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Some girl whom I met on fb started chatting & subsequently became friends, After couple of weeks She told me that she is going to revive her Jewelry Business for which she is coming to India. As such this was a sudden decision & being a friend she insisted me to arrange meeting of biggest Jewelers for which my investment of almost INR 200000/ is required. As per our recent whatsapp chat she's currently traveling to India but looking at the ticket I am not sure coz there is no PNR number or any reference number. She is travelling with British Airways from Heathrow, London to Chatrapati Shivaji Airport Mumbai. i am attaching the ticket she shared with me for clarity purpose.

Can Someone help in this regard ?

enter image description here

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  • 78
    Scammer warning. Someone you have not met in person asking for money? That is not good. Ticket information not complete? That is worse. Do not give her any (more) money till you have been able to confirm more details (and even then it sounds fishy.)
    – Willeke ♦
    Commented Mar 16, 2023 at 19:15
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    This is clearly a scam. BTW: BA139 today flied with Boeing 777. As it did yesterday, and will do tomorrow and has been for as long as I can see in the history.
    – littleadv
    Commented Mar 16, 2023 at 19:54
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    Guaranteed fake, they can’t even do basic maths, there are different times all over, and none match the real flight schedule. And the barcode… I hope you haven’t paid a cent because you won’t see any of it again.
    – jcaron
    Commented Mar 16, 2023 at 20:02
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    Keep in mind that even if the ticket were real, the purchaser could still cancel it later, possibly even for a full refund if it's a refundable fare. Of course, in this case, the ticket isn't real and this is obviously a scam, but this still would have every hallmark of a scam even if the ticket were real.
    – Zach Lipton
    Commented Mar 16, 2023 at 21:26
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    If you had posted this on Personal Finance & Money, someone would have said “I stopped reading at ‘Some girl whom I met on fb’”
    – Damila
    Commented Mar 17, 2023 at 0:02

2 Answers 2

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This is a scam, 1000%

  • All Boeing 747s have been retired back in 2020 from the BA Fleet

  • The times are different on the same page (see the 07:40 arrival and the 00:15 arrival)

  • The departure time from London makes no sense as BA139 leaves LHR at 9:30am, not at 17h50

  • That barcode is obviously from a parcel and not from a flight (online check ins give you a QR-like code, not a barcode)
    Paketpostzentrum roughly means parcel mail center, which is far from a flight barcode

If you have sent money, you will likely never get it back, depending on how you gave that money, contact them and file a police report

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    Googling "Paketpostzentrum" I found the source for the picture (at least that part): en.wikibooks.org/wiki/File:Germany_stamp_type_PC-B3.jpg. The barcode is copied from there.
    – Fabio says Reinstate Monica
    Commented Mar 17, 2023 at 16:59
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    One more to add is that they put the flight number on "aircraft". And I don't think any airline would ever write "Boeing 747 Jet"; if anything, they would write "B748" or "Boeing 747-800".
    – Martin Argerami
    Commented Mar 17, 2023 at 19:32
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    @MartinArgerami: BA does display the flight number and aircraft name like that. Here's an example and source. That itself isn't suspicious.
    – Wing
    Commented Mar 17, 2023 at 22:28
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    @Wing I think it's a vestige from yesteryear when flying on a jet was like flying on the Concorde. That, and I see it in regional/commuter flights. The layperson can't tell whether an A220 or Q400 is jet or prop.
    – user71659
    Commented Mar 18, 2023 at 2:41
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    Plot twist: OP could be the scammer itself and is looking for weaknesses in the fake ticket they created
    – Ivo
    Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 7:24
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I agree with @Nicolas Formichella's answer that this is a scam. Don't send any (more) money.

Some more details:

  • Paketpostzentrum is in German language, thus it cannot be relevant for a flight from the UK to India operated by British Airways. All captions should be in English.

  • The plane ticket is way too expensive for 2910.12 GBP. A ticket for a non-stop one-way flight from LHR to BOM operated by British Airways, departing tomorrow can be booked for less than 600 GBP, and a round trip for less than 1000 GBP. Other airlines sell even cheaper non-stop tickets for this route. (I've just checked on flights.google.com.)

  • Plane e-tickets usually don't have any barcode, QR-code or rectangular code, but boarding passes do. The boarding pass is usually issued up to 24 hours before the flight departure, and has a caption saying boarding pass (rather than ticket or trip summary).

  • Some boarding passes issued by some airlines do have regular barcodes. (However, a flight barcode with Paketpostzentrum next to it is a red flag. There are many other red flags as well in this case, see the answers and comments.)

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    The term Paketpostzentrum itsself is outdated. Paketzentrum is used mostly in Germany and Switzerland now. Paketzentrum 15 would be Rüdersdorf (outside of Berlin)
    – Mark Johnson
    Commented Mar 17, 2023 at 11:39
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    A fully flexible ticket could be quite a bit more expensive (didn’t check), and the “ticket” says “selling class” (whatever that means) Y, which if it were a booking class would be fully-flexible non-discounted economy. But that’s about the only thing that could make sense on that “ticket”.
    – jcaron
    Commented Mar 17, 2023 at 13:27
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    The kerning (letter spacing) on the word CONFIRMED is terrible, looks like a bad copy/paste.
    – scunliffe
    Commented Mar 17, 2023 at 13:54
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    @scunliffe All things considered, bad keming is probably the least suspicious thing here.
    – Bryan Krause
    Commented Mar 17, 2023 at 15:17
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    @scunliffe Hardly an indication of legitimacy, but the word CONFIRMED isn't kerned at all because it's written in a fixed-width font. (It is an especially ugly fixed-width font though.)
    – OpenAI was the last straw
    Commented Mar 17, 2023 at 16:43

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