Someone on Facebook Wants to Buy My Test Strips — Is It a Scam?

You are holding sealed boxes of test strips — maybe from a prescription change, a switch to a CGM, or a family member's estate. Someone on Facebook Marketplace, in a diabetes supply group, or in your DMs says they will buy them. You want to know if they are for real.

Legitimate buyers do find sellers on Facebook. The market exists. But so does every scam format that has ever targeted people selling small, easy-to-ship goods. Knowing the difference before anything moves is the whole game.

The red flags: what a scam looks like

These patterns show up consistently in fraudulent offers. Each one is designed to get your supplies or your money before you realize what happened.

They send more than you agreed and ask you to forward the difference

This is the classic overpayment scheme. The check or digital payment looks real, and they tell you to keep your cut and send the rest to their "shipping agent" or a third party. The original payment reverses days later after you've already forwarded real money. A legitimate buyer never has a reason to overpay and route funds through you. If the word "agent" appears anywhere in the payment instructions, stop.

They want you to ship first with payment promised afterward

Once your boxes are in a mailbox or a carrier's hands, you have no leverage. A real buyer who works by mail provides a prepaid label and pays within 24 hours of confirming your shipment arrived and was verified. Any offer where you ship on a promise is structurally a gift to a stranger.

They pressure you to decide right now

Urgency is a manipulation tool. A legitimate buyer will still be there tomorrow. Anyone who tells you the offer expires in an hour, that another buyer is about to take it, or that you need to commit before you can verify anything — is applying pressure specifically because verification would end the deal. The pressure itself is the signal to slow down.

They want to move the conversation off Facebook immediately

Facebook keeps a record. Scammers want to shift to WhatsApp, Telegram, or a personal number right away — not because it is more convenient, but because it breaks the trail. If a buyer insists on moving off Facebook before you have any verified business information about them, treat that as a hard stop, not a formality.

They cannot give you a business name or address

Serious buyers are running a business. They can tell you who they are, where they are located, and how to verify that independently. Vague answers, no physical address, no business name you can search — those are not privacy preferences. They are the absence of a real operation. An individual buyer is possible for a small amount, but anyone paying meaningful money for meaningful volume has a business behind them or they are not a real buyer.

They introduce a "shipping agent" or middleman

A buyer who routes your payment through a third party is building in a step where they can claim the agent never received your supplies, that the agent paid you directly, or that the funds are stuck in transit. There is no such thing as a legitimate shipping agent who holds payment on behalf of a test strip buyer. Any chain with more than two parties — you and the buyer — is not a legitimate transaction structure.

What a legitimate buyer actually does

Real buyers in this space are direct because the transaction itself is simple. Here is what the real version looks like from first contact to paid.

They give you a firm number before anything moves. Not a range, not "depends what I find when I open it" — a specific offer based on the brand, box count, and expiration dates you told them. If they cannot commit to a number before you hand over anything, they are not operating a real buying process.

They provide a business identity you can verify. A name, a location, a phone number that rings somewhere other than a burner. Legitimate buyers have been doing this long enough that they are findable with a basic search. If a search comes up empty on the business name and number they gave you, that is information — not a fluke.

For in-person transactions, they meet somewhere public and pay on the spot. A busy parking lot, a coffee shop, a public place where both parties can count the supplies and the cash together. Payment is immediate — not sent after they get home to "inspect" the boxes.

For mail-in transactions, they provide a prepaid label at no cost to you. You do not spend money to ship supplies to a buyer. They provide the label, they receive the shipment, they verify it, and they pay — typically within 24 hours — via Zelle, Venmo, PayPal, or check. Not a wire transfer to an account you cannot trace back to a real business.

They do not need your banking details or Social Security number. There is no reason for a test strip buyer to ask for your routing number, account number, or SSN. Zelle, Venmo, and PayPal require none of that from the recipient. Any request for that information is fraud, full stop.

How to protect yourself before anything moves

These steps take ten minutes and cut almost all the risk:

Get the number in writing first. Ask for a firm, specific offer for your specific boxes before agreeing to anything. A scammer cannot give you a real number because there is no real transaction behind it — the vagueness will show itself here.

Keep the boxes sealed until payment is confirmed. An open box has no resale value to any legitimate buyer. Keeping it sealed protects your asset and removes any excuse to dispute condition after the fact. Do not open anything to prove the contents are "really there."

Photograph the sealed boxes before anything leaves your hands. Shoot the boxes clearly — the brand name, expiration date, and lot number visible in each photo. This is your documentation if a dispute arises. Date-stamped photos taken before the transaction are the cleanest record you can have.

For in-person transactions: meet in public, in daylight, and count together. Agree on a public location — a parking lot, a coffee shop, somewhere with other people around. Count the boxes together before handing anything over. Count the payment together. Neither party leaves until both sides are confirmed.

Search for the buyer independently before you go anywhere. Run the business name and phone number through a regular search engine. Look for a real website, a physical location, any history of the business operating. If you cannot find the business through any channel other than the person who messaged you, that is a problem.

Do not let urgency make the decision for you. Every legitimate offer you pass on can be replaced by a real one. There are no irreplaceable deals in this market. If the pressure to decide fast is the loudest thing in the conversation, that is the signal to stop.

The platform question

Facebook is not inherently unsafe for this transaction — it is a place where real buyers and real sellers connect. The risk is not the platform; it is the absence of verification before anything moves. A buyer who can pass the checks above is a real buyer regardless of where they found you. One who cannot pass them is not — regardless of how polished the profile looks or how many followers the page has.

For context on how the transaction looks from a legal standpoint, the guide on whether selling diabetic test strips is legal covers the three conditions that govern any private sale. The short version: selling sealed, personally owned supplies is permitted across the United States, as long as the supplies were not purchased through Medicare or Medicaid. What you are protecting yourself against here is not the law — it is the people who use the legitimate market to run fraud.

If you want to understand more about what legitimate buyers look for — what makes a box worth buying and what gets declined — the guide on what buyers do not buy is the right read. Knowing that filters out the other risk: showing up with supplies that no real buyer will take.