Online fraud makes me very angry

I’m mad as h*ll today and I’m not going to take it anymore! Be prepared for a semi-ranting post below.

I do a lot of business online, shopping, paying my bills, buying tickets on Craigslist, paying for things using Paypal, etc. I have been VERY fortunate that in all of my business transactions online, especially when buying tickets from people on Craigslist that the sellers have been legit.

Unfortunately, that streak is broken. Someone I know was recently a victim of online fraud from someone on Craigslist and it makes me really f*cking mad.

We’ve been dealing with this for the last few days and today it was confirmed that it was fraud and the money would not be returned. Now that it’s “resolved,” I just feel mad and violated.

Here’s what I’m mad about:

• That we fell for it, I shop online, I should know better
• That I didn’t read the signs that something was amiss, again, I should have known better
• That there are real a**holes like this person online prying on people
• That they preyed on us
• That I dared to believe that something that was too good to be true actually was
• That I can’t be left alone with my belt and this guy for 10 minutes so I can show him how “sorry” he should be

After working through these emotions, I am clinging to one silver lining: that it wasn’t an exorbitant amount of money. I know this is subjective but instead of thousands of dollars, it’s only a few hundred. In hindsight, it could have been so much worse.

And not to be overdramatic, but it left my “glass half full” mentality about people a little bruised. I’ll move beyond this and hopefully good karma will come by way soon but it was just…disappointing.

So all in all, we will survive and I will have to take my anger out at the gym, but this taught me a very valuable lesson and I’ll definitely be more careful when buying things online.

What about you? Have you ever been a victim of online fraud?