In all logic you should win this case, but we know logic does not apply to paypal.
Your buyer is definitely a scammer. Most scammers are constantly weighing the risk and benefits of scamming. One strategy, in this situation, may be to make the cost of scamming you too high.
He is banking that he will keep your product, get his money back from paypal, and you will go quietly into the night. His worst fear is that you get the authorities involved, he gets convicted of theft by deception, mail fraud, wire fraud, and he ends up doing 10 years in the federal pen for an item under $300. This is extremely unlikely because the authorities have bigger fish to fry. But every now and then you see a story in news that some small time internet scammer was snatched up by the FBI.
My suggestion is to make him believe he has a larger chance then he thinks of being the next scammer to be outed. Send him a veiled threat email that to an idiot may look like you are sympathizing with him. Tell him something like you are going to refund him but first you have to get the authorities involved (maybe for insurance reasons) to catch the thief that took the package off his porch. Mention that you are gonna forward the police his emails to help them with their investigation and make light of the fact that alot of people in all neighborhoods these days have cameras pointed on their streets.
This has proved to be an effective method for me in the past for calling scammers bluff.
Last edited by Futuremogul888; 11-02-2012 at 06:07 PM.
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