Scammer gets creative and ships women's shoes instead of Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti
Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 Ti may have lost its spot on the list of best graphics cards, but scammers are still targeting buyers with the last-generation graphics card. As shared by I_Leak_VN, one unfortunate Vietnamese buyer got scammed and received a pair of women's shoes instead of a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti in what appeared to be a legitimate transaction.
Apparently, a merchant in Thailand had approached the Vietnamese victim, offering a Manli GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. The buyer had reportedly paid the asking price and shipping. What he didn't know was the surprise that was on the way to his home. Instead of a graphics card, the sneaky scammer had sent a pair of worn women's heels inside the box, even going as far as to pack the shoes in foam packaging.
The fraudster likely used a fake identity and probably disappeared from the platform after the scam. That's one of the caveats of buying computer hardware from third-party reselling platforms where you can't verify the seller's identity on the other side. Transactions like these are usually a leap of faith, especially if the scammer doesn't have a good rating.
Online graphics card scams are everywhere, so buyers have to be extra careful. It wasn't long ago that a Chinese buyer picked up a GeForce RTX 4090, but there weren't any GPU or GDDR6 memory chips on the PCB. You're no safer purchasing from big retailers like Amazon, either. For example, Amazon had sold an individual a GeForce RTX 4090, which was, in reality, a fried GeForce RTX 4080 PCB. Many sneaky criminals take advantage of Amazon's return policy and buy a legitimate product only to return a fake one. It's not a scam that only involves graphics cards, as the perpetrators do the same thing with processors.
It's a shame that online computer hardware shopping has become so insecure. Sometimes, the scams are easy to spot. For instance, some third-party merchants were selling Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards for next to nothing on Amazon. But the sad part is that some consumers fall for the scam.
Let's admit it. The days of brick-and-mortar store shopping are long gone, so your next purchase will likely be online. When you're on the market for expensive hardware, such as a motherboard, processor, or graphics card, make sure you do your due diligence before hitting that buy button.
