My son was scammed yesterday. Now an item turns up on backpack.tf. What should I do?

[Funkgris]

Yesterday my son was scammed. I'm sure you heard this before: One guy says he reported my son by accident. My son panics. A 'Steam Admin' shows up and offers his help. My son gives him acces to his Steam Account. They change the email and password and everything is gone. And the account is deleted. Fuckers

Today I do search on backpack.tf for one of the stolen unusuals. And there is is. The hat's history confirms it. My son was the last owner before the seller. The seller is clearly a thief. A thief who steals from children. 

Now my question is this: what can I do? Can I report him somewhere? Can I get him banned from Steam or Backpack.tf?

Please help. 

[Emlopp]

Backpack isn't affiliated with Steam, so they can't restore your son's items or account. But according to steam support, accounts aren't deleted until 30 days after a request is provided, and in order for said account to be deleted comprehensive proof of ownership has to be provided. Unless you've been waiting for way too long, it's heavily unlikely that the account is completely gone.

Go to the hat you found with your son in its history, mouse over his username, and click on the profile picture. It'll lead to his account on the steam community, even if it's since been edited it is still his account. Contact Steam Support and explain the situation, provide the account's URL and be ready to provide proof that you own the account. Generally speaking, the older the information the better. Don't provide that information here.

In the mean time scan the computer your son was using for any possible malware, and don't log into any accounts with it until you give it a full check just to be safe. Come up with an entirely new password that's not related at all to the old one.

It's unlikely that Steam will restore any stolen items, but this will be a good lesson for your son. Make sure that he knows that Steam employees will never ask for any account or personal information, and to never take a trade that goes outside the trade window (ex Paypal, asking to go to a separate site, or anything about "i want you to play on my comp team go here (scam link)"/"i will rig gambling for you (scam link)"). There's a lot of other scams that other people have documented if you want to show him those so he knows how to avoid them. It's ultimately common sense but if he knows enough of them he'll know when to be suspicious of possible scams.

 

You also can report the account here on backpack and steamrep, which would get them marked as a scammer, but being blunt it's likely going to be too difficult to do (due to the possibility that the relevant evidence may be lost) and would likely not have any real impact (said scammer could create another account to sell the hat, offload it to a bot, etc.) Getting the account back takes priority and that's something backpack and steamrep can't do. If you want to report them after, there are other guides available on this site for it.

[Funkgris]

Thank you very much for your fine answer. Right now I have difficulties finding a way to explain anything to Steam since I can't find a way to communicate with them. But I guess I'll have to look harder
 

As for the trader now selling the hat... He looks like a pretty high tier trader. Could it be possible for a scammer to sell the hat to somebody without showing up in the hat's history? 

 

[Buddy]

Accept your loss and don't trust your kid with anything valuable in the future.

[Funkgris]

Sure. I'm not trying to get anything back. But don't you think it's in our collective interest as a tf2 community to do what we can to stop people from scamming and selling the stolen goods here?

 

[Amattica]

Absolutely report the scammer and anybody involved to SteamRep https://steamrep.com So their profile will be marked as a scammer so nobody trades with them again for one.

[Ahoibrause]

Hi, you should report them to backpack.tf. Trading with scammers aswell could end in a ban etc.. Its like buying a stolen car. Even if you dont know its stolen.

Its possible that a owner wont appear in the history if the item is traded away the same day he got it if i am correct.

 

[Zodiak]

your son  doesn't know how to make a post?

[Apoq]

40 minutes ago, Funkgris said:

Thank you very much for your fine answer. Right now I have difficulties finding a way to explain anything to Steam since I can't find a way to communicate with them. But I guess I'll have to look harder
 

As for the trader now selling the hat... He looks like a pretty high tier trader. Could it be possible for a scammer to sell the hat to somebody without showing up in the hat's history? 

 

Yes its very possible for it to be traded to someone who doesnt show in the history. Couldve been dumped on steam market as well.

[MeFigaYoma]

48 minutes ago, Funkgris said:

As for the trader now selling the hat... He looks like a pretty high tier trader. Could it be possible for a scammer to sell the hat to somebody without showing up in the hat's history? 

People only show up in the history if someone looked at their inventory on backpack.tf (while the hat was there, of course). If inventory was private, or simply if no one loaded the inventory, it won't show up.

 

It's unlikely that the guy currently selling the hat is the scammer.

It is possible that the guy selling the hat knew he was buying it from a scammer (and probably got a good deal for it). This is a bannable offense, but it will be difficult to prove since, with the history missing, only the seller knows who he bought the hat from.

It's also possible that two or more people are missing in the history - in that case, the scammer could have sold it to someone unknown (not a scammer), who then quickly sold it to the current seller. In this case, the current seller hasn't done anything wrong, and could have no idea that the hat was scammed.

 

7 minutes ago, Apoq said:

Yes its very possible for it to be traded to someone who doesnt show in the history. Couldve been dumped on steam market as well.

Also a possibility, but in that case, it would be untradeable for 7 days. If there's someone currently selling it, OP must have waited a while.

[Funkgris]

21 minutes ago, Zodiak said:

your son  doesn't know how to make a post?

Well... Sure he does. But he's just a kid and I've got 5K hrs in the game. I believe I know a little more about how scamming works than he does (obviously). Besides I giftet him the aussies and unusuals he lost so I kinda feel I've got scammed as well. 

[Mrs TS]

You mentioned you do not know how to contact Steam.   Go to the main Steam page and along the top, click on the word HELP and there you will see STEAM SUPPORT.

[Funkgris]

20 minutes ago, Mrs TS said:

You mentioned you do not know how to contact Steam.   Go to the main Steam page and along the top, click on the word HELP and there you will see STEAM SUPPORT.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong. But when I click on 'support' I don't get the option to contact anybody. I can navigate to this page though:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithAccountStolen
But when I click on 'recover my account' they ask for an email adress. And since the account has been deleted I get the message, that the email adress doesn't correspond to any account. If anybody know how to get in touch with a real human being it will be greatly appreciated. 

[louisclub]

55 minutes ago, Apoq said:

Yes its very possible for it to be traded to someone who doesnt show in the history. Couldve been dumped on steam market as well.

This. The item only shows up in backpack history if backpack scans the profile of the inventory. if the scammer moved the item to a private inventory, then sold on SCM or traded to an unsuspecting person, backpack wont show the middleman here. it only shows what it scans, in public inventory. 

[Mrs TS]

Click HELP > STEAM SUPPORT > Trading, Gifting, Market and Steam Points > Trading > then either 'My items are missing or stolen" or "I'd like to report a scammer"

 

 

If you report a scammer, it will show you a page like this that shows who you recently traded with, so do it from your son's Steam page - https://i.imgur.com/NBC0vzD.png

 

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7623-IOFX-1021

[MeFigaYoma]

2 hours ago, Funkgris said:

Maybe I'm doing something wrong. But when I click on 'support' I don't get the option to contact anybody. I can navigate to this page though:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithAccountStolen
But when I click on 'recover my account' they ask for an email adress. And since the account has been deleted I get the message, that the email adress doesn't correspond to any account. If anybody know how to get in touch with a real human being it will be greatly appreciated. 

Apparently it has gotten a lot harder to get to the support page - I suppose they don't want to have to answer too many questions.

 

After some searching, I figured out how to get there:

Go to the "recover my account" page

Type in the email (which doesn't correspond to any account)

Afterwards, there should be a page with a button "search by account name"

Enter the username you use to login to the account (not the public profile name). This cannot be changed, so it should be found.

Apparently you should get to a page something like this (presumably the email indicated won't be yours):

After you click "I no longer have access to this email address", you should get to the contact form.

 

Images shamelessly ripped from some ad-infested help site, by the way.

[mr. o.g.]

9 hours ago, Funkgris said:

Well... Sure he does. But he's just a kid and I've got 5K hrs in the game. I believe I know a little more about how scamming works than he does (obviously). Besides I giftet him the aussies and unusuals he lost so I kinda feel I've got scammed as well. 

that sucks dude. but if I were you I would just replace them.  no kid needs that shit as a lesson. 

[rndmchrs]

11 hours ago, Amattica said:

so nobody trades with them again for one.

... and 99 other jokes you can tell at dinner parties

[Vebster]

25 minutes ago, rndmchrs said:

... and 99 other jokes you can tell at dinner parties

i mean it will stop a lot of people to trade with him

[Funkgris]

9 hours ago, MeFigaYoma said:

 

Apparently you should get to a page something like this (presumably the email indicated won't be yours):

After you click "I no longer have access to this email address", you should get to the contact form.

 

Images shamelessly ripped from some ad-infested help site, by the way.

Sadly this doesn't work either. The email is indeed not ours, when I click on 'I no longer have access to this email address' I only get the option to search account by username. When prompted for a password it won't accept it. Probably because it's changed by the scammer

[Royalcake]

Stay away from scams.

[MeFigaYoma]

4 hours ago, Funkgris said:

Sadly this doesn't work either. The email is indeed not ours, when I click on 'I no longer have access to this email address' I only get the option to search account by username. When prompted for a password it won't accept it. Probably because it's changed by the scammer

Click "I forgot my password", that's the last page before the contact form. I just tried it myself with an alt.

[Goldman Sachs]

What you can try, check your browser history for the user ID of your sons account, they can change the username but they can't change the steam ID of the account.  Search Steam in your history and have a look


Aside from that, not much I can think of that hasn't already been said, in the email when the scammer changed the account you might have gotten an email which states the change and maybe something like "if you didn't make this change, please contact us immediately at the link below" or something like that, you must have received notification of some sort when it happened, did your son have an authenticator in place?  You just have to check every angle for anything you can find, best of luck brother.