What do yall think is going on? Is this guy scamming me?
 

I've got kind of a weird situation going on and
I'm not sure if the guy is just being weird
or if it's some kind of scam he's trying to pull or what.
I wonder what you all think might be going on here.

A guy asked me to install a script for him and I asked
him for the FTP info so I could install it and also asked him
how he'd like to pay for it.
He paid with a checking account through paypal and
told me he'd send the FTP info when the payment cleared.
I asked him to go ahead and let me know what
site it was and such because I sometimes have
to do some research and coding to make it
work with a particular server control panel,
contact their host about enabling features
it needs, etc.
He refused to tell me anything until after the payment cleared.
I noticed that the paypal email address was different
fromt he email address he had been using to email me,
but that's not unusual, so I thought nothing of it.

After a few days the payment cleared and PayPal
sent an email to the address registered on the account
letting them know that the payment had cleared.
Apparently the guy I was talking to didn't get that
email, because a couple days later he emailed me
again from the other email address asking if the
payment had cleared and I told him yes, it had and
I had assumed that he would have gotten the email from PayPal saying so.
He still didn't tell me what site he wanted it installed on
or the FTP info so I could install it, so I asked for that
and he replied with some bogus ftp info that didn't actually work.

Getting a little curious, I emailed the address that paypal
had listed as where the payment came from,
telling him that the FTP info wasn't working for me and asking
for correct info. I guess he didn't get that email either,
as a few days later he emailed saying he had waited long
enough for the install to be done and he wanted me
to send him back the money - NOT refund the orginal payment
using the "refund" link in paypal, but do a new transaction
sending him money.

OK, so maybe the guy has a legitimate PayPal account
connected to a legimate checking account and there
is a good reason his PayPal account is under an email address
for which he doesn't actually recieve email.
Maybe he had some legit reason for making sure not to tell
me what site he wasn't talking about until after the checking
transfer cleared and then giving me a hassle about the necesary
FTP info before claiming that I was taking too long
and asking me to send him money.
Maybe, maybe not.

I'm wondering what's going on and also if he is a legit customer
I want to make him happy. Also at this point I've already
determined that the server he sent bogus FTP info
for is running CPanel so I've researched how to make the
necesary server features work without CPanel getting in the way, which took some time.
So I respond telling him that
I will gladly refund the orginal transaction AND also
set up the software for him, AND also include other bonus
modules that he hadn't originally paid for.
I told him that I would install it that day and if, after he saw it
in operation for 24 hours, he didn't decide it was more
than worth the wait, he could keeep thhe software and
bonus modules for free and I'd refund the transaction.

Now this morning I got another email from him refusing that offer -
he insists that I transfer the money right away and just
ignored my mention that I never got correct FTP info.
It seems to me that a legit customer would jump at my
offer of getting what he ordered for free, plus the extra modules free
and still get his money refunded if he still wanted to
do that after 24 hours even if this legit customer
figured it was my fault that he never sent the FTP info.

Do yall think this is some kind of scam where he paid me
through a hacked paypal account or something?
I'm not quite sure how such a scam might work,
but his actions don't make any sense for a legit webmaster either.
Any ideas?

Oh, maybe I should also mention I figured that
maybe this was just a misunderstanding that
could be cleared up with a phone call, so I did
a whois on the domain in his email address
to get his number. The listed number was no good,
of course, although the info was updated just a
few months ago.
His nameservers are listed as ____host.com,
which is also registred to the same person,
so I figured maybe he'd have a number on his
hosting site. No go there, either, as the "site"
for the hosting company is nothing but a single
page with just a picture of a server on it.
It kind of looks like the guy wants to make it
hard to figure out where he's really hosted too.

Can you sum it up for me?

I would definately say that he is trying to scam you! If you are going to refund the money, do it through Paypal, do not transfer it to this guy. If he is legit, then he will still get the money back through Paypal, if it is a scam, than the rightful Paypal account will get their money back. (It isn't difficult to hack someone's account, especially if they are out of town, in the hospital or even worse dead. ) I would also recommend tracking his email address (both his and the paypal one), you can trace email addresses and find the true owner of that address. That way you can find out if the ip addresses are even from the same country.

Good luck!

I would just use the refund option and forget about it. Too many oddities, and even if it is legitimate, nobody can really complain about refunding the payment in exactly the same way (refunding to the same email address/PayPal account) as it was issued. Anything else, in my opinion, would be taking a risk.

refund him by pay pal only and forget the nutter

Look ...

The only way you cannot get scammed, is by using the REFOUND feature of paypal . That is the ONLY way .

He cannot really complain about anything anyways ... He sent you money thru paypal, you refound him .

yep sounds pretty shady..refund it

sounds like a scam, and even if it isnt - do you really want to deal with a guy like that anyways?

refund and forget about it, and keep the info handy in case it is a scam. :2 cents:

What he said..definately ONLY refund through paypal :2 cents:

Ivy

sounds like a scammer to me... Press refund