The second, third, and fourth screenshots are where the conversation begins, he greets me, offers to trade TF2 items and, being interested in what he may have to offer, wait see what he is asking for when he proceeds to send the screenshots of his supposed inventory displaying his unusual conga taunt, which, as mentioned in the outline, are screenshots doctored from the true owner of these items, The Nervous Pyro. Their screenshots of both the items in question they want to trade and the surrounding items match screenshots I have taken from The Nervous Pyro's inventory as reference as proof that, at the very least, the screenshots he posted are fabricated, and that he has attempted to leverage TF2 items from me in exchange for items which he did not possess. (The screenshots of the Nervous Pyro's inventory are posted in relative order to the chat log)

3. The individual then proceeds to claim that this comprises their inventory, and that their inventory value is worth $130,000. I ask what his offer is for these items and he says he needs to view the items in my inventory again, although it is strange for him to want to ask me for these items in hindsight, as all of them can be attained by trading his items, or selling them for money and buying them on other third party websites, which I inquire about in the next screenshot, but I put those aside, as I was blinded by the supposed offers being made. He offers all of the items in the previous screenshot in exchange for eight higher-value items in my inventory.

4. With my suspicions heightened, I ask them why they are asking to trade me for my items instead of purchasing them from a third party website. They claim that they trade only through Steam, and that if I don't trust them, that they'll send their items first, which did calm my suspicions temporarily. They said they wanted new items for their collection. I say I need a moment to check, by which I meant to check his profile on Steam or Backpack.tf to acquire any additional information. His Steam profile is private, with no trace of the games he plays and comments disabled. His backpack.tf profile was also vacant with no sign of recent activity. These on their are not necessarily evidence of anything, but in combination of the previous screenshots verifying that he was offering up a fake trade, it only increased my suspicions of him. He instead provides an alternative offer, with which he pulls up a screenshot which I cannot verify the source of. It is of a trade window where he is offering a golden frying pan, an Australium scattergun, and an Australium Tomislav, with my inventory pulled up on the side.

5. The text at the top of the page pertains to the previous screenshot, where he is offering the golden pan, Australium Scattergun, and, Australium Tomislav for eight items instead, and I say that I am more than comfortable receiving that trade instead, and proceed to ask if he can trade the items to me right away in exchange for the items he asked for, as promised. He asks for me to add him as friend and I oblige for the rest off the chat log between us. Once I do that, he says he needs to charge his phone, so I wait. He asks where I got all eight of those items, and I explain where I got them. I ask how amassed his inventory, and returns the answer that he is trader, that he does not play TF2, but that he only trades in-game. I follow it by estimating where he would be ranking among the top published inventories if the value of his is to be believed.

6. He responds to my estimation of his ranking among the other most valuable inventories by stating restating why he is trading for my items to complete his supposed collection. He also gives the alleged reason why he won't appear among the top ranked names by value on backpack.tf, as he claims to have been scammed out of 3 golden pans and that he was also impersonated and that he did not want to risk getting banned supposedly. He then asks me if I have heard of mannco.store. I say that I have and that it just went down, which it did as of the time of the chat log, and of the filing this report. He responds by saying that he asks because he currently buys and resells items from mannco.store, and the he wanted to make sure that my items are marketable there, and that he wants me to check and confirm that I can sell my items there before proceeding with the trade for his three items. I ask him how he is able to use mannco.store when the site is currently suspended. He says that he will file a red ticket for a mannco.store bot, and that he would like me to check my items for marketability. This raises a red flag in my mind once again, and ask him to wait for me ask another question. He then restates that he is filing a ticket for a mannco.store bot.

7. I ask again why he doesn't trade for the items I have on third party websites, including the one he used to search up the items in my inventory. He responds again by saying he only trades via steam, and that he wants assurance that my items are marketable. The then sends another screenshot of the proposed trade offer of the golden frying pan, Australium Scattergun, and Australium Tomislav, claiming that he has created the trade offer, and that he will give me the items once I have confirmed that my items are marketable.

8. He then posts another screenshot of another supposed offer he has with someone else of several painted Max's Severed Heads in exchange for nothing, as well as sending an accompanying screenshot of his inventory on backpack.tf with the painted Max's Severed Heads supposedly in his inventory, claiming he traded first to someone else on a previous trade deal as evidence that he wasn't a scammer. He then, once again, only says that he wants new items for his collection, and here I make my first blunder. I, in wanting to potentially see if he even legitimately owns any of these items he claims he does, ask if he can trade me one of his Max's Severed Heads, saying that I will send the item back to him and that I simply want evidence that any of what he had said up to that point is true. This was not my place to speak on asking such an offer. Looking past the initial falsified inventory offers and giving the benefit of the doubt that he had something of value to trade to me, if not the proposed items previously mentioned, then I proposed what could have potentially been seen as a scam myself as there was no way for me to prove that I would return his supposed items to him in this supposed proof of legitimacy. Even if he is an alleged or confirmed scammer, asking people for items outside of their proposed trade offers, even on the basis of believing they are a scammer is not a strategy I plan to repeat in the future. He responds by saying that I can test that the items are legitimate by playing TF2 to see that the items are there once I receive them.

9. He then proceeds to asks if I have discord, and, with my suspicions heightening once again, I make another, much smaller third mistake of wanting to show a certain video which can be seen in the next screenshot. He refuses wanting to see the video and says that he is fine not trading with me if I don't want to trade. I then explicitly say that he has no shown no definitive evidence that what he is offering is real, although this is more off of the basis that he would not trade me an item from him to prove his legitimacy, and not based on the falsified screenshots of his inventory in combination of other suspicious qualities pertaining to his profile, which I only discovered after the conclusion of this chat log, which was another partial error in my judgment. I ask him why it is difficult for him to prove that he his trades are verifiable. He gives a disparate response to my question by restating that he wants confirmation that my items are marketable, in spite the fact that any items unmarketable would be labeled as such in my inventory. He then claims that I am perhaps afraid to check if the items in my inventory are marketable, and that it is the one barrier between that and confirming the trade for the three promised items. I say, again, that mannco.store is down and that I cannot check anything there. He says that he has finished filing the supposed mannco.store bot to check my items, and I respond claiming I have something the can, "go file to your bot".

10. It is following the previous screenshot that I send a video of the intro to the videos by YouTuber, PyroJoe, a TF2 YouTuber who gives advice on trading and preventing individuals in the community from being scammed, with me sending the video in reference to my suspicion of him which, was not only slightly excessive, but as mentioned up to that point, was working from very flawed reasoning to believe him to be a scammer. He responds confused as to what I am trying to say, and continuing by asking what the collector's value of my inventory is. I did not understand what the collector's value on items is, so I ask what he is talking about. He states again that he is asking for the collector's value on my eight items. I again ask what he means by collector's value.

11. He defines the collector's value as the price from gambling and not from the steam market price of off of the item value in keys from backpack.tf. I call his definition nonsensical and that it appears to have no accompanying metric. He then requests that I find out the collector's value of these items be sending a link to a website called csdealing.com, supposedly, checks the collector's value of items. Being suspicious that this could have been linking to website for phishing, I did not click on this link, and as such cannot confirm if this site is reputable or not. I once again, make the flawed request to ask for one thing of value upfront from his inventory to prove his legitimacy or that I otherwise have no reason to trust him. He responds by saying he wants me to check the collector's value on the items I possess and that there is no need to trade anything. I then repeat that I want to establish a basis of trust; that he does have items to offer by sending me an item, and that I again see no reason to trust him if he does not do so. He then says that I scammed him.

12. I ask how I scammed him. He says that he will not do anything unless I check the collector's value of my items. He says once I have done that, I can accept the trade for his items and I can unfriend and block him as I please. I realized that we had reached a roadblock and any agreement or progression, so I responded by saying, "Blocked. Goodbye, chump.", and proceeded to unfriend and block all communications with him, only to unblock all communications with him in order to collect evidence of these chat logs and the blocked all communications with him again.

Conclusion - Although I do not have concrete evidence on if he truly does not possess the secondary items of his inventory of the golden frying pan, Australium Scattergun, and Australium Tomislav, and my methodology of deducing if he was a scammer during the processing of the chat log was rather flawed, after further research, I can confirm that he did attempt to impersonate another trader by falsifying initial inventory trades with me by doctoring the inventory of someone else.​