OneVanilla ChargeBack, asking for advice.

[SirCoin120]

Recently I bought about 1,000$ worth of VanillaVisa Gift-Cards in exchange for bitcoin. This was approximately 30 days ago.
I received my first chargeback today for 50$. All cards were bought through the same seller. I assume now there will be more and maybe the guy is a fraud.
I will NEVER ever buy these cards again, should I just refund all of the payments or wait one by one and return them when a dispute comes? Sucks to take a 1K loss but I don't want to be caught up in someone else's fraudulent behavior, especially if it's hurt someone else or has been taken from someone else.

Just curious for any advice on that, and any would be appreciated. I've also bought Amazon cards but I've always asked for the cash receipt. Although i've never had a problem with those it's started to dawn on me that most of the people who've sold them to me have been out overseas. (On PaxFul). How do they even obtain these?

What's the best way to protect myself when dealing with these things?

Many Blessings

~SirCoin

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[leowonderful]

The OneVanilla cards you see on sites like Paxful are all obtained fraudulently; the basic explanation of how these people even get the cards in the first place is that they make fake balance checkers for OneVanilla cards that instead record the card number, security number and expiration date and these are exported to a place that the site owner can access, and then they're sold on places like Paxful for unrealistic rates. I would highly suggest trying to get refunded on all of the cards right now, because it's very likely that the owners of the OneVanilla cards will try to chargeback as soon as they see charges and you could be the one that gets in trouble for using these cards as well. Not worth the risk at all IMO.

The best way to defend yourself against these cases is just to not transact with prepaid cards and get funds through something like a wire or PayPal transaction with a reputable seller for a more risky option. You'll face less problems that way.

[SirCoin120]

Thank you for your reply! Unfortunately I cannot get refunded from the seller, if that's what you ment. I will however will return all and any disputes as they come in. Not going to fight it. If anything happens I'll point them to the guy who sold them to me. This may turn out to be a thousand dollar lesson, I have always traded crypto but I'm new to peer2peer trading. Seems I have a-lot to learn.

[SirCoin120]

Edit:
I may be able to recover at least some bitcoin, paxful has a bond they make them deposit in order to trade Gift-cards, I think 0.1 btc, I'll report it to them.
Unfortunately even if I do, depending on how many charge-backs arrive, I will still ultimately be in the hole ='(

[adaseb]

Yes you need to becareful with people who are selling any type of gift cards for Crypto. The ones with a good reputation might be safe but many are fraudulent.

I heard a story a while back about somebody who bought some Amazon gift cards and paid with crypto, and then he used those gift cards to buy some electronics, they were delivered to their house and a few days later the police showed up and confiscated the electronics due to the fraudulent cards. No idea if this is actually true. Its tempting because they are sold at amazing rates but keep in mind if its too good to be true, chances are it most likely is.

Try and get a refund however most likely if its a scam then you won't get your crypto back.

[SirCoin120]

Did they get in trouble for this? Seems kind of screwy since they’re the one that got scammed! Do you know if they bought cash receipt cards? That’s the only thing I’ll buy with amazon. My mistake was buying these cards from the seller with no receipt because he had like a thousand good feedback and no negatives.

Now I’m worried it will somehow fall back on me but I do have proof of every transaction, I hate being scared over trivial things like this, I don’t know what the best course of action is from here but I’ll surely return every disputed charge that pops up.

I read a similar post on this forum from a guy who said he had around 3-5k chargebacks! Wow that’s insane, wish I would have saw that post sooner =(