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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."
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
And then we would have got the story from the [i]buyer[/i] about how he sent this check off and it got cashed and WHOOPS! the PowerBook never showed up and he then had to track down the seller and threaten him with a baseball bat. :)
No relation to Happy Monkey
>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
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.