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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."
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"
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
eBay and Paypal didn't care, and this didn't really shock me. I mean, the guy (or gal) made $600 in $20 increments. I just chalk it up to 'Caveat Emptor,' and honestly, item for item, I have been conned more in garage sales and flea markets with a lot less purchases, so eBay is still okay with me.
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
how easy is it to have multiple logins and create a "false reputation" for yourself as a seller?
you can have an ebay id for every email address you have. however, the biggest scam currently on ebay involves stealing other people's good reputations by gaining access to their account and then posting high dollar auctions - laptops, digital cameras, etc. a huge majority of these will ask for payment via western union to a foreign nation. people who are only checking feedback are continually scammed by these people.
your best protection (as a buyer) is to pay for any auction with a credit card via paypal. ask your seller a question before you bid. their answer will help reveal if they are the kind of person you want to deal with. check their history. did they sell 100 widgets for $1 and then suddenly list a plasma tv?
i would also suggest any buyer check out the trust and safety forum in the community section. a quick read of the latest messages will alert you to the current scams and help you avoid them.
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
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!"
If most ebay scammer stories are anything to go by, sellers with no feedback are not scammers. Scammers generally will perform legit tasks or use dummy accounts to raise their feedback before scamming.
There was a scam in Washington. I forget the name of the company, but basicly they auctioned computers and used a diffrent account to bid outlandish prices so no one wins. In turn, they then offered to sell the same system to other people who bid on the item at the price they bid. Got sent money, but no system. Couldn't actually complain on e-bay because the auction happened outside of e-bay. They did eventually get caught, but it kinda shows how painfuly easy it is to get postal money orders sent to a p.o. box.
I've not been burned on e-bay yet personaly, but mostly I tend to buy things like camera lenses and other propriority goods. I tend to think the scammers would be more inclined to sell more universaly useful items like ram, keyboards, mice, laptops.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
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.
Every kind of society had/has its share of shirkers; this problem is not particular to western or capitalist societies.
What is particular for our type of society (and some other types) is that it wants its members to be succesful. The 'ideal' thing in our society is to do well in school, get a good job, get a nice raise and promotions from time to time, marry, buy a house and a good car, and live the good live. Those who do not attain this ideal may feel left out... in fact, their peers may start wondering about them. And this feeling may drive some people to turn to crime or unethical behaviour in order to attain the ideal... others may sit and moan about society being unfair.
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. Then again, very few people there feel the need to perform, and thus not much gets done. The real question of course is: who lives the better (ie. more enjoyable) lifestyle? Us or them?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I've seen comments like this before, and you do have a very credible point.
Thankfully I've only been had 1% of the time, one time as a seller and one or two times as a buyer.
The one time I was a seller, I sent DVDs in perfect condition and even put extra protection on each disc to prevent scratches, and padded protection surrounding each keepcase, in a box. In my opinion, the customer watched it, thought it sucked, scratched them (even _both_ sides of all discs) and then complained that the discs were bad and didn't work. Since I can't prove it, there wasn't anything I could do.
being the geek that i am i hit view source for that page. it's all one long javascript string, completely obfuscated. very interesting indeed. meta content generator says frontpage, though. i'd like to slashdot the server the actual script sends to. this person appears to be smarter than they appear. just a sec, lets see here.... here we go, page properties courtesy of mozilla firebird. form method = post, action = http://ns.terraserver.nl/cgi-bin/web2mail.cgi unfortunately no apparent hidden field for the info to be mailed to, such that it must be inside the cgi script. hrmmm....... no luck getting the source of that cgi, mebbe someone with more talent than i can go for it.
it's being a whitehat to hack spammers/scammers, right?
-PsychoI3oy
mmm freeBSDelicious.
OTOH, many genuine sellers are harrassed in the name of the safe harbor department. A google search on "ebay suspended my account" reveals:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=645
http://weblog.wlkr.net/2003_06_01_wlkr_archive.
Both these folks got a nice notice:
Ebay has suspended your account in accordance with section 9 of the user agreement. (Which says ebay can suspend your account if you violated any section of user agreement). Please contact the safe harbor department.
On contacting the safe harbor department, they were told that ebay is too busy to verify what went wrong. So, they can get their account reinstated if they send a "Cease-and-desist" letter promising never to violate ebay user agreement again, and send verification information.
Is that the way to deal with suspect accounts?
If you're not using firefox, you're not surfing the web, you're suffering it.
---
Great name for the directory: ebayDLLupdate
He knows that when most people see "DLL" their eyes glaze over and they do whatever they're told to. It's easy to get people to click OK and change their homepage, but getting people to put in their bank routing number and pin number takes big brass balls. That said, I think we should draw and quarter this guy. People would probably think twice about online scams if there was a real threat that they would get torn limb from limb.
-B
After learning my first bit of JavaScript, I was able to extract these goodies:
. cgi"> <INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME=".email_target" VALUE="sorc3r3r@sorc3r3r.org">
<form method="POST" action="http://ns.terraserver.nl/cgi-bin/web2mail
When will people stop locking their keys in their car and thinking it's safe?
~Lake
I once sold $5-$20 items on eBay for a period of six months. I have NEVER seen so much lost mail. I was the seller. I'm an honest guy. I shipped the product out as soon as I had the payment EVERY time. And when there were reports of lost mail, I always shipped another free of charge.
I can't help but think that it's the buyers half of the time. I know the USPS isn't that unreliable. These people were just taking advantage of the system. It works both ways.
.-.--
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.
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
True story:
I bought a video adapter for $16 on Ebay a few weeks ago. I didn't pay insurance, and the guy claimed it was lost in the mail. A scam, you say? Judging from his zipcode, my zipcode, and the date, it was actually quite plausible: a truck carrying mail from his area to mine got into an accident and the mail was destroyed. It was in NC and featured in the local newspapers, but sadly I can't find a link at the moment.
In the end, he refunded my money, even shipping. yay!
Excellent Ebayer. Would do business with again. A+++++++
Rooting a default RedHat 6.2 install and finding an exploitable cgi mailer isn't much of a challenge, there are rootkits out there, so the simplest explanation is someone of script-kiddie level collecting all the information unsuspecting sellers will give him. What is also worrying is that enough information is being collected to fill out false change-of-address requests, credit applications, etc. If you got one of the spam emails referencing this, it may be a good idea to report it to your local law enforcement or FBI office.
The man most often credited with "founding" socialism was Robert Owen. A Google search will bring up websites about what he believed, what he was trying to do, and how he did it. In essence, Owen ran textile mills, felt that his industry was dealing with the people doing the work poorly, and proposed ways in which his business could be restructured to give his workers and their families a decent life. Despite Modern American (including Hessen's) dogmatic portrayal of socialists and socialism, Owen didn't involve the State in anything beyond one attempt to outlaw child labour.
Omitting this might seem just carelessness, but actually Hessen chooses to write about that very period in history, describing the period as being some sort of war between evil Socialists who were trying to eradicate "individualism" and the mill owners who could do no bad because, well, things weren't actually worse were they:
While it's true that Socialists like Owen promoted brotherhood, community, and social solidarity, and even designed model utopias which had a few common areas (erm, basically, kitchens and schools, and these "utopias" were, for the most part, intended to be supplied by employers like Owen for their workers, in order to be more humane), to suggest, as Hessen does, that these were repudiations of what had become known as capitalism, and were promotions of coerced, governmental, involvement and a destruction of inelienable rights, is an extraordinary jump. This is not to imply that there wouldn't have been those calling for government regulation who were socialists, but the picture of a unified group opposed to trade and a free market, in favour of government regulations (at a time when, in Europe where this movement started, the governments were hardly seen as friends of the poor - the poor couldn't even vote in the UK, you had to be a male landowner to do that) is an absurd one. It is even more absurd when he adds comments about inalienable rights, especially given socialists were, by and large, trying to improve rights for everyone rather than allow a situation where by economic circumstance, their's or those of their parents, someone may be deprived unfairly of any degree of reasonable control over their lives.This kind of slap-dash rewriting of history is why it's very often difficult to take the ideological Right seriously. Simplistic paintings of "socialism", over-zealous faith in the "free market" to solve every problem, and a refusable to even accept the possibility that people might need protection from some forms of greed, combine to shore up reasonable ideas with unreasonable justifications.
Unfortunately, since Reagan and Thatcher made these ideas fashionable, these views are taken far more seriously than they should be.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
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.
The other interesting thing if you read the feedback is that most of the positives are of the "quick pay" variety - in other words, he was the buyer. He bought stuff to pump up his feedback rating. All the negatives are of the "didn't send item" variety where he was the seller.
I have blog like everyone else
What ebay should do is send you an email 2 weeks after a transaction and ask a few simple questions:
Did you receive your item?
Was it described as advertised?
Rate your overall satisfation with this transaction? (1-10)?
The seller would never have to know it was you that answered these questions. Ebay should make these votes apply at random intervals to prevent sellers from guessing who caused their score to change. The accumulated results should affect a score on their ebay ID card:
example:
Delivery: 98%
Accuracy: 87%
Satisfaction: 93%
Having this information on user's ID cards I think would be more valuable than the current feedback system itself. It would help keep the honest seller honest, and give buyers a more unbiased profile of the seller.
I have never left negative feedback because it would have been more damaging to me to have them attack back and damage my so far perfect rating. This is the number one reason I don't use ebay as much as I would like to.
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!
That is good information on Robert Owens. Unfortunately, I suspect that the works of Robert Owens and others were hijacked by the German idealists. The "slap dash" history that you dislike is unfortunately a pretty good description of what happened to the world. It seems to me that the revolutionaries fanned every conflict they could. Brutally murdered hundreds of millions of people, and brought a great deal of ill to the world.
Although the "slash dash" history is close to the truth of what happened, I agree with you that the conclusion of the far right is wrong.
The far right has assume that since "communism" is wrong that "capitalism" is right. When infact the whole communism/capitalist divide was an illusion. We have to somehow get over the failed historicist approach used by Marx and learn to recognize and correct the imbalances in the society.
I think most people would look at the Robert Owens view of a patriarchal big business as a bad route to take. But the historical information you provide is very valuable. The debate was hijacked. Now, how do we get it back on track? How do we keep it from being hijacked by the next wave of iconoclasts?
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.
Take some bandwidth:
wget -nd -m --cache=off --delete-after http://202.99.11.88/