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MacAddict Tracks Down eBay Scam Artist
OS24Ever writes "A future high school history teacher, Jason Eric Smith, sold an 867MHz PowerBook G4 on eBay right before finals. He found out the hard way that people are out there to rip you off, and he went to great lengths to catch this guy with the help of Mac heads everywhere. A great read and agreat way for us little guys to get back at these scammers."
...if this guy had just waited to ship the item until the payment had cleared. If the buyer wasn't interested in that, then wait for another buyer who *is* willing.
Would've saved him a lot more trouble and money in the long run.
Ok, so it sounds like from this article the guy listed his system on eBay, but then sold it to a guy who "saw his ad" on eBay, but didn't actually bid on the item. This is 1. Against eBay rules for selling, and 2. Stupid. There's no way to get any kind of verification on who it was he was talking with (as he found out), no way to check out the guy's prior habits (via feedback), and no way to get back at the guy without a lot of effort. Every sale on eBay is insured up to a certain amount, with fraud protection offered through PayPal and through credit cards, COD is also the worst way to go.
I tell everyone who contacts me in this manner to bid on my auctions. Period. There's a reason eBay has these rules, and this is one of them.
But, no one ever said Mac users were the shiniest apples in the barrel.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
you should have planted a joint on him before calling the cops, that would have got them interested.
This story should be fowarded to everyone at the Chicago police. It should be an embarassment for them.
The ho hum attitude of law inforcement regarding things done on the Internet is sad, and scary. If the young man hadn't finally been able to contact an agency that actually wanted to do their job (stop crime), who knows where it would have gone.
Being a vigilante is never a good idea, but when the police don't do anything, it leaves the average person little choice.
I suspect we'll start seeing this more and more in the future, as long as law enforcement refuses to act on these things. Why should a person have to spend their own time and money in order to stop criminals? Are we going to reach a point where the only way someone can get an investigation is if they pay somebody to do it? I thought that's what our taxes which paid for police departments were supposed to do.
Just wait.. Withen a few years somebodys going to get killed because the police sat on their hands and a frustrated victim did their footwork and blows the person who scammed them away.
The Internet is generally stupid
Not to be contrary or anything, but do you have references to any studies that show this? I imagine that this conclusion is NOT true. My reasoning is the following: pricing on addictive substances is generally highly inelastic (that is, demand and price are only weakly coupled). That is, producers can demand just about any price they want, and the users will continue to pay that high price. The same is true of many currently LEGAL addictive substances: alcohol, tobacco, gasoline, heating oil, food, etc (okay, I admit that I'm using "addictive" a bit loosely here). The demand for these substances has little to do with the current price (when the price of gasoline rises 50%, for instance, you don't drive substantially less ... you suck it up and pay the high price), and the current price has little to do with current end user demand. I don't see any reason that legalization of a currently illegal addictive substance would drive its price down. Nor do I see that driving down the price would greatly increase the number of users (the demand). I know that I, for instance, wouldn't run out and start to ingest cocaine or marijuana if it was suddenly legal...
Please throw me some links if I'm wrong though; I'm quite curious if there is information contrary to my reasoning.
As others said, it was a cashier's check. Normally there's no reason to wait for a cashier's check to clear.
From the article:
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>go to great lengths to ensure that people don't steal them.
Fine, I'm with you, BUT this guy wasn't protective of his computer - he sent it to someone else! He was protective of his money.
OK, the Mac heads helped him out, Mac users are all one big team, wonderful. But some of the lines in the article puzzle me: "It's hard to sleep comfortably knowing some asshole has your Mac and is doing god knows what with it."
Was it easier for him to sleep when he thought the cashier's check was good?
Most crimes committed in the name of drugs are to keep profitable turf and eliminate competition. Make no mistake, drugs are illegal in this country because it keeps wallets fat. Think what the Mafia would be if we never had the 18th Amendment.
Do not touch -Willie
For your example about gasoline prices, the prices are directly affected by supply at the origin, but not much by demand at the end consumer. Most gas stations in an area are within a few cents of each other, because they are all maintaining prices as low as they can while still making a slight profit. Why? Competition. They don't get a lot of choice in the price, because (1) they do not determine the price they buy at, and (2) they have lots of competition.
For drugs, the street dealers also generally do not determine the price they buy it at, but they do determine the competition (or lack thereof). In an area with a large organized group of dealers, how long does an upstart independent competitive dealer survive? What happens when two competitive dealers (or organizations of dealers) lay claim to an area? Lower prices or physical violence?
Legalizing drugs may not be the complete solution, but it would go a long way towards lowering prices. When every gas station and grocrey store and drug store has a recreational drug counter, the competition will drive prices down to the point that the retailers are just barely making a profit. Also, a minimum quality of product will be assured. Taxes will be collected. The economy will benefit. (OK, so maybe I'm going a bit overboard there.)
The people who can't handle their addiction will at least be able to get more for a lower price, and maybe overdose themselves out of existence. In the long term, that should cut down on the theft needed to maintain habits.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
He may be out time, money, hardware, and grades, but he got revenge. Never underestimate the value of revenge.
(If I had the chance to catch someone who defrauded me, I'd do so in a second. If I knew he had defrauded many other people and would continue to do so, I'd spend a fair amount of time and effort to track him down.)
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Check out the price of caffein. Caffein is more addictive than cocain, though the two used to be mixed together. The difference is that the effects are milder and the withdrawal is not as bad. the majority of headaches that people experience in the US and other Western countries are actually from caffein withdrawal.
Anyways the price of caffein, or coffee, tea, and cola if you will, is kept in check by competition. Alcohol is also kept in check because there is competition. Oil is not a fair comparison as that is held mostly by a Cartel- OPEC anyone?
Make it legal but controlled and most of the crimes associated with it would disappear. Just not overnight.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
I'm going to make a wild guess here -- you don't live in New York at all, right?
If you do, you must not get off campus much, eh?
You've just presented a remarkably inaccurate picture of the police program which turned New York around, and had already improved relations between police and communities (including minority communities) long before 9/11.
See, `the minorities' aren't any different than the rest of us. Everyone wants to be safe in their home and neighborhood. By having the police fight crime in minority neighborhoods as well as rich neighborhoods, instead of just giving up on areas like East Harlem and Bed-Stuy, Giuliani did more for police-community relations than any of the hundreds of `outreach programs' ever had.
Better yet, why not just password-protect the bios? Once they pay you, tell them the password.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
As said in the story, the phone number he was given went to a cell phone, the adress whent to another phone. Do you have any idea how easy it is to scam fedex? Have an item sent to an adress fed-ex. Track said item. Stand outside of adress pretentding to do yard work during deliviery day. Intercept fed-ex man before he gets to the door. Sign for package. The adress had to be verified another way.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984