helping a friend into a fraud

I have been helping a friend who asked for a favor. He is selling an item and got a contact from England from a supposed buyer. Well we start working on the deal and it seems a little too good to be true, but we are trusting and move forward. He wants us to use paypal and my friend has to create one for this purpose. Then suddenly he needs to send money via western union to a shipper and we start feeling a little uneasy. But somehow the whole paypal thing seems pretty convincing.

Then just when we are about to step into the trap I do some research and find these pages. I find the same exact "paypal" letter formats that some other people have also gotten. Well it all seems very clear then. We are being scammed big time.

I tell this person that the deal is off. We are not going to move forward with sending any money. The next email is a threatening one calling for a lawsuit. This also seems to have been the tactic with many others.

But here is what is curious and what I really would like some help with. It is ok if this guy tries to do this, but now I think that he is actually on my computer controlling things. Yesterday I was on this site but today I can't get to it through my computer. Also the paypal site that I used suddenly is frozen and I can't get to it at all. I am writing this from another computer that does not have those problems. Is it possible that this hacker guy could have taken over my computer and has planted these real looking websites and lured me into this game of his. I don't know much about the possibilities but enough that I know all this is possible and much more.

What can be done at this stage of the game?

If you went to a fake site, there is a possibility you have picked up a virus.

Typically I recommend running a full scan of your computer with at least 2 different antivirus programs with current definitions. The reason for running 2 when you suspect infection is because no antivirus is perfect, and because each scans a little differently.

If you currently have antivirus installed, make sure you update the definitions and run a full scan. There are several antivirus programs you can download for free, or run straight from a website. A few that have free antivirus or a web-based scan are malwarebytes, avast, avg, trend housecall, kaspersky, ad-aware. There are others too--these are just the ones I can think of offhand. Note that we do not endorse any specific antivirus program, as that is outside of our area of expertise.

Another thing you can do if you are using firefox is to use the WOT add-on, which will warn you if you are about to visit a site that has been reported as unsafe. Again, it is not perfect, as it takes time for new sites to be reported and flagged, but it can be very helpful at times.