I've been writing about personal finance for about seven years now, and my beat has included ample reporting on various and . I know several red flags to look out for and what steps everyone should take to protect themselves from ill-intentioned actors in the real world and online.

Still, I fell for a scam this spring that cost me $500. 

I've been on the other side of this story: reading or hearing about how someone else got scammed and thinking that would never happen to me. But it did happen to me because I lost sight of a lot of the advice I've heard from experts and included in my own reporting.

It may all be worth it if you can learn from my mistakes and avoid falling for this or a similar scam.

How the online scam unfolded

At the end of April, I was in the process of moving and trying to sell some furniture on Facebook Marketplace. I needed the items out of my apartment by May 1, and I wasn't getting a ton of serious inquiries until one Facebook user reached out, interested in buying a kitchen organizer I posted.

He offered me the full price for the item ($50). I gave him my phone number to pay me via Zelle. That $50 never came through, and I received texts purportedly from Zelle saying that, to receive my funds, I'd need to upgrade my account to a business account. The texts said the buyer needed to send me an additional $500 for the upgrade to happen. He said he would send it, as long as I'd reimburse him, which I said I would.

He told me he sent that $500. Then I received another text from Zelle congratulating me on upgrading my account, telling me that $500 was coming but adding that I needed to send $500 "firstly" to receive my entire $550 — the initial $50 payment plus $500 for the account upgrade.

After some back and forth with the buyer and a phone call with an alleged Zelle customer representative, I was pressured into paying $500 in order to receive all of the money owed to me. As you have probably figured out, I received nothing.

Here are the four red flags I ignored.

1. The deal was too good to be true

The "buyer" didn't negotiate the price I listed for the item and told me his nephew could pick it up that evening. Since it would be several hours before I handed the item off, he wanted to pay up front to ensure I wouldn't sell it to someone else. This seemed reasonable at the time.

I should have asked myself: "Would you pay for an item you haven't seen in-person yet?" The answer would have been no. But I didn't ask that question, so I didn't recognize right off the bat that this offer was probably too good to be true. 

"If it's too good to be true, if there's pressure, if they're communicating with you on different platforms, those are signs that there may be a red flag here," Ian Bednowitz, general manager of identity and privacy at LifeLock says.

In the future, he adds, I should remember that "I need to slow down and breathe and think and verify, even if I'm on the go and it's a pain."

2. I used a third-party service for payments

Facebook itself warns against using Zelle for , but I thought that warning was for less savvy buyers and sellers, not me, a financial journalist.

"If anyone ever tries to take you off the platform, any type of request like that, that's a problem, and ideally you want to use Facebook Pay so that you're not even dealing with Zelle," Bednowitz says. 

Indeed, Facebook has for buyers who run into issues during transactions as long as they use Facebook Pay, not a third-party payment app. Zelle similarly instructs users to only send funds to people you know. In my head, someone who has agreed to buy an item from me was enough verification to meet that standard.

3. The texts were never coming from Zelle

The initial texts I got from the scammer, at first glance, seemed like any other texts I've previously received regarding Zelle transactions. If I had spent an additional minute or two looking at the texts, I may have seen the typos, weird phrasing and different phone number that signaled this was not actually Zelle contacting me. 

"You have to take your time, especially if you're dealing with a marketplace of unknown people," Bednowitz says.

To my credit, I did Google "Zelle customer service" and see a different phone number on their website. To my shame, I ignored the discrepancy.

I can really only chalk this error up to distraction on my part. I was at work, for starters, so already trying to focus on . Additionally, I was in the middle of trying to move and coordinating all the logistics and costs that go along with that. All to say, I was not in the right headspace to be making $500 decisions, much less a transaction of that size with a stranger.

4. My emotions were running too high

In retrospect, I can see exactly why a scammer saw me as a prime target. I'd mentioned time-sensitivity in my listing, so the scammer knew from the jump I was a little desperate to get the item sold and distracted by the stress of moving.

During the transaction, the buyer manipulated me by making it seem like he was worried about getting scammed. While I was trying to do a little due diligence — calling my bank, looking for Zelle's actual customer service number — the buyer repeatedly messaged me, panicking that the issue wasn't being resolved and that he was losing his $50. 

Similarly, the agent on the phone acted like I was the one being irrational. He told me to "calm down" when I started getting frustrated with his fishy instructions to just go ahead and send that $500 even though there was no evidence on my banking app that I was receiving any payments.

"Scammers like to prey on the anxiety that people have," Bednowitz says. "[They] are preying on urgency and short time frames and your emotions by pushing you to act quickly and not think about it."

'There's no reason for anyone who's been scammed to feel any level of shame'

Looking back, I can't say I didn't know better. I wish that I had just taken a moment to let my emotions regulate so I could have seen and thought clearly throughout this transaction. The red flags were not so apparent in the moment because I was distracted and stressed out. They are so embarrassingly apparent when I look back at the messages now.

Bednowitz noted that scams are getting more sophisticated and harder to detect for everyone, even those of us who know what to look out for. "There's no reason for anyone who's been scammed to feel any level of shame," he says. 

My story goes to show that, even if you think you're vigilant enough to avoid getting burned, the wrong state of mind can make you vulnerable.

"It is much better to share your experience with your friends, to get the right protection, to share it with authorities," Bednowitz says. "Don't hide because something happened to you."

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