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eBay Fraud Vigilantes
firstadopter.com writes "New York Times (free registration needed) is reporting that users are sick of internet fraud on eBay. With lack of help from the company, they are taking the law into their own hands and closing down auctions they think are obvious scams."
Reg Free Link
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =2795846600&category=52476
***Please note, this auction is not selling the electronics themselves,we're selling electronic book packages that get you listed on a revolving list at our website. For list information and any other questions please visit our webpage @ www.revbuys.com--$220.00
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =2795844320&category=52476
**You are not buying the actual item, you are buying a link to a website where you can obtain the item for around a $250 US dollars. Link also includes lots of other good deals on nice electronics** $5.00
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =2795281687&category=52476
Please Read Auction Carefully. Winner will recieve information on where they can buy an Alienware Area-51 Extreme for only 275$. This is perfectly legal and I am usuing mine right now. Only one Alienware 275$ computer per household, so you can see why I am not selling the computers, but I am working on that.--$49.99
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =2795708246&category=40176
Please Read Description Carefully Before You Bid! you are not buying any electronics in this auction. Here are some examples of the amazing deals you will get upon winning this auction:
Products:
JL Audio 10w7 Subwoofer: $100
Sony DVD/CD Changer: $100
Sony Motorized indash 7" LCD: $100
Exhaust Systems from $50
NOS Kits: $100
Body Kits: $100
Playstation 2: $40
Video Games: $20
Gateway 42" Plasma TV: $200
Sony DVD Dream Surround System: $100
Sony Digital Camcorder: $100
40GB Apple iPod: $115
Compaq iPaq PDA: $50
Panasonic Portable DVD Player: $50
Alienware Desktop or Laptop: $275
Sony VIAO Desktop: $150
Sony VIAO Laptop: $100
AND MANY MANY MANY MORE!!!!
Shipping is absolutely free!, If you have any questions, please feel free to email us at http://TankDoggSC@aol.com $3.00
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =2795726979&category=52476
The item for sale isnt the real PC.the highest bidder will recieve the link to the site where you can purchase it for 160/275$.WHOEVER SAID ''THIS ISNT A REAL PC JUST A BUNCH OF LINKS'' MEANS THEY DID NOT READ THIS. $5.50-6 bids
C:\>
Following is my opinion only:
Don't use paypal's "withdraw from bank account" option. Use the credit card option. If something goes wrong and you go past 30 days - your are screwed. My experience is that Paypal (an ebay company) is the worst in getting problems resolved.
www.paypalsucks.com
...but more often than not, it's the banks that are watching out for suspicious things. The one time someone tried to pay me with stolen credit cards, it was the bank that alerted me (thankfully before I sent the laptop).
Really, what should be happening is that eBay should cooperate as much as possible with the banks/credit companies, and that would take care of a lot of fraud then and there.
libertarianswag.com
Oh come on, this link doesn't even point to the full New York Times article. There's a better link posted before this one by a person who isn't trying to karma whore.
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
Stop bidding on items from Andora and Romania. A little common sense goes a long way.
I've been ripped off on ebay before, ebay did not help, paypal did not help - only my credit card company helped. I wish these guys would have saved my ass.
Take the law in your own hands!!!
I have had to (more than once!) dispute a charge on a CC I used on PayPal because they were trying to screw me out of my money (or the product). The PayPal folks wouldn't return my calls or letters. I got a live body once and told them I was going to dispute the charges if they didn't stop trying to defraud me. They immediately transfered me to a guy that IMHO does nothing other than threaten to sue PayPal users if they threaten to dispute CC charges. I mean that's all he didn't. He knew nothing about the circumstances. He was just there to read me the riot act (from a script) about what they'd do if I disputed the charge. I told him just exactly what he could do with his business and called my CC company. The CC company credited me my $$ within a week and I never heard any more about it. Paypal, contrary to what many of the horror stories said, didn't freeze my account. It wouldn't surprise me if they did but they didn't to me at least. Always Always ALWAYS use a CC when paying via PayPal. In fact I don't have a valid checking account registered with them anymore. I closed that account nearly 8 months ago when I moved. They already verified the account and I'm not going to try and tell them otherwise. :)
eBay is financially rigged to favor the
auctioneer instead of the customer. As a
fee based system, they derive the bulk of
their income from these same auctioneers.
By joining eBay, the bidders relinquish
any right to sue, and the cap on any
arbitrated settlement is $200. PayPal
might be convenient, but they have next
to zero for security and auditing. A
close friend had their checking account
cleaned out by someone either at PayPal
or one of the auctioneers. I stopped
doing ANY business with eBay after getting
ripped off a few times in rapid succession.
Going on eBay is like walking in the barrio
streets of Rio De Janero with you wallet
hanging half-way out of your pocket. The
old adage "Buyer Beware" doesn't even
come close to the risks. Anyone that
would consider buying an automobile, let
alone a house, on eBay must be daft.
Recently bought a router, the seller shipped a hard drive to me by mistake. After emailing back and forth I sent the hd back, but no router. Seller stops responding to emails. So what happens when I fill out the Paypal form to try and get a refund?
They have an item asking if you received ANYTHING in the mail. So I checked that off. Bad mistake! They classified the report as "misrepresented item"!!!! Then a few days later closed the complaint saying they didn't do anything in those cases!
Paypal = SCAM CITY
Lesson: accept Paypal payments for expensive items and mail a jellybean to the buyer. Paypal will support you all the way.
These are the latest variant on a pyramid scheme. Basically, people are paying today for a wait list for a product that will be delivered whenever the waiting list gets long enough to have enough money to buy your item. Early people on the list will in fact get their items, but as the list gets longer, the wait gets exponentially longer until the world runs out of fools to supply and the list stops growing. The people caught "below the line" when the scheme colapses end up paying to wait in a line that has stopped moving... they'll never get their stuff.
Netbank.com doesn't allow paypal to transfer money FROM your checking account, but will allow paypal to transfer money into the checking account.
And it is free. As Dan's Data would say, Recommended.
Fellowship 9/11
Full details on the event are in my advogato diary.
Basically the scam was that this seller puts a laptop model for sale on eBay, dozens of times. Dozens of people bid on the item and he picks the 'n' number of highest bidders to "win" the auction. At no time does he own these laptop models he is selling. He requires that all payment be sent to him within 5 days of the auction close.
After 4-6 weeks of delays, people start sending emails, getting pissed, and mad. "Brian Silverman" emails them back, with excuses about delays at the "warehouse" and other excuses.
Meanwhile, 2-2.5 months later, he purchases the laptop model, at quite a discounted price from the vendor (not being the "newest" model on the market anymore).
So he keeps hundreds of thousands of dollars in auction buyers' money in his account, accruing interest, and then he purchases the laptops, at roughly 30-40% less than his original auction price.
But wait, it gets better... Brian decided that the whole "send the item to the buyer" part of the scam was eating into his profits too much, so he decided to just not send any laptops to anyone.
I was the last person he ever sent a laptop to. I actually tracked him down, and called him at home one night to demand my laptop, or the FBI would be at his door in 30 minutes. He claimed he would send it out that night, and double the RAM "for my troubles". A week later, I did indeed receive the laptop.
But I posted all of the details in my Advogato diary entries. Hundreds of other people who were being scammed by Brian Silverman googled for his "electro_depot" name, and my diary entry was the only one to come up. They would email me directly asking for more details.
I then received a call from the NY Cyber Crime division, asking me if I had any details on the "scam" with Brian Silverman, and if anyone else had contacted me, because they had a "few calls".
I said I had 141 separate people who had emailed me to complain. 141 people!!!
The end result, was that Mr. Silverman was tracked down out of the country, and the FTC caught and nailed him. I even received a nice little letter from the FTC praising me for my efforts in catching him.
My diary entry was THE reason people were brought together, and the FTC and NYPD took notice in the matter.
Vigilante justice does definately work, but you have to be very careful about how you go about it. After people found my diary entry, they created all of those other websites to track and report on Mr. Silverman's scams.
(And that T23 that I "won" is currently at IBM repair, for the 6th time in 2 years, so it wasn't exactly a "win" in my case).
Sorry, I was was hurrying, that link should have been www.matrixwatch.org
I put in a bogus name and password and it passed me right on to the next page where they ask for all your info, including a credit card. I plugged in more bogus info and it responds with yet enother page that looks exactly like eBay's that says congrats you've updated your info. I wonder how many people fall for this?
I also wonder if it would be technically illegal to use curl to submit a few thousand million POST requests with bogus info to that scam page?
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
NYT has =also= agreed to have a registration free google link so they aren't forcing anybody to register anything. There's no reason /. needs to annoy its users with stupid registrations when it isn't necessary.
I have successfully purchased (and sold) many items on eBay. You can get awesome deals on some items, so long as you know what you are doing:
- Check feedback. Not just the number, but the comments. Read the negative and neutral comments and judge whether it was the seller's fault ("you never shipped") or the buyer's fault ("my notebook didn't have an OS" when the auction said so) or neither ("broken item, seller replaced, OK").
- Sanity check prices. A brand new Sony notebook on buy-it-now for $49 is a fraud. A used Dell CSx with a PIII 500, 20GB HDD, DVD/CD-RW, Windows 2000, good battery, and 256MB Memory for $350 is a stupid seller.
- Remember, prices on auctions often start low and go high. SET A HARD LIMIT. DO NOT BID MORE. It is easy to get into a bidding war and end up paying way more than you wanted.
- DO NOT PAY WITH A WIRE TRANSFER. PAY ONLY USING PAYPAL AND ONLY WITH A CREDIT CARD.
- Ask bogus questions. If you are buying a notebook, ask if it has the "hyperspeed math co-processor". If you get a "yes" answer, it's a fraud.
- Know what you are buying. If you have a question, ASK before you bid.
- Compare with similar auctions. Check completed auctions. If something seems off, ask about it.
- Know how much shipping is.
- Make sure you aren't buying pirated software. If it includes Windows, make sure there is a COA (unless you plan on loading Linux).
You = Not educated in online purchasing. You need to excersize due diligence in protection yourself. If you recieve the wrong item:
ALWAYS PAY WITH CREDIT CARD. Credit cards offer you the protection of canceling a fradulant charge within 30 days. A misshipped item that they refuse to exchange counts. Contact the seller and demand a refund. If they don't ssue one, stop payment on your card. Contact the seller and let them know you are happy to ship it back to them, at their expense.
Also, if you get ripped off, SUE THEM! Our courts are here for a REASON. Unless you are buying something quite expensive, you should be able to sue in small claims court. The monetary limit is like $2000-$3000 in most jurisdictions. It's usually $20 to file a suit, and you don't need a lawyer. Try to get their personal information from eBay and Paypal. If they can't or won't give it to you, file the suit and subpoena it. They'll give it to the court (they have no choice).
While I agree that PayPal and eBay need to work harder on stopping fraud, you have a good deal of responsibility too. If you get ripped off, online or not, crying about it doesn't get you anywhere. You take action to get your money back. I've been ripped off by Pep Boys. A letter to my bank, an independent expert inspection of my vehicle, and some documentation, and I got my money back.
Don't roll over, just keep upping the stakes till you get what's yours. First try talking to the seller, if they dont' respond try PayPal, if they screw you stop the charges on your card, if that becomes a problem take it to small claims court.
Since when is email a secure, private, guaranteed communications medium?
Ursula Andress, Catherine Deneuve, and Charo, twice...
He apologized profusely, said he didn't know it was wrong, said he emailed all bidders to apologize, said he was extremly mortified, etc.
This space available.
The net is only the medium of communication. A public street is likewise anonymous yet vendors have done business there for thousands of years.
EBay could choose to authenticate their users much better than they do, but they choose not to. They could even go as far as make all transactions go through their own escrow service if they seriously wanted to stamp out the fraud. However, since EBay makes as much money off a bogus transaction as a legit one, they'll really only care if enough people stop using the service to affect their bottom line or the law cracks down on them.
Or he could have just been a scammer.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I didn't want to give many details since it might give scammers hints (not that I did anything really clever here), but since I've given the impression I spend my days snooping people's emails, I'll try to go into some detail. The first thing to tip me off was just the large number of signups from the same address. At first I thought it was another 419er.
Next I checked his sign up details, he'd created 50 accounts all with the same details (e.g. firstname, lastname, address were all identical). Finally, earlier that week I had noticed a large amount of traffic from eBay's mail system, delivering lots of emails to these accounts.
With a give away like that I did one final check by looking up some of his addresses on eBay. He was selling satellite nav, plasma TVs etc, and all of it was way too cheap for what it was worth. At this point I thought that if he wasn't scamming, why set up 50 separate accounts? The whole point of the eBay feedback system is that lots of good feedback shows you are a trustworthy seller. So by then I was certain he was up to no good and checked one of his mailboxes, which revealed the last of his tricks:
The guy would open an auction, and invite potential buyers to email him any questions about the product. When he'd got enough "fish on the hook" he would close the auction and email the "fish" telling them he was having problems with eBay but he was still willing to sell if they were interested. He then asked if they would mind paying him directly.... Since he only had 1 of each product to sell on eBay it was clear he was trying to sell the same thing multiple times and by being paid directly he was skipping the relative safety of PayPal et al. At which point I slapped the auto-responders on and locked his accounts.
It is a condition in our T&Cs that we reserve the right to inspect an account if we suspect illegal activity, but I only exercise that right if I am absolutely sure there is something going on. Usually this means an email sent to the abuse address with headers that prove the email came from our system.
Now, if you think eBay scammers are bad, try keeping 419ers of your system. Luckily the rise of broadband means they usually have the same IP address for extended periods of time. So when we are informed of a scamming account we can find all of their other accounts at the same time.