Scammers are always coming up with ways to trick people out of money. They have been doing it for a long time in Mercado Libre , OLX, Facebook MarketPlace and other online sales sites. They convince you to deposit money before sending you the product, which never arrives, or they sell you used cell phones that are reported as stolen, not approved or simply clones or fakes. Recently a relative of mine fell in a somewhat different way: he was offered a high-end cell phone in exchange for a little money..
In this case, people's emotions are also appealed to. They come to your house in great desperation and hurry saying that they had an accident, that a family member is in the hospital, that they need money to solve the problem because they don't have cash on hand at that moment, etc. They can simply ask you to borrow money promising to pay it back in a couple of hours or, to further convince you of the situation, they give you their "super high-end" cell phone, such as a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, in exchange for only about 100 or 200 dollars.
So far everything seems fine. It would also be a good guarantee, considering that a Galaxy S22 Ultra is over $1,000 in value. However, what you are really receiving is a counterfeit of this cell phone model, which in addition to having a much lower value than what they ask for in return, will not be functional after a few days, because it will surely not be approved in the country, possibly it is reported as stolen or with some important damage. They know this and they want to get rid of those teams even if they earn some extra money..
Scams of this type have a whole social engineering plan behind them. The person who approaches you pressures you and rushes you, in order not to give you time to think and analyze the situation. Everything he says has a purpose, for example, that he only lends you the cell phone, that he is not selling it to you because he has personal things there. He could even leave you his identity card or a copy of it, which will surely be false or a set-up.
4 aspects that reveal a scam in Mercado Libre
How to know if a cell phone is new and original
What are CLON cell phones and how to differentiate them from the original ones
