ROCHESTER, N.Y. — A new version of an old scam is targeting people selling items on resale sites, and a News10NBC viewer reached out after being targeted herself.

The multi-step scam is fooling many people who think they’ve made a sale but end up losing money instead. News10NBC found post after post from people selling items on sites like Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist and Depop who were all targeted by would-be buyers up to no good.

“This is an evolution of a scam that came about in the Craigslist days and it’s continued to morph into different varieties of it,” said Jeffrey Allan, director of the Institute for Responsible Technology at Nazareth University.

A viewer selling a bicycle on Facebook Marketplace recently got a message from someone offering to pay before picking up the bike. The message read “I’ll proceed with payment right now.”

The scammer then posted what he claimed was a screenshot from Venmo. It read “recipient email is required to complete the payment,” so the seller gave him her email address.

He then wrote “hello the payment has been made” and told her to check her email. The seller had indeed gotten an email that appeared to be from Venmo saying her payment was on hold.

She shared it with the buyer who answered, “I guess this is the first time you’re receiving payment from a business account, so the payment is on hold.” He told her that because he was sending the payment from a business account, Venmo required a transaction of $500 for the scammer use his business account.

He then offered to pay the $500 and asked, “you’ll refund it back immediately when you receive the confirmation?”

“The biggest red flag would be anyone asking you to pay money to get money,” Allan said. “That’s 100 percent always a scam.”

What made this scam so convincing were the emails the seller got that appeared to be from Venmo. Those emails were actually from the scammer. He got her email by claiming he needed it to complete the transaction.

Selling items on these marketplaces is easy, but experts warn people not to be fooled by this scheme.

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