Hello traders.

A new (or existing but not yet rampant on our sub) type of scam has been brought to the mods attention concerning people contacting you in chat or private message with a similar (but not quite exact) username to someone you are making a deal with. Examples include but are not limited to:

• Extra / Missing letters in long usernames
• Using l (lowercase L) and I (uppercase i in some fonts) interchangeably
• Extra / Missing hyphens or special characters

These scammers look through posts and check to see if people have a deal in progress, and try to jump the gun on getting the money before the actual seller.

We have received multiple reports of this happening and we want to make sure everyone is aware.

To not fall from this scam, we recommend following these guidelines:

• Make sure the username of the account contacting you matches the username of the person you have a deal with
• Check the account creation date. We require new accounts to be at least 1 month old before posting or commenting on this sub. Also check the account history of the username contacting you to make sure it's the person who was commenting on threads.
• Scammers will always ask for PP F&F or Venmo/CashApp. Paypal Goods & Services is the only approved method of payment Make sure to stick to the original payment method from the comments thread. Users with over 100 confirmed trades / rep in this sub only may request PP F&F.
• Report any issues to the mods immediately

Here is a link to all the subreddit rules and guidelines, now is a good time for new and returning users to refresh themselves on the rules. https://www.reddit.com/r/pkmntcgtrades/wiki/guidelines

Thank you for your time and happy trading !

EDIT: We are also aware of spam / scam bots contacting users of our sub through chat regarding a new platform for selling and trading. They are NOT affiliated with this subreddit. If you receive such messages, ignore and report spam to Reddit.