Found a scope on a Facebook but/sell optics group. Very common scope for a very common price. I message the guy that I would like to purchase the scope. He responds with he was helping his neighbor sell the scope. I know the safest transaction is thru PayPal so that's what I suggested be the payment method. He asked would I be comfortable with mailing a postal money order instead of PayPal Bc he did not have a PayPal acct. I did some googling on the safety of a postal money order and in a moment of stupidity said sure. I mail 2 money orders to the neighbors name and address (both of which can be googled and lead back to each other). Send the tracking numbers and he said he will mail the scope as soon as the money is in his account. It arrived in Thursday and he said he tried to cash / deposit the money orders but that there is a standard 2 day hold ( I immediately called my banking lady to which she said was true ) and that as soon as it cleared that he would mail scope and send tracking #. All of that lead up to Friday afternoon about 5 and all was right in the world. For whatever reason I started digging into the guy that was leading this arrangement. His fb profile is ur standard older guys page with very few pics of family and an occasional dog. Then I click on his friends..... there's 19 of them with none of them having his last name and none of them in his state. This is when I started wigging out. I can't find any info on the guy leading this transaction. So I start looking up the guy who is supposedly selling the scope and the name the money orders are made to. I know there are a lot of people with the same name so I looked up the name on fb and the city / state. Bammm.... a younger guy with a Alabama hat on. I message him and ask if he is selling a scope , he says no. So I asked was the address I mailed the money orders to his address and he has yet to respond. This is now sat night, I get a message from the guy leading up the sell and he asked how hard was it to make a PayPal acct since the money order is taking more time than originally thought. I said that I suggested this first but if he could mail back the money orders (not sure how u could get them out of the bank after u supposedly deposit them........and after I made sure they were the real ines I mailed) that I would send payment via PayPal. He said that Monday afternoon, if the funds weren't available, that he would mail the money orders back . I know u can't stop payment on a money order but since someone by the name on the money order had to deposit it into his bank account I should be able to figure out who he is right???? And if I don't get my scope be able to do something right???

This is by far one of my dumbest moves to date and should have stayed with my PayPal only policy on fb transactions. So aldeerians.... what should my next step be besides going to work to make back the $$$ I just pissed away