Middleman Scams and Lawn Care Professionals

 Episode 110 of I Hate Talking explores the phrase “middleman scam” and how scammers can impersonate both buyers and sellers to trick legitimate parties. The hosts break down a real-life example involving a lawn care job, a fake identity, and a confusing attempt to route payment through a third party, using it to explain how these scams work in practice.

The episode also looks at the broader risks of spoofed usernames, fake listings, and payment fraud, along with the uncertainty and frustration that come when it’s hard to tell who is actually legitimate. By the end, the conversation becomes both a cautionary tale and a reminder to verify identities carefully before sending money or agreeing to a service.

Keywords: middleman scam, scammer impersonation, fake seller, fake buyer, spoofed usernames, online marketplace fraud, Facebook Marketplace scam, lawn care scam, payment fraud, vendor verification, fake invoice, property service scam, scam awareness, I Hate Talking podcast, conversational podcast.

Transcript

I Hate Talking: 0:30

Welcome to episode 110 of I Hate Talking. Hi everyone. So we'll jump right into our word or phrase of the episode, and that is the phrase middleman scam. Middleman scam. Yes, is that politically incorrect? Should it be middle person scam? No, it just sounds like a tongue twister, so I was making sure I understood it. Middleman, middleman scam. Yeah, see how hard that is to say? Say it 5 times fast. Middleman scam, middleman scam, middleman scam, middleman scam, middleman scam. OK, good. I couldn't do it. I can't even do it once. So, a middleman scam, according to our favorite duck go AI or at least my favorite duck go AI. is described as a scam that involves a scammer acting as an intermediary between a buyer and seller. It goes on that this can often include using spoofed usernames or fake accounts to deceive their victims. Mhm So apparently middleman scams have been around for a long time. It's basically any time that there's somebody in the middle of a buyer and seller could potentially act as both the buyer and seller to legitimate buyer and sellers. Or Basically pretend to be a seller. That is selling a legitimate item, pretend to be that seller, collect money from the unsuspecting buyer, and then when the buyer tries to collect their item or whatever the case may be, they will go to the legitimate person and say, hey, I paid you this money. I need my stuff, but that legitimate seller was also taken advantage of because they were not the ones that interacted with said buyer. So. There's one party that's not acted in good faith. And then there's two other separate parties that are acting in good faith. Correct. Mhm. In the middle man. be acting in bad faith also, or is he always a victim? -- The -- middleman is a bad person. Huh OK. I feel like the middleman is the innocent victim that gets put between the bad person and then the main person. Now, the middleman is the middle person that is in between the buyer and the seller, acting as one or both of the legitimate parties, pretending to be one or both of the legitimate parties. What do you mean by one or both? So it could be. Both. The An old man scammer is acting as both the buyer and the seller. Or it could be Just one, typically acting as the seller, it seems. But if he's acting as both buyer and seller, who's he talking to? Well, we'll get to that. So, probably the more simple one and The one that's been around longer is the middleman scam where typically the person is acting as the seller. So this apparently has come about more recently than I thought with perhaps the rise of the internet age. So some of the classic examples that are given here is that the Nigerian prince email scam is an example of a middleman scam where There will really be a Nigerian prince, and there really will be somebody that wants to collect money, but there's this person acting in between that is pretending to be the Nigerian prince to say that they need X, Y, Z done and then they'll pay certain money or whatever they need to move the money around. So can they send some money to establish a Bank account routing number so that they can send the money to them. And then online selling is also apparently prone to this as well, where again, the middleman scammer will act as a legitimate seller. So there could be a real seller that has a real listing online on like an eBay type site or Facebook Marketplace or something like that. And the middleman person will pretend to be that legitimate seller and Perhaps create a fake listing or somehow contact a potential buyer, and they will think that this is the real person that's selling this real item. And then pay this scammer the money, and then when they go to collect the listing that they think that they just paid for. The legitimate seller does not have any record of this because they did not interact with this potential buyer. So like, a super practical way would be, say, I post something on Facebook Marketplace. And a scammer sees that. And makes a fake profile, takes the photos I posted. And uploads their own listing. Maybe this mama who wants a baby carrier that I'm selling, likes the post or comments on it. The scammer sees that, and the scammer directly messages her, like, hey, I'll sell it to you for 10% off if and hold it for you if you Venmo me right now. So then that mama is like, that's a great deal, sure. And so she Venmos the money. And then she messages me trying to get pick up or something. Correct. Mm. All right, yeah, I can picture that. Luckily that's never happened to me, but I can picture it. Exactly, so, and this probably happens less frequently now with perhaps more of the security processes in place with Facebook Marketplace where there's not really a public chat per se. But it's more through direct messaging and everything if you're trying to buy something. So that makes sure that you're actually interacting with the person. That has the posting, so it's not like they can spoof the username with like public chats or like names that look similar or if they steal your profile picture and things like that. So that's The example of a middleman scam where they are functioning as just one party, typically the seller. So then there's also the middleman scam where they function as both the seller and the buyer. OK, explain that one because that one makes, I don't understand who the victim is in that. Well, we are the victims. We were a victim of the middleman scam. I know we were, but he wasn't. Doing 2 parties, he was, there were 3 parties involved, us, someone else, I was a victim also. And then that guy or entity. Right, so there was us The legitimate lawn care professional, and then the third party is the scammer, and the scammer theoretically was functioning as both the buyer and seller. How So To give a little bit of background on this, basically, there is a known middleman scam, particularly in lawn care, for whatever reason, I guess it's perhaps one that's a little bit easier for a scammer to take advantage of with perhaps parties that are not going to see each other face to face or they're going to communicate through digital means and Not necessarily have a lot of readily available personal information to identify themselves back and forth. And you don't have to, with lawn care, like versus a tangible item. The lawn care can just show up and do their work and leave, versus somebody who's buying an item is gonna be expecting that item. Right. There's also no barriers in terms of like access to property or something like that. You can just, like you said, show up, do the work, and then Go about collecting payment. So, We Basically have. Some property that we're working on selling and that particular property. I Has a lawn and does need lawn care. So essentially what happened was that there was a scammer. Uh, for all intents and purposes that we can tell, was scamming potentially, I guess mainly us and the person. I don't know. I think both parties would be victim, depending on how it shakes out. But essentially, the scammer contacted a lawn care professional and said that they needed work done at this property, pretending to be us, and that was through a series of text messages. Where that particular scammer asked for service at the property and wanted to get a quote and it was actually interesting to note that the lawn care professional was very professional and wanted to know exactly where the property lines were and if there was any additional work needed and making sure that it could be done in a timely fashion and This should have been a red flag to a lawn care professional person, but they didn't catch it, though they did after the fact say that they were suspicious, but the scammer did not respond with any information about property lines. They just basically said, I need it done really quickly, and that was enough for the lawn care professional to take the job. Yeah, and got out there like that day or the next day, right, -- and got it all -- done, right? So the lawn care professional gave the quote of a few $100. And proceeded with the work and got it done quickly. And Then There were additional text messages with some really odd stuff, but we'll get into that in perhaps a moment because I think it Maybe it takes us off course from the middleman scam. So Scammer Solicited services from the lawn care professional. Lawn care professional did the work, and we didn't know, and we have not known about any of this up to this point, and we would not have had any clue because we actually have a lawn care guy who was coming later that week. So we would have just thought, oh, he came a couple of days earlier. Cool. And little did we know that our lawn care guy noticed and thought that we replaced him. Correct. So then we got this information on basically the lawn care professional reaching out to. One of our additional service people that they had their phone number of and we're asking how to get a hold of us for payment because I guess at this point, perhaps the The scammer had ghosted him. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but We got all this information that Quote unquote, we had requested these professional services for the lawn care and now owed money. Right, and I, when I got that phone call from our friend. I I was like, oh no, so and so is mowing our yard. I think this guy's scamming you. Don't do anything. So then I had to call our lawn guy, because I thought, oh, he's just trying to take advantage or something. And our long guy was like, that's when I found out. He's like, no, I, I went over and I noticed it was done already. I thought you got someone else. OK, so somebody did do the work. Both parties saw it, and both our friend and lawn care guy, they both said he did a great job. So, kudos to him. Yeah, so then we had to start saying, why would he mow our yard? And then try to get money, like, Who is sending him to our yard? Correct. Well, the scammer sent him to our yard because the typical outcome in this middleman scam is for the scammer to then invoice. The legitimate party that would have. Than the ones that quote unquote requested the service. So, -- so -- he should have asked us for money and we would have paid the scammer. Correct, yes. So, this would typically happen in a Expeditious fashion where the scammer is going to invoice the person that owns the property or uh would have had the lawn care service done. And request that money and then us or the property owner thinking that this is A legitimate scenario where you know this person work got done so we'll pay the money. So that has not happened up to this point, and that's perhaps because Neither of us answer spam calls and maybe they attempted to contact us or Something like that, but we never received any particular written invoices or Texts or phone calls. So maybe you are thinking that you may have received a phone call now. Well, I didn't know, you're right, I don't answer them, so I don't know, but I get spam texts and calls several times a day, and I just ignore them. And I was just thinking like, oh, I should go back because the lawn care guy who did a good job that we didn't hire sent us all their texts and I think his phone number is probably on there that I should probably go through my log. And see if any of them line up just out of curiosity. Well, there you go. So this is still going too. This happened a week ago, so we're still playing catch up. Things could change, I guess. OK, so go on, so. You're talking about Uh, he might have tried to contact us, we don't know. Right, so that would be the normal. The outcome for this particular scam is that the scammer would invoice the property owner before getting invoiced by the legitimate lawn care professional. But I think because this lawn care professional is like a small business, they don't necessarily invoice people on like a monthly basis or something. He's basically asking for payment immediately upon completion of the work that He was the first one to actually get a hold of us. And so we sorted all this out. I actually text him to try to confirm if he was a legitimate lawn care, and he has, you know, like a Facebook page and a Yelp listing and the phone number is associated with the actual business name and everything like that. So, it does from all appearances seem to be legitimate. So we did pay him. Some money. Right, yeah, we basically just, again, again, I'm, you know, I can only say good things about this guy. At first I was really skeptical, like, I think he's trying to scam us, but like you said, he did seem legit. We actually had, when we searched him on the internet. Mutual Our acquaintances, you know, like, live in the same town, know the same people, it's like, OK, I think he is a real person. Um, and he just, I mean, he was so nice. He was like, I'm, I messed up, I should have done my due diligence, like, don't worry about it, for payment. But we told, you know, we were already gonna pay our lawn guy. So we told our. You know, just apologize to our lawn guy. We offered him a little bit of like, hey, you know, you banked on this. And he declined it, he refused to accept any little like gift, and we just said, we'll use you in two weeks again. But the one guy who did a great job, the new guy, we paid him basically what we were gonna pay the other guy. We definitely still wanted to pay, he did the work, and I think this is, like he said, a life lesson now for him. Correct, yes. It's possible that he It is like a semi scammer. Like he just wanted a job. I mean, well, it's possible that the person that we paid is the middleman scammer and we haven't been invoiced by the legitimate company. I don't think that's true because of all the text message, screenshots and all the research that we did on the business and the phone numbers and Actually interacting with him that -- he seems like the legitimate party in this scenario -- because he would have had to go, yeah, because again, when you looked him up and we saw that we had mutual acquaintances and stuff, that like, you really have to deep dive like. For a couple $100. I mean, this is a big. Uh, investment of time and work for him for $200. Correct. And then the, the timetable lined up exactly with when the work was done. So it's unlikely that a scammer would know that detail of information in terms of like the work was done, plus we had, you know, our neighbors that are checking on this and everything lined up. So that is what led us to pay the money to what we perceive as a legitimate party. We still don't know that for 100% sure though. We could be contacted tomorrow from a different lawn care company and say, hey, I did this work. And I need to get paid. Sorry it took me so long to invoice you. Yeah, I'm more worried that he's gonna be hiring more work. Because we needed that job done. So, I mean, just basically our guy was out of a job for two weeks, but aside from that, um, You know, we needed the job done. I don't want him like hiring window washers or I don't know, gravel or, you know. That's true. That scares me. I hope he's not trying to put our jobs on our house. Or what if it's the person? Here's a conspiracy. What if this person wants to buy the property, but they want us to upgrade stuff, so then they're gonna systematically hire people off and we're gonna pay it off, then they get the property upgraded. That would be a reach, but I guess it's a far-fetched possibility. The other thing it could be is that. This legitimate lawn care professional just wants to grow his business, and this is how he's doing it by just like. Pretending to have a fake conversation with a person that doesn't exist and saying that they were hired by this unknown entity when in fact it was themselves that hired themselves, did the actual work, and then got paid so that they could perhaps grow their business, right, because he, he did a good job. So like, hey, if we didn't already have a guy, I'd probably be like, you want to just keep going. That's true. So, -- there -- you go. That's a a really risky, but interesting. Job, um. -- Market or what's it called -- like a business growth strategy, yeah, business growth strategy, an interesting one, yep. So that is how the middleman scammer can be both parties. They are functioning as a property owner. They're basically pretending to be the property owner -- requesting legitimate services -- because the lawn guy thought that he was a property owner, correct? OK. And then if the scammer contacted us, they would be pretending to be the legitimate lawn care professional trying to collect payment he didn't do. And hopefully it won't happen and may not happen because of the final thing that was even more odd and maybe the actual end goal of the scammer and that they don't really care about the lawn care and the few $100 is because they requested the lawn care professional. Do some additional. He asked for them, where the scammer said that they had people coming to do some appliance work and that They needed to be paid at the time of the job being done, but the scammer did not have enough money. So if the person could please pay the appliance people. So he's asking the lawn care company to give said appliance people. It was over 2000 bucks, right? It was. 2500. -- $60 I -- believe. So if he can pay them for him while he's there anyways. And then he will pay him back right with with interest and extra. So basically the scammer said you pay the appliance people $2560 you're gonna be there anyways. You'll be there anyways, and then the scammer will then pay the lawn care professional $2960. To reimburse them for their $2560 plus the Interest in fees of doing that particular task, which I still don't quite understand how that would work because I don't know if like they were planning on having him pay through some like online portal or like PayPal or something, this money or more worrisome is like there would actually be the scammer show up and pretend to be the appliance people to collect the cash or something. That's what I thought he was going to do. I don't, yeah, I don't know how it would work otherwise, so I'm not sure exactly, but I guess if the scammer is going to all this trouble, maybe they set up a fake payment portal to like a fake appliance company, and that would be how they would collect the money electronically or something. So. Crazy. So maybe that was their end goal is to lure the lawn care professional in so that they are on site on the property and could quote unquote be there to do this appliance job payment thing and that would be their end goal is actually to collect the $2560. Right, cause that's, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, $200 is probably not a big deal to them. They want to go after. Uh, big money, the 2500, and then maybe they would just call it a wash and walk away. I guess, but luckily, the lawn care guy was like, well, that's shady. Not doing that. So we we did confirm that he did not pay, right, because then. As property owners, right, then I think there would be Some sort of issue, right? Because the lawn care professionals out this money and we're a victim as well, but I don't know how that would work. I don't think I would pay that money. I'd be like, sorry, I'll pay you for your services rendered, but the rest is on you for falling for a scam. Yeah, I mean, again, we weren't upset because even if he was very quick to be like, oh, don't even pay anything. It was my bad. We're like, no, like, you did work, you did good work, we're gonna pay you for your job. But yeah, I would have had a hard time paying 20 like reimbursing him, because that was an obvious error on his part, just like you have to. Go to your bank and fight that, you know, that's because our bank isn't gonna let us reimburse someone and then fight it, you know, so he has a better chance of recouping his money, but that's where the whole conspiracy I had earlier was when he was talking about appliances being delivered and I was like, oh no, what if he, this man is doing all this stuff to our house. Oh man. So yeah, what if he's doing all this stuff to our property? This is uh really stressful. It doesn't seem like anything else is happening, but I am a little uneasy. I, I don't understand. I guess I'll just read this verbatim because we have the, the text message screenshots because I don't still understand exactly -- how -- we can be one person and I'll be the other one. No, I just wanna read the, I, I guess, I don't know. Perhaps our listeners would enjoy that. You have the, do you wanna be good bad guy or bad guy? I'll be the bad guy because, yeah, it's, it would be fun to read, I suppose. So this is scammer Michael and then you will be the lawn care professional. So we have Michael the scammer and Lawrence the lawn care professional. OK, OK, so here we go. This is fun. This is like story time. All right, so me as Michael the scammer. Hello, are you available for lawn care service? Which area do you service? Yes, we service the area you're in. Ah, I am located at this address. Please go ahead and make estimate and get back to me weekly mowing. Yeah, and as he's reading that, that's how it's written, without punctuation, without capitals, without Proper grammar. So there you go. All right, it's back to Lawrence, he says, how far does the property go behind the back fence? Also, is it both sides of the driveway? Yes. Could you take a screenshot of the property on maps and outline what you want cut? Please go and make estimate. I need you to start the mowing anytime soon. That's, that's how it's written. I am working on it right now. What is your first and last name? Michael. And then I sent, Lawrence sent the portal, client portal. When will you be able to start? Tomorrow. OK, perfect. I will be making 2 months upfront payment through check. Hello, there is one more thing I want you to do for me. What's that? A company will deliver and fix some electrical appliances in the house in a couple of days, but I can only redirect my paycheck to only one person. So I will add some money with your payment so that you can help me pay them. I know this can affect your time and working schedule, so I will pay you $200 to help me pay for the orders. The check payment I am sending is $2560 and you will remove your payment and the $200 extra, then make the remaining payment. Hello, are you there? Yes, that's perfect. And that's the documentation that we have in the text message exchange. This is, yes, that's perfect. It's an interesting um result that happened. Like 5 hours after that very complicated money discussion. So, I don't know if there's other discussions in there. He does have the portal. Yeah, I, I don't know. I don't understand the last part of the scam on what exactly they would even try to do. Like send a check to this person or try to get them to pay for it out of pocket and then say they're going to reimburse it. I don't know. It's very strange. It is also strange that he replied, yes, that's perfect. Yeah, that's what I'm saying that was weird. What was he saying? Yes, that's perfect too. I don't know, it's, that's weird. That was like the one thing that made me think, maybe. Right. This is A double middleman scam and like, The lawn care person is pretending to be the scammer too. I'm not sure. OK, so, but the work got done, so we paid somebody and the work to get done. So hopefully we don't get an invoice from another party that says, hey, I actually did this work, right? I did pay on Venmo and actually usually my Venmo is set to private. Um, I just, I like to sometimes scroll Venmo and see what other people are buying, and who they're Venmoing. I think it's, uh, kind of fun to see, but I don't like it on mine, so I try to keep mine private. Uh, I just think the person, the friend usually or whatnot, and me are the only people that need to know that I paid, but I did make that one public. Because I wanted to have some kind of more validation, like more. Eyes to see, yes, I paid this individual this much money on this time. Well, there you go. So, at least we can, you know, fight it. Hopefully this long haired guy. Was legitimately taken advantage of and learned his lesson and hopefully nothing else happens to the property. Before we sell it. That's true. So that is. Our experience with a middleman scam, as well as a little bit about the definition and some examples and how that came about as a particular phrase in the modern lexicon. So you can always like, share and subscribe, perhaps share this with a friend that may be susceptible to the middleman scam, they can be informed or perhaps you yourself have been impacted by a middleman scam, you can always let us know by leaving a comment, sending us an email or a text message. And you can feel free to let us know what you would have done. Would you have paid what appears to be the legitimate lawn care professional, or would you have refrained from doing so? Yeah, Yeah. I'm just really worried that our saga is not over. But I hope it is, and I. Hope that we were wise through it all, like I don't wanna get scammed. That really bums me out. So We'll see We'll see. So hopefully our middleman scam saga has come to an end, but our podcasting saga has not come to an end. So this is episode 110, and we'll be back next time. Sounds good. So from your friends at I Hate Talking, until next time, remember, it is only through talking that we begin the journey to understanding.