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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."
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.
I really don't think we will know the true depth of ebay scams, unless there is legislation to make it public.
If that were to happen, ebay sales would decline drastically.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Yes, but he did use many different IDs.
And I suppose there are ways to circumvent the ratings systems. What if he made a BUNCH (say like 100) accounts, and sold items to himself - he'd then be able to give himself really good ratings.
"... 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...
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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.
The problem in doing that is that you will then have a whole group of people who claim they never got their goods and end up ripping off the legit sellers. Its a screwed up system in the first place because of its anonymous nature.
"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.
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."
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!
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 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.
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.
But that would cost them money and eat into their multi-billion dollar profits. It could cost them, ooh, thousands.
The main problem with eBay is the enormous and insatiable greed of tyhe people running it. They know the law will eventually clip their wings. They just want to make as much money as they can before that happens. They're no better than the scammers, in other words.
- 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.REAL moral of the story, you could have saved a lot of people from getting their money stolen and scammed if you had reported and/or followed up on this guy. If you are going to buy/sell on Ebay, you should act in a manner that will improve the experience of your peers or help them out. Thanks a lot from everyone who got ripped off.
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.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
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.
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...