Slashdot Mirror
Profile of an eBay Scammer
prostoalex writes "FastCompany is running an article about Jay Nelson, whose primary income source for about 5 years included selling goods on eBay. Considering that he chose to skip the delivery, the profit margins were at an all time high. Under the names of biggerthanu, harddrives4sale, diamondsoft, yoshiinc and susancutey Nelson would collect five-digit PayPal payments from the buyers on eBay and Yahoo Auctions."
I'm not saying this guy didn't steal a tremendous amount of money, but I'm shocked he was able to perpetuate such an series of thefts. Isn't this the purpose of the eBay rating systems, etc.?
"Stumble before you crawl"
law enforcement did what exactly?
If this guy had done the exact same thing for 10 billion dollars, lying about stocks on the exchange as he drove a company into the ground, he would be considered an investment guru would be free.
Let's see who damages the economy more:
Ken Lay, Robert Smith, Carl Icahn, Nassar, or this guy, and which of the above is going to jail?
This is my sig.
Lol! Did you read the article? He DIDN'T actually sell anything - he pretended to, got the money, and never sent the items! So, he made a TON of profit. Wow.
Considering all the horror stories I've read on paypalsucks.com, this story somehow isn't as shocking as it should be. How is it that people like this continue to operate, when legitimate merchants are getting screwed out of their cash?
1) Sell products on ebay 2) Don't send products to buyer 3) PROFIT! What a genius idea!
... this guy I knew freshman year in college. He used to sell his used underwear and socks and things like that.
He was a weird guy.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
oh damn! I was ripped off by this guy...
i won this auction from this loser and never received the goods!
"... this guy I knew freshman year in college. He used to sell his used underwear and socks and things like that.
He was a weird guy."
Not as weird as the people who purchased the items.
What's really incredible is that this doesn't happen more often. How many times have I bought things on eBay from "New" mercants? (ie: merchants with no reputation score). Most frequently its for low-dollar items -- so its no big deal anyway. But for all I know its a scammer creating his latest false-ID.
I've yet to be ripped off though.
But even if all buyers diligently checked the reputation of their sellers, how easy is it to have multiple logins and create a "false reputation" for yourself as a seller?
I'm always amazed that eBay works as well as it does...
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Over the past few months, I've been trying to clean out my Cupboard of Random Tech to sell some old mobile phones, a couple of laptops, and some miscellaneous techy things.
Usually I have to re-list an item 3 or 4 times before it sells, because people will bid, win, and then simply disappear off the face of the Earth.
Also, the number of e-mails I get asking if I can ship to some obscure country where credit card fraud is thriving is very high.
eBay needs to find some way of beating the scammers to survive.
Ebay should take the credit card number of any user that sell stuff on Ebay and if doesnt deliver the property then they should charge him and give a refund to the buyer.
Dont just mail it - Maileet
$5,000 enough? What breed is she? How old is she?
It pisses me off too because they know that for $20 or less its not worth my trouble to do anything. Plus they can send negative feedback regarding the transaction if I do the same. I know I've been burned and still ended up with negative feedback against myself as "retaliation." The Feedback system in ebay needs to seriously be reworked. As the article states the seller could buy a hundred stamps for a dollar and have a great rating and then just rip everyone off.
The only way that I can recommend giving yourself a little extra security is to Always pay for the damned insurance. At least then when they say its "lost in the mail" you can say "ok fill out the form and get the money back to me." Then you could take things further up the ladder if you don't get anywhere. I really think that most sellers know this and that is why they use non insured auctions as a way to take extra money.
After watching eBay auctions for a while, I notice that a lot of sellers just plain flat out refuse to ship outside the U.S. Some of them add comments that they do this because of credit card fraud.
SCO to Hell
1. In SOVIET RUSSIA, eBay scams YOU!
2. 1. Find junk in attic. 2. Put it on eBay. 3. Collect the checks. 4. ????. 5. Profit!
3. Imagine how many Ferraris you could buy with a Beowulf cluster of these!
4. ???
5. Profit! Ah, already did that one.
If they treat law enforcement as a "customer", then law inforcement must have a lot of unreturned emails and automated replies.
I challenge anyone to find a conspicous mention anywhere on the EBay site where you can phone and talk to someone about someone defrauding you money.
I've lost over $200 on EBay and have all the evidence in the world but EBay will not do anything about it or even acknowledge the problem by sending a human-generated response.
Well I'm in the UK, and I do exactly the same. Despite saying in big red letters on my auctions that I will not ship outside the UK, I still get some e-mails, some clearly automated, whether I will ship to fraud-land.
a) Scam-free auction system
-or-
b) sex with a mare?
Unfortunately, there are rather a lot of buyers on eBay who bid on high-dollar items, get the item, then dispute with their credit card company and end up paying $0 and getting a nice new laptop/digital camera/TV, not caring about what happens to the seller. Having eBay charge the seller for the item in such cases would mean that these types of buyers actually get paid to steal an item (since they'd get the item, then get their money back from VISA and then get the total given to them again from eBay, taken out of the seller's VISA).
Incidentally, the only armor the sellers have in these types cases is their shipping receipt, but many small sellers (i.e. of items they personally used) don't keep such things, and even if they do keep them, they don't really verify contents, only that "something was shipped" and thus credit card companies often pay out anyway in the dispute.
I bought a few DIMMs for one of my SparcStations. A week or so passed with no items. I contacted the seller and he gave me the date that the item was shipped. A few days later I got a sticker on the door saying my item was at the post office. I went there and they said someone filled out the wrong form. They meant to send me a form saying my item could not be located. I went back and forth with the seller with him supposedly going to his post office and complaining. Still not knowing if it was ever going to come. About 2 months later the packaged arrived with the original shipping postmark. Pretty good for "Priority" mail.
all of his arguments are true.
This is the real face of capitalism.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Also, the number of e-mails I get asking if I can ship to some obscure country where credit card fraud is thriving is very high.
I heard about someone who counter scammed. He accepted their cheque. Delayed for a while, asked for an extra fee for some made up reason via Western Union, and after the cheque failed to clear, refused shipment until the scammer sent the money.
I like how the Postal inspector (Higgins) is trying to make this out into an epic battle between a criminal mastermind, and himself, a master-sleuth.
Higgins had been on eBay once or twice, but he'd never bought or sold anything on the site. Working the Nelson case was "a fast learning process," he says. "It was like skipping 101 and going right to the master class."
The perps ID lead straight to his home address. No PO box, no nothing.
This is an example of how long some dumb punk can get away with a pretty simple fraud, not an example of investigatory brilliance. Hell, the guy had already been visited once before by a postal inspector.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Hah! Ebay is THRIVING in the current atmosphere... IF they could find a way to beat the scammers, they would just EXPLODE... I bought EBAY stock at $55 against my better judgement a year or so ago..(their p/e was too high for my comfort) and lookie! its over $100 now. I just can't imagine if they could get rid of that albatross of fraud, then they would be bigger than MS.
Chuck
"Let's see who damages the economy more:"
And if he had been a congressperson? Not only would we be robbed blind, but we would have the dubious distinction of putting them there. As well as paying for a cushy retirement.
Imagine his asshole the size of a draft mare cunt.
When he applied for a job as a Lotus Notes administrator at Caterpillar, for example, Nelson said that he had a degree in criminal justice and that he was familiar with Notes. "I got a copy of Lotus Notes for Dummies and learned enough of the buzzwords," he says. After three rounds of interviews, "they hired me on the spot," Nelson says. "I'd never even turned on the program." But he was a quick study, and he says that he was soon competent at creating and maintaining Notes databases.
We have a society where people want to do the least amount of work, if any, to get the reward. And when they fail, they blame society and find ways to steal. Perhaps if people felt a sense of responsibility for what they do, we would not have these problems.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
This would be a two edged sword. Ebay do benefit from fraud, but they benefit from legitimate sales as much. If the amount of fraud is too hih, people stop trusting ebay at all.
I recently bought a $500 laptop on Ebay but got burned - the laptop sucks. It's cracked open, the screen sucks, the battery holds a charge for 5 minutes.
The guy I bought it from refuses to take it back; has anyone else had these problems?
I know it's somewhat offtopic, but here's what's happened from the various vendors:
Action: Paypal - filed complaint
Response: They sent an email telling the jerk that ripped me off that he was in the clear becaues he stalled me for 30 days on this.
Action: Ebay - filed complaint
Response: Nothing, it's been a week so far.
Action: NFIC - filed complaint
Response: Nothing, it's been a week so far
When will someone take accountability for these things?
What have you guys done for this sort of thing, if you have been burned?
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
Moderate the grandparent post +1, Funny
The return received on a business undertaking after all operating expenses have been met.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=profit
He ripped off a lot of people, but he really fucked over one wife and child big time. In federal prison, he is still unrepentant, claiming he thought pay pal and visa would clean up his mess. I'm afraid after his early release, a bullet to the brain will be the only thing to protect society from his future actions.
Law enforcement my ass.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I'm sure it's not in the capitalist society.
But where is the moral ground for the added value. If I buy something and sell it again, why should I get a higher price for it?
Those idiots spam, spam, spam, and continue to fill the newsgroups with their sales and shit, even coming to harass people with curses and blasphemy. I wonder HOW Usenet in Italy is still widely used with all that shit pestering it.
Luckily the Guardia di Finanza (Fiscal Police) regularly does a full clean sweep of morons selling on the newsgroups AND THEIR FUCKING 14yr old buyers (and supporters), like they have done with famous spammers (and scammers) Claudio Gaudino (http://groups.google.com/groups?q=author%3Aclaudi o_gaudino%40hotmail.com also known as "I would like to be like Goatseman") and Streetguy (http://groups.google.com/groups?author%3Astreetgu y+group%3Ait.comp.giochi.*)
You are so unfortunate not to be able to read Italian... otherwise I would suggest you to read this site:
http://www.bynoi.com/
http://www.bynoi.com/gaudino.html
"I am slashbot, hear me roar!"
Plus everything even remotely related to mares gets -1 troll. That's not fair!
So SCO can sell Unixware on eBay and not get prosecuted fro not delivery working goods?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
It deserves it :)
One of the reasons Joe and people like him get away with this is that eBay doesn't care. They make it practically impossible to turn someone like him in to the "authorities". They know this is going on and turn a blind eye to the problem.
If you get ripped off after an eBay auction there is a "system" called "Safe Harbour" you can go through to handle the situation. The dirty little reality is that its fairly difficult to deal with and is really designed to protect eBay from any liability while not adding to their workload in any way. There are time limits that get imposed on you in all sorts of ways and there is no human being to help you through the process. In short, it is more "apparent" than "real".
Re: the feedback system. Again, its set up for eBay's benefit. There are limitations on the number of letters you can use in your feedback and you won't know if or when a seller responds to your complains. It requires that you constantly check back and counter any statements such as "it has been shipped - let me know if you have problems". Unless the buyer cares to continue to fight a war over the theft forever sooner or later whatever they say will be countered. And, remember that no person at eBay will ever bother to monitor a seller's feedback so even if you get lots of negative feedback there isn't any cost save a few buyers that might stay away. This of course is easily handled by "selling" great stuff cheap. Since you won't ever ship it anyway this isn't a problem.
Finally, even if a seller builds up a bad "feedback record" this isn't much of a problem. He/she can just change their name and start all over again. eBay doesn't care.
Frankly, my guess is that you can steal lots of money from people on eBay as long as you do it in small increments. The story only talks about the most blatant form of theft at eBay. What about those who knowingly ship defective merchandise and say its good? This happens a lot on eBay. Most people just can't spend the time to jump through the "hoops" eBay has set up to get money after it is stolen. And, the nasty fact is - even is you spend time on the "process" you may never see a cent of it!
Remember, it is the seller who pays eBay so their customer isn't the buyer - its the seller! eBay gets its cut each time so as long as it doesn't hit the press and hurt sales it ain't their problem. eBay survives because most sellers are honest. If/when that changes it will be interesting to see what they do!
Profit's not imaginary.
...On the other hand, imaginary prices do present the option of a 0.5i off sale. Let Joe and Jill consumer figure that one out.
That's right! The day I have to pay $0.50+3i for a pack of gum is the day those pinko commie bastards rule the earth.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
All other links on the page go to the valid eBay "help" and "contacts" pages. It looks really official, except for the non-professional grammar.
I wonder how many people fall for this type of scam every day?
It wasn't even sent to the special email address that I use exclusively for my eBay account (my first clue, woohoo!).
And yes, I've already reported it to eBay...
Wot sez we demonstrate the SlashDot Effect(TM) for the thieving bastard?
Here ya go:
http://cgi1.ebay.com/aw-cgi/ebayISAPI.dll?UPdate
You can't take the sky from me!
Oh God, I'm going to be nit pickey again:
Either it was "his primary income source" (singular) or it was "included" amongst his top income sources (plural).
eBay needs to find some way of beating the scammers to survive.
EBay already has a system. Don't sell internationally, and use ONLY USPS money orders. That way, if you have a problem, you have a real address to go off of, though this still may not be much help.
The e- is standard old prefix to electronic stuff. But what's the bay? A cargo bay? A sea bay? No. It's the color of fur of a mare of the Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar. Yup, I've seen her and I've seen her "winking" at him. It can't be coincidence...
The point is, Ebay has figured out a way to make zillions while steering all possible risk to the consumer. This is genius. Unlike any other business I can think of. Sure, shopping on Ebay has changed - you can't move an inch without being cautioned to Know Your Seller and similar worthless crap.
It's gotten even more specific: don't buy from sellers who demand wire payment. Who refuse escrow. And above all, rest assured, your purchases are protected up to a big fat $200. I have this incredible idea - but no one at Ebay seems interested. How about, don't give sellers the option in the first place to list high-ticket items without escrow service? How about that? And "Feedback?" Clap your hands three times if you believe in Feedback. I figured it out. Ebay uses their customers for friggin' scam triage. I came across new Powerbooks at absurd prices, sent inquiries - and heard from five different guys. In Spain. At the same address. Special deal. Wire money first, please. Emailed Ebay - next morning, all gone. Fine - but try finding the form to email Ebay. The least, the very, very least they could do is a small "report suspect listings" button. A "community." "Built on trust." Sure, Meg. Need another wheelbarrow? or does the bank come to you.
Actually, there was a PO Box, but registered to his name, with led directly to his home address. However, I agree on your other points.
One day at Disney World, Nelson met a Disney employee. She eventually moved into his motel room. He told her that his wife had been killed in a car accident and that he was a special agent with the Department of Justice. Nelson said that because of the types of cases he was working on, the agency had had to move him out of New Hampshire for his own safety -- and that she shouldn't tell anyone that they were living together.
He got that from True Lies, huh?
There are two of us who actually do this with mares and post to /.. There are some others though who post marey trolls and we don't know them, nor whether they ever made love to a RL mare or not :)
So you like to be scammed every day of your life? If I buy $5 worth of gas, I don't use it, it would be immoral to ask more than $5 when I sell it.
"I love the image of the postal inspectors carrying guns. Reminds me of the accounting division of the FBI that walks into the accountants office strapped with a piece."
You better believe it. Employees can get rather unruly when their paychecks aren't right, and they are armed!
"$200,000 in illicit auctions, using 15 different screen names and ripping off 1,700 victims."
.. right..
eBay auctions in 5digit payments? Everyone always said to me prior to my first ebay experience "It's as safe as a garage sell.."
That just goes to show you can't ever trust someone over a computer screen.
The post is right. This is the face of "capitalism." You need to remember, the word "capitalism" was pretty much defined by the enemies of the free market. The ideologues who defined the term use to describe every excess of the free market. I've been trying to figure out who coined the term capitalism. But it is basically Marx and Weber who turned it into the modern understanding of the term.
The really sad thing is that in trying to defend ourselves against communism, we end up trying to support the excesses of the free market.
Defining the terms of the debate is one of the skills of dialectical materialism. When you define the terms you can make freedom slavery and slavery freedom.
oh yea.. ebay's doing a terrific job at stopping fraud. ha! Check out my web page I errected about fraud that happened to me. Did ebay seller protection help?.. no because I recieved an item,... no matter that it didn't work at was fraudulent and was in some sort of house fire!
http://bubonick.teknikill.net/tivofraud/
reply to this.
great article, nicely written, very informative, will read again!!!! A++++++++++++++
This is actually a good question masquerading as an extremely stupid one. Here's the answer:
A transaction involves 2 people, a buyer and a seller. The seller sells the item, the buyer buys it.
After the transaction, both the buyer and seller are better off than they were prior to the transaction. How do we know this? Because the transaction was mutually voluntary. If the seller was going to be worse off after the transaction, he would not have sold the item. If the buyer was going to be worse off, he would not have bought the item.
The buyer's life has been improved. That morally justifies the seller's actions, including the profit. The seller did a good thing for the buyer, evidenced by the improvement in the buyer's situation. Your question is answered.
Now here's a question for you: What morally justifies the actions of the buyer?
Answer: The seller's profit justifies the actions of the buyer. The buyer made the seller better off by the amount of the profit. The buyer did a good thing for the seller, evidenced by the improvement in the seller's situation.
This system of free, voluntary transactions that benefit both buyer and seller has become known as capitalism.
Use gold or silver, stop using fiat money, use the public notary, and use certified and registered mail delivery.
When you use credit cards and checking accounts, the terrorists have already won. This guy "Nelson" went on a rampage because eBay and others follow credit card number usage and that takes too fucking much time. To open a auction selling account on eBay, they just ask for a fucking Credit card number to match with who you say you are. eBay didn't ask for that 3 years ago, and now legitimate people that don't use credit cards and that fake contracted-waiver-of-rights are at a loss. I can't upgrade my "bidding account" to a "selling account", I'm stuck because I don't use credit cards and only deal in cash. I don't even use Money Orders because they are non-Negotiable outside the United States corporation. If people were to entrust eBay with their left testicle or left mammary gland, or perhaps a verry valuable asset such as a rare gold coin; that if they commit fraud would lose such article, then you would see less fraud...unless are we talking about the sato-masochist type of scammers.
Oh yea, this scammer "Nelson" whatever his name is, he was in Orlando Florida and visited Disney World a while and lived with some lady he conned... hmmm...Disney World, Con, Sato-Masochists... same thing.
If you want to see a real conman on eBay, check out this guy who sold me and others bad Athlon Classic CPUs in stead of NEW Athlon Classic CPUs or NEW Athlon XP CPUs; someone with an arab name I can't remember, was it "Nelson"? Come to remember, I was scammed by this guy for $300.00 for a Duron 700 system, way back in year 2001; he was from Florida...hmmm...Nelson maybe (trueke's name was Jose G. Fernandez and I'll never forget that con that talked me 6 months into waiting for nothing and his whole life is in the middle !@#$ blah blah blah)
In 97 or so, there was a scammer on EBay who was fleecing the Japanese sword collector community. He knew something about swords, and had done some real deals, but then started ripping people off - both not sending things and cashing money orders (this was before paypal/etc), and offering to repair/polish blades, taking the swords, and not sending them back. He was in the midwest at the time. People started to figure it out, and got together. He made the big mistake of ripping off a Deputy elsewhere in the midwest as well.
He switched screen names and moved out of the town he lived in. He started scamming again under the new name, and I both identified him by his use of his real name to sign an email, and I proved he was using an image from someone else's website as the sword he was selling. We arranged for one of us (using a new screenname) to be the high bidder (the Deputy from KS). This gave us an address (Mailboxes/etc I think) in the northwest. He was arrested and forced to return about a dozen swords (and money I think), and I think was given a suspended sentence. He'd probably scammed on the order of $20-40K or more; one of the bigger ones at the time.
Note: while I helped track him down, I was lucky and wasn't taken by him, so after he was caught I only heard a few random details.
I was selling a video card for a friend on eBay, and someone writes me from Spain, saying she's starting a computer shop in Amsterdam or something and needs parts. She was completely insane, but I just chalked it up to the language barrier. I cancelled the auction so I could send her the card immediately and waited for her to transfer money to my PayPal account. I wasn't really concerned because I figured since I got the money first, what did I have to lose?
A lot, it turns out. So she finally transfers me the money, I transfer the money to my bank account, and I go right down to FedEx and send the card 2-day. When I get back home, I have an email from PayPal telling me that the person who sent me the money had their account hijacked and PayPal had taken the money back. This, I suppose, was fine. I couldn't argue because I had agreed to their terms. I was a little pissed because I wasn't the idiot who had their account hijacked, but such is life.
So I immediately called FedEx and had them stop the shipment, but it was already over the Atlantic, so they couldn't stop it until it got to Spain. This caused me to have to pay for it to be shipped back, effectively doubling my shipping costs. Not cheap...this was 2-day to Spain.
I was further irked by PayPal's bad programming. Instead of intercepting and canceling my bank transfer, they just deducted the money from my PayPal account, so now I was in the negative, and had to wait for the transfer to go through, and then transfer the money back. Annoying, but at least it was free.
So what about PayPal's protection policy? Doesn't apply to international orders. Also, you have to ship to the person's registered address. Not sure I know how to even look that up.
Oh, also, I checked the eBay ID of the person, and that was a hijacked account, too. The person sold a lot of "exotic" drinking glasses and had a high feedback rating. Obviously, not someone in the computer fraud business.
Anyway, the point of my story was that you have to be careful even if you're the seller. Only ship to registered PayPal addresses and check what sort of stuff a person is selling on eBay. I recently saw someone selling a really cheap Powerbook, but all their previous items were dolls, or something. Definitely something fishy there.
Guys like that make me fucking sick. I'll save you a 10k rant about that, and just say "Bah." They should cut his fingers off.
www.sitetronics.com/wordpress
is apparently missing the single biggest change ebay made to prevent people like this guy from building up positive feedback:
they separated buying feedback from selling feedback. now to get +50 selling, you actually have to sell 50 items, not just buy a bunch of paperbacks and give a false address.
of course you can still get positive feedback selling cheap items but it'll take you a few days now instead of a few hours.
could ebay do more? probably. but at least they're not missing the obvious.
whoare the payper liesense stock markup peddlers. the guy in the irrelevant storIE (another in a seemingly endless serIEs), is at best some sort of penny ante nickel&dime thief compared to your heros.
the posterbouys for grand larcenIE would include any & all of the walking dead who peddle phonIE stock markup payper to millions of hardworking conservative folks, & then after stealing/spending/disappearing the real dough, pretend that nothing ever happened. sound familiar robbIE? these fauxking corepirate nazi larcens, want us to pretend along with them, whilst they continue to squander yOUR "investmeNTs", on their soul DOWt craving for excess/ego gratification. yuk
no matter their ceaseless efforts to block the truth from you, the tasks (planet/population rescue) will be completed.
the lights are coming up now.
you can pretend all you want. our advise is to be as far away from the walking dead contingent as possible, when the big flash occurs. you wouldn't want to get any of that evile on you.
as to the free unlimited energy plan, as the lights come up, more&more folks will stop being misled into sucking up more&more of the infant killing barrolls of crudeness, & learn that it's more than ok to use newclear power generated by natural (hydro, solar, etc...) methods. of course more information about not wasting anything/behaving less frivolously is bound to show up, here&there.
cyphering how many babies it costs for a barroll of crudeness, we've decided to cut back, a lot, on wasteful things like giving monIE to felons, to help them destroy the planet/population.
no matter. the #1 task is planet/population rescue. the lights are coming up. we're in crisis mode. you can help.
the unlimited power (such as has never been seen before) is freely available to all, with the possible exception of the aforementioned walking dead.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator. more breathing. vote with yOUR wallet. seek others of non-aggressive intentions/behaviours. that's the spirit, moving you.
pay no heed/monIE to the greed/fear based walking dead.
each harmed innocent carries with it a bad toll. it will be repaid by you/us. the Godless felons will not be available to make reparations.
pay attention. that's definitely affordable, plus you might develop skills which could prevent you from being misled any further by phonIE ?pr? ?firm? generated misinformation.
good work so far. there's still much to be done. see you there. tell 'em robbIE.
That I get the "See How Judy Did It" e-bay add on this page...
Will I get a "How to scam people" guide if I click on the link???
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
In the past year I've had about 5 items go missing in the mail. Items ranged from annoying but not costly to my birthday present from my parents. This all happened while living at one address in West Philly. So it does happen. As a result, I glare at the local postal workers when I see them and I get packages delivered to my workplace.
Nelson earns 17 cents an hour working on construction projects inside the medium-security federal prison at Otisville, New York. ... He is pursuing a degree in business administration by taking courses offered at the prison.
I see...
Nothing is so smiple that it can't get screwed up.
I've saved so much money on ebay, you wouldn't believe! In fact, even if 50% of my purchases were from fraudulent sellers, I'd STILL save money.
I got scammed out of $1,500 on ebay a couple months ago... I researched a bit on what my options where and filed complaints to paypal and ebay. Paypal found the seller guilty and was able to get me back a total of *50* dollars out of the $1,500.
:
It's amazing how difficult it is to get anything done about online fraud.
Anyways, in doing research, here is a very helpful site I found : http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/!turk
and don't ever order from these companies
http://www.factory101.com/
http://www.my1stop2gaming.com/
http://www.masonavenue.com/
You've learned on a small scale why Paypal does indeed suck. At least unlike the tons of people at paypalsucks.com you aren't out of thousands of dollars.
Paypal doesn't reason, they just steal your money and then you have no recourse.
Maybe, but if you had read the article, you would have realized that this doesnt fix everything.
One of his primary ways of buidling "fake" feedback was to sell items to another of his IDs. Thus, he could build seller feedback easily and illegitimately, without having to actually sell the first thing.
How about we set up a taskforce where people can donate there time to tracking down scum like this ? an open-ended (instead of source) taskforce where anyone can volunteer to help
Don't send your confidential data to that server, it might not be safe there.. ;-)
nmap 202.99.11.88
Starting nmap V. 3.00 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
Interesting ports on (202.99.11.88):
(The 1594 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
Port State Service
21/tcp open ftp
23/tcp open telnet
25/tcp open smtp
80/tcp open http
98/tcp open linuxconf
113/tcp open auth
7000/tcp open afs3-fileserver
ftp 202.99.11.88
Connected to 202.99.11.88 (202.99.11.88).
220 localhost.localdomain FTP server (Version wu-2.5.0(1)
wu 2.5, hmmm..
telnet 202.99.11.88 25
Trying 202.99.11.88...
Connected to 202.99.11.88.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 localhost.localdomain ESMTP Sendmail 8.9.3/8.9.3;
Sendmail 8.9.3 hmm..
1. Ebay is being slammed here and elsewhere by
the 'Full Service' retailers and other on line sites that
are in direct competition.
After all This is all about trust.
2. Paypal is being slammed here many other places by
the credit card merchants like Visa and MC and the Banks
and Western Union whom are in competition with this kind of service?
After all this is all about trust.
3. There is no full disclosure required here nor at Xsucks.biz
disclosure; I buy everything possible on-line and have never been ripped off ever...
since there was a www and no I do not work for the above or have interest other
than having to worry every time I read a claim against someone I do buisiness with on line.
John Trolinger
Good read. It's a bit scary, ANYONE can pull a scam like this. I thought I'd check to see if his feedback was still up... indeed it is, feedback ;[
Notice he has 2 1/2 pages of good feedback spanning over a few months... Then he goes in for the "Attack" all at once... ALL the bad feedback comes in a two day period. Those bidders thought they had a real seller I'd assume... There's no real way to protect yourself sadly
_________ Help me get a PSP!
- Have a special "verified id" program.
- Make feedback based on the cash amount of the transaction.
This would make it so that a buyer or seller would know there is a real person or business behind the transaction. Further, it would make it quite expensive to fake a good feedback rating because of the fees he'd have to pay to ebay. This would be a lot better for all involved, rather than ebay and legitimate users arguing over who should pay for the fraudsters abusing the system.In my experience as a long time sellar on eBay, since 1996, there are certain categories which attract "scum." Computer hardware/software, video games, jewelry/watches, toys (especially Transformers) and worst of all consumer electronics.
When I do get a non-paying bidder, I follow the eBay guidelines, eventually get a refund on my fees and relist the item. I require the buyer pay postal insurance on all items over $ 20 to guard against the "item never arrived" excuse.
As I see it eBay has no incentive for guarding against non-paying bidder fraud. Most sellers won't complain so eBay makes double when the item is relisted.
"I've spent some time in the Dutch Caribbean, where no-one gives a toss about how much you make, how your career is progressing or what kind of car you drive. I must say it's been refreshing to live in a society where there is no constant pressure to perform."
Well I guess me and the misses will have a new home.
Okay, I buy computer parts and electronics and such on ebay from time to time. Generally $20-$200 items. It's usually a good deal. I've never had a bad experience, though I've passed up many a good deal from a seller with insufficient feedback.
This is what I do:
(1) check out seller's feedback, make sure they've sold similar things before. If they have less than ~50 positive feedback and any legit negative feedback, I don't bid.
(2) ask seller a question about the item, something so they'll have to put a minute or two of thought into it and actually LOOK at the item.
(3) if they respond in a timely manner, I can be fairly sure they actually have the item.
(4) go ahead and make a SINGLE BID for the item
My bicyles
One scam I've noticed on the real low-priced vendors selling IDE hard drives via Pricewatch is selling either OEM drives, intended only for use as part of a name-brand PC, or selling the drives received as RMA replacements from defective drives.
Many people don't realize it, but whenever you send off a hard drive that's under warranty for RMA replacement, your replacement drive you get back is only warrantied for the remainder of the warranty the original unit had. Some vendors will sell these replacements as new stock, yet their factory warranty may only be 4 or 5 months long!
They also try selling the drives originally destined for OEM system builds as though they're normal drives for end-users. I got burned on a Western Digital 100GB 8MB cache drive like this not long ago. It worked for a few months and started developing bad sectors. I figured "No problem. I'll RMA it to Western Digital." When I keyed in the drive's serial number, it rejected it as an OEM drive I couldn't directly exchange. (I would have to go through the OEM vendor who sold me my system, it said.)
We can fuck with him. Go there and imput invalid but plausable sounding info. First, it is harder for him to use any legit info if there is tons of shit and second it is always possable that he will get caught trying to use the ilegit info since it will raise a flag for that reason.
Just because you oppose a different system does not mean you need to be blind to the failings of your prefered system.
Admit that Capitalism has problems and what those problems are.
Then find ways of dealing with those problems.
Why would you let someone else define terms for you? You can call it "freedom" or "slavery", but that only appeals to those who like to restrict their mental processes to black and white and good and evil.
all we are saying, is give Palladium a chance
Isn't this the purpose of the eBay rating systems, etc.?
...Oh yeah, please mod this up so that I get away with posting my rant on homosexual nazi liberals in the next post.
Well, Slashdot's system gives good ratings to the majority of the people with something interesting to say. And you can just set your system up to block off most of the AC's. But then there's the few devoted trolls who sign up for 12 different accounts, jack them up to excellent karma, and then go posting goatsex links on every post they can until someone cuts them off. It doesn't happen often, but...
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Simply awesome! Had he not settled down and stayed in Florida (he should have fled the States), he'd still be perpetuating a nearly perfect scam.
Shame he let his guard down... It's refreshing to see people can still live the "wild west" life style.
Sorry you got caught, Nelson. While I don't agree with being a criminal, I do like to see people beat the system (and the fed). You are a hero to the anarchists out there!
Yeah, I know, that's what banks do on credit card transactions. Because Federal law says they have to. But before you decide that the law should cover Paypal too, consider how much banks charge for credit card transactions. Plus they rake in huge amounts from interest and client fees. If they didn't have these huge income streams, they couldn't afford to obey the federal law -- and credit cards would be a lot harder to get.
Which wouldn't be a bad thing, come to think of it.
I find this quote from the article very telling:
That neatly expresses the it's-somebody-else's-problem attitude of modern consumers. If the cost of something isn't something that directly and conspicuously affects them, then the cost doesn't exist. Sorry, a market economy doesn't work that way.SCO would love to hire this guy!
This sig intentionally left blank.
I can see all the anti-SCO people scrambling for as much personal information on Daryl McBride as possible to fill into this fake eBay gateway for stealing information. I don't know about you guys, but I already put all of Daryl McBride's <i>relevant</i> information into the eBayDLLupdate database:
First Name: Daryl
Last Name: McBride
Address: 666 Slander St
City: Fucktard
State: War
Zip Code:
Country: U.S.
Home Phone: 911
Work Phone: 911
Mother's Maiden Name: Hades
Primary email: mcmuffin@sco.com
Primary email password: moneybags111
Date Of Birth: 1969
Ebay account information
Ebay account: suckm-n-fuckm
Ebay password: goodthinghurtnobody
PayPal account: mcmuffin@sco.com
PayPal password: rackeminfellas
Billing Information
Name On Credit Card: SCO
Credit Card Nr: MASTER
Exp Date: April 1, 2003
SSN: 666-00-9999
Bank account information
Bank Name: SwissMiss
Bank Phone: 1800-movfast
Pin Code: 66666666666666
Account number: 2343-346346-7855
Routing number: 114
CC limit: 100 beeelion dollars!!!11
Online bank account: j00 betcha
* Online bank account login/pin: mcmuffin8r
* Online bank password: suckm-n-fuckm
Online bank account status: active
When I do get a non-paying bidder, I follow the eBay guidelines, eventually get a refund on my fees and relist the item
One thing that annoys me is even when you get a non-paying bidder, and go through the process of filing a non-paying bidder report (find the obscure link, submit the warning, wait 10 days, file the request for final value fees) is you only get final value fees. So you lose the initial listing fees - which can be a decent chunk if you started the auction at a high price, listed in 2 catagories, or sprung for those extras (bold, gallery, extra pictures, ect). It would be nice if you at least got part of your listing fees back when someone doesn't pay through no fault of your own.
I don't have huge amount of non-payers, but I probably have one in every 10-20 who doesn't pay. I really don't get it, especially since most of the stuff I sell is low-value
I have blog like everyone else
Typical American attitude,
you see the rest of the world as a threat not an oppertunity. Do you know how annoying it is when someone from europe wants to buy something from a US company (or ebay trader) only to be told they wont ship abroad. The internet should be helping to globalise trade not encouraging people to ignore the rest of the world. By the sound of this fraud is a major problem in the US too, so your strategy is hardly helpful. Perhaps ebay should require a credit card number as verification, that way its a lot easier to check someone's name etc. Although this is not fool proof it would make it harder to just invent another ID. It would also work internationally. Or perhaps such a system would be better left to Europeans who seem to understand that people on the other side of an international border often want the same thing you do.
There is nothing on ebay that protects the consumers. Ebay only knows how to make more money. For example, recently I won a bid and I later found out that the seller makes shill bidding. It was so easy to spot the shill bidding that I was totally suprised why ebay couldn't find it yet or that another user didn't catch the man yet. Later on I found that the same user was using a different name before. If you complain about the shill bidding, ebay doesn't compensate you. There is nothing you gain by complaining. You always lose on ebay. People list their items without guarantee and they say that you have to agree to the rules which is that they can sell you any item they want. Beware of ebay.
As far as I know, ebay has not actually seperated buying from selling. What they do now that they didn't do before is show if the transaction was a buying or selling transaction by putting a "B" next to the feedback if the person was the buyer and an "S" if they were a seller. So if you click on the person's feedback and glance at it, you can see how many of the feedbacks were from selling versus buying, but at first glance all you will see is:
nameofebayer(feedback)*
You actually need to click on the feedback and read to find out how they got it. And the people most likely to be scammed are the least likely to do that
I have blog like everyone else
I'm pretty certain that this site is already being
operated from a rooted box - it's running Apache 1.3.9
and the Redhat default install page is 4 years old.
Scammers like this rarely use their own machines.
Surely this is just yet another easily exploited
box sitting somewhere in China...
(1) Never ship anything until you receive payment in full.
(2) Never pay for anything until the shipment arrives in good condition.
Voila, problem solved.
-- thinkyhead software and media
a Dungeons and Dragons character...
... about $4,000 in gold and platinum coins."
"He was traveling with
When stopped by the Feds did he warn them to back off he's a 7th level rogue with a +5 short sword of slaying?
I lost almost $1000 in my last ebay auction. The seller had two years of selling, 2 negatives and almost 200 positives. He gave his home phone, cell phone, home address and every other piece of information you could want and now everything is disconnected and he has vanished. I even talked to him and his girlfriend on the phone a couple times and he assured me the product would come but of course it never did. He has over $30,000 and the police cant find him anywhere. Its been almost 4 months and very little has been done, although at least ebay contacted the local police. Just another example of how you can never really trust ebay.
from the article"One day at Disney World, Nelson met a Disney employee. She eventually moved into his motel room. He told her that his wife had been killed in a car accident and that he was a special agent with the Department of Justice. Nelson said that because of the types of cases he was working on, the agency had had to move him out of New Hampshire for his own safety -- and that she shouldn't tell anyone that they were living together."
Talk about a stupid woman. This is one of the oldest in the book.
He had to of defrauded thousands of people. Surely we could get him some more time. People like this are scum, and white collar crime IS the most expensive for all of us. I want to see people like this doing real time. Not 6 years. I would be happy with 12-15. 6 is too light.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
I haven't bought much off ebay, but in the last 4 months, I've bought some comics, a motherboard, several action figures, and one or two other items. Not had a problem...yet.
But I do know that everytime I decide to bid, I get this sinking feeling that I'm gonna get scammed...not a good feeling for "customer" of ebay to have!
That is the wole point of OEM. It is not intended for resell. I thought it was common knowledge that retail items do not come with the same warranty as OEM AKA "White box"
When searching pricewatch, just put the word retail in your search query and you should get the same item plus X% more $. But you are guranteed the manufacturer warranty.
Also, OEM items sometimes carry NO manufactuer warranty and the only thing you can do is send it back to the original vendor, good luck finding that place.
Google apparently turns up a number of unfortunate persons by the very same name.
I feal very sorry for most of the Jay Nelson's of the world. Except for this guy. In fact I almost feal sorry for the eBay scammer. Almost.
However after reading the story of a similar scammer* maybe I should cut the spammer some slack.
*Look at the last "bad trader".
I know spammers can be evil but spammers just don't get this evil.
I don't actually exist.
that's a good one
In addition to nominating this troll for the biggest douche of the universe, he should be nominated for being the biggest troll/dildo of the universe.
(I hate trolls, even more than gray davis)
I'm not so sure selling OEM drives counts as a scam, so long as they say "OEM" or "Whitebox." Certainly you must be careful in buying one, because not only the warranty but also the features and basic specs can differ, especially on video cards (eg clockrate).
The reason I don't ship out side of the US is because, 1 it cost to much, and if I try to say a international shipping cost more, I get called an american asshole. so for me it is just easier not to ship outside of the US.
As a non-US citizen who occasionally trades on Ebay, I've got to wonder what's the problem? Just say your price is "plus shipping", maybe provide a link to UPS/Fedex/UPSP, and give people the option. Choose your shipper wisely - DHL might charge $100 for an "Express" delivery, while USPS might charge $20. If the replies from folks you quoted too much to hurt your feelings, then get over it and provide a competitive rate. If it's something stupidly heavy, post a note about it and give people fair warning.
I agree with AC's post. I've had dealings with people from many countries, and EU and Asia are great to deal with - they don't jack the shipping costs and are eager to sell. The US generally isn't - they'll put up all sorts of barriers to trade / payment, or flat out refuse to bother.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
How about you read the fucking article? Christ, how do you think the feds got records of his transactions with people? Paypal handed them over when property asked by law enforcement. I'm adding you to my foes list. RTFA next time.
More fun: google for sorc3r3r. First few links are for someone who registered with a number of dating services in New Zealand. Next you have some IRC activity in Romanian. Then you have some caches of rooted web pages, and sorc3r3r gets a shoutout along with a bunch of other Romanian nicknames (mafiotu (mafia man), dulcica (sweet girl), beculetz (light bulb)).
The most interesting link:
here
This is google's cache of a Romanian web server's stats page. Note that sorc3r3r.org accessed this page, but the DNS entry was a different IP at the time (traceroutes to Australia or New Zealand). This ties together the sorc3r3r.org domain name with New Zealand and Romanian, so it corroborates the rest of the links.
So we have our man. A lonely Romanian in New Zealand who I'm guessing runs Windows XP and plays Counter-Strike. He's also interested in script kiddie games on IRC, so the spammer email trick may just work if you're clever with the subject line (to trigger a preview). (Look up some Romanian greetings, that should do the trick :).
For the curious: yes, I'm Romanian (that's how I can read the IRC logs and whatnot). And no, we aren't all little script kiddies, although that's what it looks like if you're ever on IRC (so I have no sympathy for this guy - when I tell fellow network security guys about my origins, the first thing that pops into their heads is the IRC nonsense).
Have fun. Don't steal. Keep off IRC.
i've been screwed via ebay/paypal... and going through the process and finding out what they don't protect you fro is a great way to learn how to scam people..... for example.... as long as you received *something* paypal doesn't care.... i didn't get what i bid on, and they basicallt told me "tough luck" and if the sale is under like, $30 per item..... ebay won't do anything.... don't worry, armed with this info i plan to spread the love... i have some crap layin around here i can sell... and paypal and ebay can help me get back the money i was screwed out of..... thanks for the tips paypal!
No, not the escort services you use.
How about you goto Ebay and surf for a bit? There already is a "verified id" program, ok genius? Don't suck your dick too hard at thinking up all these new "systems" to prevent fraud.
Attention slashdot: do something about the moderators! At 3am this was moderated insightful. Read the post...how is it insightful? If you follow the directions, nothing is shipped.
do something about moderation
But there are too many morons, bums and soccer moms that wouldn't trust you or have the intellect to realize this might work.
When he applied for a job as a Lotus Notes administrator at Caterpillar, for example, Nelson said that he had a degree in criminal justice and that he was familiar with Notes. "I got a copy of Lotus Notes for Dummies and learned enough of the buzzwords," he says. After three rounds of interviews, "they hired me on the spot," Nelson says. "I'd never even turned on the program." But he was a quick study, and he says that he was soon competent at creating and maintaining Notes databases.
Imagine the interview:
- I have a degree in criminal justice.
- I am a criminal who serve jail time, so I really understand criminal justice.
- I have always been interested in computers.
- Here are some buzzwords concerning Lotus Notes.
3 interviews and hired. I wonder that none of them were technical interviews. I try to stay away from management decisions, but a senior techie should always be consulted before hiring another techie.
Then he was "soon competent at creating and maintaining Notes databases."
Lotus Notes is for building secure distributed applications for large enterprises. A lazy criminal can quickly become productive with it; so can you.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
is apparently missing the single biggest change ebay made to prevent people like this guy from building up positive feedback:
they separated buying feedback from selling feedback. now to get +50 selling, you actually have to sell 50 items, not just buy a bunch of paperbacks and give a false address.
OH MY GOD!! WHAT A FUCKING INGENIUS IDEA!!
Seriously, this is something you would think they would have come up with a few years ago when Ebay was first starting up.
(1) Information about the particular item that the feedback is referring to is deleted after a few months. So - you then have no idea whether the item was $5 or $1000, unless you contact the other party. So at the very least, ebay should also store the price of the item (can't be much more room in their database can it?). A description of the item would be an additional plus.
(2) You can't search/sort for positive/negative feedback. Sometimes you have these guys with 10000 or more feedbacks, with a few hundred negatives. You have to go page by page to find the negative ones. Extremely tedious.
As other posters have said - ebay is being extremely short-sighted in their pursuit of volume by allowing scam-artists to rack up large volumes of sales. At this point in time, ebay is like a 3rd world nation. No real "legal system" in place. I would love to start my own auction site and do it right. But ebay would probably start stealing all my ideas if my site even remotely became something of a competitive threat.
I'm not in the US, so that isn't really a solution.
despite all the ratings and feedback, eBay is about trusting some person you've never met. Hence, it's for suckers.
Blar.
eBay appears to have a system that works well enough in protecting sellers that many scammers simply try to circumvent it. Or, they work on scamming buyers, as the person described in the original article did.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
hold on a sec... this guy reached the 10 most wanted on the US post... and his earnings were only 5 digits??? this sounds like one of those cases that the media highlights the capture of a small fish, while leaving the big fish in the shadows... of-course, untouched. Something here is definately wrong...
I don't worry about the seller's rating - sometimes you can get something you want from a first-time seller.
However, I only buy from people
At least then I know I have a good chance of being able to show up at their doorstep and kneecap them if they rip me off.
a flaming red hot poker
If I ship something to Los Angeles and get ripped off, I can contact the Post Master General, the FBI, the internet fraud prevention center, etc.
If I ship to Europe, or anywhere outside the US, who am I going to go to for help? See the problem now?
This system of free, voluntary transactions that benefit both buyer and seller has become known as capitalism.
Actually it has been known as trade and has existed way before capitalism.
You don't like the way Marx defined Capitalism. So don't use his definition. Put forth your own.
Take the time and clarify where Marx was wrong and why his characteristics are not related to Capitalism.
The easiest way to solve a problem is to define what that problem is.
Why waste time complaining that someone else's definition is wrong and that their definition means you cannot discuss the problem?
I see the problem, and I think you're missing some clues about business. Everyone I've dealt with expects money up-front, and fair enough, but who's taking the risk then? The foreign party, that's who. And it's not like USians are inherently more trustworthy than anyone else. Plenty of people get ripped off within the US anyway - this article is about exactly that!
I really don't get what the big deal is - don't ship until you got the money via PayPal/CreditCard/DirectDebit. If it's big dollars, use an escroe account. If the punter says it never arrived, make sure you shipped it with tracking - if the shipping co. says it arrived, the problem is between them and buyer. If he says it's damaged, make sure you ship it insured. This isn't hard stuff, and the risk is predominantly with the buyer.
Be realistic - it's not like the FBI's gonna follow up some dude not paying for your laptop... Internationally, there are avenues for recourse of course, and if the sum is large enough, you may want to persue them, but look, if you want someone else to take the risk of your trades, good luck to you. You won't get that in the anywhere - International OR US.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
This would be a two edged sword
I don't think this would be a two edged sword. I'm seeing the glass half-full. It's a win-win situation, really. Synergistic, even. Hot damn, I feel like empowering myself with a mission statement right now!
Fraud is not a problem in the US if you follow my suggestions. Money orders are supposed to only be cashed with proper identification. Therefore, if the information doesn't match up with your driver's licence (or other ID), you don't get the money. This makes it very difficult to cash a money order and not be easily traced. Of course, there is still the problem of law enforcement involvement.
While this does shut out the rest of the world, quite simply: better safe than sorry. Until there is another system in place, it just isn't worth the risk doing anonymous transactions like eBay internationally.
US companies are a different matter. They can be held to higher standards much more easily than an anonymous seller on eBay. There is no reason a company should not be doing international business, unless it violates export laws (such as crytographic software).
Typical American attitude, you see the rest of the world as a threat not an oppertunity...Or perhaps such a system would be better left to Europeans who seem to understand that people on the other side of an international border often want the same thing you do. Right.
USPS Manual: Money Orders
what attracts people to ebay is great deals. a couple of months ago, i made out with a 21.3" LCD screen paying $500 less than at bestbuy's, a set of bose speakers, saving $200, a roomba vacuum cleaner, saving $100 off sharper image price. i saved about $1000 on all the various purchases i made. my philosophy on ebay is that every time you bid, you are taking a risk. i always ask myself whether that risk exceeds the reward? by looking at the feedback of the seller i can further mitigate that risk. so the question i ask myself is: am i justified in taking a risk of buying from a seller with a 99.7% positive feedback selling a $1500 LCD screen for $1000? the answer was yes, i took the risk, and now i'm reaping the rewards.
i have been with ebay for about 4 years. i have never had a major problem. i buy and sell. i have had problems, don't get me wrong, but was able to resolve each one.
..just like we did. Here is the story of the dickhead on eBay that scammed us and after my g/f left negative feedback, he tried to retaliate. Too bad he's a stupid moron and couldn't even get that right.
:P
Even more fun.. he's in a small town, and the police department has taken notice.
Some of us are bored enough to seriously fuck with anybody that rips us off, even if it's only $20.
Yes, I couldn't have expressed it any better myself! Many people of strong religious belief don't even seem to grasp the idea that people could have a strong "moral code" without the aid of organized religion.
Perhaps, organized religion itself is to blame for some of this. I suspect (at least in some cases), they try to push the idea that religion is required to "give morality to people".
Personally, I found it rather obvious, upon giving the matter some real thought, that morality/ethics are a concept much more basic than organized religion. They're simply a matter of taking a little responsibility for one's own decsions and actions, and realizing that co-operation with others has a net positive benefit for one-self in the long run.
That whole "5 degrees of Kevin Bacon" game should give doubters some pause. There's a real good chance that the random person you scam/screw over is somehow linked to one of your good friends or relatives!
No, but maybe people are missing my point. These vendors are generally NOT advertising that the drives are "OEM" at all. They're simply selling the drives with specs on the make and model, with no additional info.
(Sometimes, you can indirectly figure out what they're doing because they'll offer the same drive at two different prices - and the higher-priced one says something in the description about coming in "retail packaging with mounting rails and screws".)
One shouldn't really have to order a drive in a retail box with complete instruction manul for "newbies", mounting rails, EIDE cable and mounting screws, just to be sure they get a warranty on the drive. There's such a thing as just ordering a "bare drive", and still expecting it's covered by a standard manufacturer's warranty. The "scam" comes into play when the drive is actually pulled out of a complete system made by Dell, Compaq/HP, or whoever, and the serial number is specifically listed in the manufacturer's database as one not to honor any direct warranty returns on.
I received a letter from the postmaster a while back that was an apology for having lost a payment I had sent. The letter came in a manila envelope many months after I sent the payment.
The letter was a relief to me and an admission that post office workers are human. It doesn't happen very often.
On ebay, I have had non-paying winning bidders on about 2 of 100 auctions. It is a bummer when it happens but it does not happen very often. What really sucks are eBays rules for compensating the seller. You have to go through eBay's waiting period to get your auction fees reversed. I have so far been unable to jump through all the hoops to get a refund.
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
"Be realistic - it's not like the FBI's gonna follow up some dude not paying for your laptop... Internationally, there are avenues for recourse of course, and if the sum is large enough, you may want to persue them, but look, if you want someone else to take the risk of your trades, good luck to you. You won't get that in the anywhere - International OR US."
You're probably right, but if I have the choice of selling a $500 widget to a person under US jurisdiction or a person that may not have ANY laws governing my particular transaction, I think it's obvious which way I'd go.
I can't honestly say that I have a bias or bad opinion about people not of my contry, it's just that when I deal with someone in my country, I know what all the rules are, and who to call when there's a problem. I just don't know what other rules or laws there are in other countries and when it's an amount that I can't just ignore (say, more than $25) then I'm just not going to take that chance.
And in case you tell me to just go get educated on all of the policies for each and every country, I'm just not that interested in spending that much time on it. Prehaps if I was selling an item that generated no interest in the US, but that would probably be the only occasion.
Until there are international rules that everyone has to follow I'll just stick to the ones I know best. Maybe no one else will take the risk for me, but at least I'll greatly limit my losses.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
These scams, all aimed at extracting money from your credit card (either directly, or by finagling access to your username and password), are getting to be a dime a dozen. In just the past week I've seen 'em for Earthlink, CitiBank, eBay, AOL, and Paypal. Some are crude and don't even get their own URLs right, but some are very cleverly crafted, and it's impossible for the average user (who doesn't understand about obfuscated URLs) to tell that it's not the real thing. Some even call images from the real site, so if the user does see a browser call being made, it looks normal.
Here's a good safe rule to live by: NO legit outfit EVER sends you an email asking for your password or credit card number. If you get such an email, consider it a scam, and either ignore/delete it, or report it to the *real* owner of the service in question. But never, EVER fill in any blanks, click any URLs or sumbit buttons, not reply directly to such an email.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
As always, it's up to the individual to choose. I've just seen too many people give baseless reasons for not dealing internationally. I think many of us out here in the world see other countries similar to the way US folks see other US states. For most of us, there's no real boundry.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
pity the soul that studied the history of socialism
From the article:
"Something didn't feel right," Nelson says. "I didn't go in. I lit a cigarette and walked away from the shop."
Let me guess, the guy is also a fat, overweight slob who never exercizes too?
I find the combination of an eBay banner with this article, as shown in this screenshot to be quite amusing.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
Has anyone ever tried to sell their Ebay account? Seems to me that a scam artist would pay good money for my 5 year-old account with over 100 positive feedbacks, and no negatives. Since I am getting tired of dealing with crooks who sell me junk, I should list my account and see what happens...