Similar to how community admins and middlemen listed on SteamREP's site get impersonated on a frequent basis, high profile traders are also a target of impersonation.

As these high profile traders don't display any special reputation on SteamREP's site, scammers take advantage of this, and they create a doppelgänger, linking to the real trader's inventory, claiming it as their own inventory, and stating its their negotiating account.

However, unsuspecting victims will add these impersonators, thinking it's the real person, and will ALWAYS request an "Item verification" (which is the true scam). Once items are sent, you're left with nothing.

A basic "Negotiating" account will typically have a link to the impersonation victim's inventory. More clever imposters will go as far as attempting to copy the victim's profile information, and/or keywords that will try to make themselves appear as a legitimate alternate account of the impersonation victim.

Note how it says "My Inventory"?


Here's another that will say "My Vault". Scammers will always use any keyword that will indicate a "main/vault/alternate" account:


Here is a more convincing "Negotiating" account:


In the first example, it will link to the inventory of this user:


In the second example, it links to St4ck's inventory:


In the third example, it links to Zsozsika cs.money's inventory (currently community banned at the time of this writing, hence why profile appears blank):

• Scammer adds unsuspecting victim
  
• Scammer states they want a 1:1 trade, stating they are getting a good deal but they want an item verification (another derivative is that they will pay cash for your items, but again, requests item verification)
  
• Will typically involve a fake "VALVe employee", "Steam Admin", "Valve Admin", or an impersonator of a trusted middleman, or an account that appears to be an "Item verificator"
  
• Fake "Admin" may or may not threaten to "ban" (Trade or VAC Ban) user if they do not comply (which they cannot actually do), should the user back out of the trade.
  
• Once items are sent to "Item verification" account, you just got scammed.

• They always link to the impersonation victim's inventory
  
• The deal is almost always too good to be true
  
• They always request "Item verification", "item checking", "1 trade at a time", "item cleaning" or "item cleansing"
  
• An accomplice is almost always involved ("STEAM Admin", "Valve Admin", "Item Database", "Item Checker", etc.)