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eBay Scam Victim Strikes Back
jcomeau_ictx writes "Justin Spence doesn't take lightly being scammed out of $1155 for a laptop he never received. The seller, Salvatore Wise, Jr. of Philadelphia, is growing openly more hostile over the webpage Justin produced exposing his and his wife Michelle Heinlein's scams to the world. So far Justin has documented $6841.00 total lost to this crook, but the total is more likely in the tens of thousands. " As it goes along it just gets more and more bizarre. My favorite part is when "Sal" says that all the earlier messages were sent from a different Sal, but you can tell them apart because the true Sal always writes his emails in italics.
It's a link to an article about a guy who sent a pipe bomb through the mail that killed a 17 year old kid and maimed his mom. He sent it because the kid ripped him off in a sale of a radio arranged on the internet. The guy got the death penalty.
I live near philly, maybe I'll pay him a visit.... or least go do a recon.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Since the scammer wants money orders, I assume that someone has sent a U.S. Postal Money Order.
_IF_ the sender was VERY CAREFUL to enclose the POMO with a "mail order" that PRECISELY describes the item ordered, the Postal Inspectors are VERY happy to help out; they HATE eBay scammers!
It usually takes them a simple fone call or casual visit (flash badge and BIG gun) to convince the seller to cough up the goods pronto.
If necessary, the inspector can patiently explain how 5 years "quality time" with Bubba is a 5 FULL years: no time off for ANYTHING in the Federal pen.
Been tried on me twice. In both cases I eventually received the merchandise - in the condition described at the time of the sale.
Yes - it make take as long as 9 months (in one case) but I have yet to be dissapointed by the power behind that $.90 piece of paper.
Bill
T_O_M
"Michelle" is one of the aliases that the computer personality in Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress goes by. Cute.
What Would the Fab Five Do?
I posted a back-link to this slashdot article on his obituary thread at the Lexus owner's club... it was promptly delted. You all should do the same.
Luckily, my vigilance paid off, and Brian Silverman, aka "electro_depot" was caught and charged by the FTC for his crimes.
Dozens upon dozens of people were scammed by Brian over the course of a year or two. Many of them went to google to find out more about him, because he failed to return emails and phone calls. At that time, my Advogato diary entry was the only hit that google returned, and over 80 people contacted me directly via email to ask if I had ever received my laptop (at the time, I hadn't).
I had an officer, Det. Mike Gischner from the NYC "Computer Crime Squad" division call me directly, based on that same Advogato diary entry (the only one mentioning "Brian Silverman" by name at the time), asking me if I had heard of anyone else that had problems with Brian. I asked him if 120 people was enough. Silence on the phone. He thought I was kidding. I forwarded him all of the emails I had received at the time, and proceeded with his end of the case. He had no idea that there were that many people being screwed by this jerk.
As time went on, several web sites popped up to try to track the fraud from Brian Silverman, based on my original "collection" of users and emails that I had received. I take full credit for bringing enough evidence to bring him to justice.
I did eventually receive my laptop... the last one he actually sent out to anyone. I managed to track him down, at his home address, and called him one night asking (no no, demanding ) my laptop, or I would be at his front door the next morning. The laptop arrived a couple of days later.
As an aside note, the laptop, which I am typing this reply on right now, has been back to IBM 7 times for repair in the last couple of years, for repairs and replacement of almost every part, several times. Its definately a lemon, but it works well now.. and is basically brand-new again.
Basically his scam was as follows:
Eventually, he decided that the whole "Ship the laptop" thing was just too much trouble, and he started keeping the money, never purchasing any laptops at all, for any bidders.
I'm glad he's rotting in a federal prison right now, getting 60 months (from what I understand), for his crimes, and an enormous $600k fine and penalties.
Anyone seen the recent 3rd party company "SquareTrade?" I bought an item from a seller, he never responded to any emails from me, he left negative feedback and a squaretrade case, I responded with my side, and squaretrade still spams me every day telling me I have to pay $20 to get this dorks negative feedbacks removed. I needed the MPEG2 encoder unit for the 5th hope conference in NYC. Time was critical.
.... so once time runs out, eBay is home free. It takes like 2 weeks minimum to complete the non-paying bidder process.
The funny thing is, the guy never responded to squaretrade either. It eggs you on like it will take care of you and help you out, but then it always asks for 20 dollars. It's like the loch ness monster, only instead of $3.50 the fucker wants $20! This all happened months ago, and this Squaretrade piece of shit still emails me every other day about paying $20 to resolve some negative feedback that I honestly could care less about. It was false, I'm not giving the squaretrade assholes $20 to remove it from eBay's database.
Ebay and Paypal are a love/hate relationship. They have grown too big for their own good without proper competition to keep them in check.
I sold a Cray supercomputer on eBay. Ebay quickly took the $100 in commision, but the bidder was slow to pay. I went thru eBays 6 step process of reporting the non-paying bidder, and the bidder said he would pay. So eBay still charged me $100 in comission. Here I am 6 months later calling daily trying to get these people at VRSim to pay. I contacted eBay asking why they never did anything / refunded / assisted, and they said "Please go to this page" which took me back to step 2. The deal is, everything has to be done in 30 days
Oh well, what can you do? The deals are good. The fees keep going up on a site with basically no customer service. Gotta love it.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
Isn't there some special online protection plan that can remburse you in case of an online purchase fraud? Why don't people just get one of these cards specifically for ebaying.
"Buyer beware" really is as old as the hills. Its an interesting challenge in this digital age as you can't see the person, and you can't be sure they are the person they say they are.
Would we buy a laptop off a bloke on the street who "promised to bring us the laptop same time tomorrow" ? Of course not. But on ebay we make a similar decision on a regular basis.
How about an "eBay bond" where sellers have to lodge the cash with eBay until the point at which the seller receives the goods, i.e. the money is in escrow until the whole transaction is complete. The company goes bust or fails to supply within a set period (agreed as part of the sale) then the money is refunded.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Just in case anyone runs across this... there are lots of people that sell things like AOL CDs on eBay for $1. They get lots of buyers. Basically, people are buying feedback. You will see someone selling 10 or so plasma TVs for $5k a pop. Look thru their history, and they bought $30 in $1 items. $30 to walk away with $15k or so in stolen profits. Just a heads up.
A long time eBay user, I've definitly come out way ahead... but there are risks. Nothing is as bad as Yahoo auctions. I caught a fraudulent seller red handed, notified Yahoo as there was 6 other bidders on the same item... and Yahoo wouldn't / didn't seem to do a thing about it. They (Yahoo) should be held accountable if money was lost -- they knew. I contacted the police in LA but since I didn't fall for it, there was no case to be opened.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
http://us.lexusownersclub.com/forums/index.php?sho wtopic=11024&
/. them too. Yes, that's the same Sal! Spread the word - these folks are thieves.
Might as well
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Honestly, if you always use a credit card, striking back is usually not that hard. Most credit cards guarantee your purchases, whether or not the merchant does.
Last year I decided I wanted to buy a Pioneer Tivo/DVD recorder combo set. Retail price at the time was about $1500; I noticed on ebay I could pick one up for around $700. While thinking the decision over for a few days, a seller popped up suddenly with a "buy it now" price of $350. I foolishly decided this was an offer I couldn't pass up and bought immediately.
Well, this seller had made some legitimate sales before, but apparently he decided that the time between taking my money and sending me the product was a good time to close up shop and disappear. In retrospect, I could see from his feedback that several people had had problems with him. A couple had sent complaints, not received a prompt answer, and posted bad feedback, only to receive angry replies to their feedback denigrating them. Apparently, this seller believed he was a better person than the rest of us for not sending prompt responses, because that indicates that he "doesn't sit at a 'puter [sic] 24-7 like you!" I still fail to see how that makes one a paragon of virtue, but I digress.
So after a decent amount of time I contacted the seller and received no response. I had initially contacted him on purchase to verify what he said in the sale about shipping being free (yes, that should have been another tipoff), and did receive a response. But now he was nowhere to be seen. And ebay reported that his userid did not exist and/or was not active (although it was still in the system complete with previous bad feedback).
At this point I looked up the seller's phone number and tried to call it, only to get a message that it was out of service. That made sense, since the number had four or five consecutive digits in it. (The number was something like ###-4567, though the area code did match the seller's alleged area.)
Satisfied I'd done everything in my power to contact the seller and resolve the situation, I contacted paypal and informed them I had not received the product and expected to take advantage of their policy. They informed me they would launch an investigation and attempt to recover my money, and I would hear from them within a week. I was a little bit dissuaded by the claims on their policy page that they were only liable up to a certain dollar limit, but I was not terribly worried because I knew my credit card guaranteed me!
After a week, paypal cheerfully sent me a message telling me they had determined two things:
Apparently they thought this news was going to overjoy and satisfy me. Wonder of wonders; I had been vindicated! At last the whole world knew that the seller was at fault! I felt better already. (Yeah, right.) Turns out the only real promise paypal makes is that they will investigate.
So I immediately contacted my credit card company and let them know what had happened, and that I had no attention of paying the bill. The credit card representative expressed mild surprise that paypal/ebay were not cooperating with me. I was immediately given a provisional credit, pending followup investigation by my credit card company with paypal. I had done this about 6 months earlier, over a DVD bought from an Amazon.com associate seller; the policy is that once they take over, you don't have to worry about anything. The credit card company investigates and, unless you're found to be lying, you get your money back. You don't have to deal with the offending merchant at all going forward.
So, about a day later, I got another form email from paypal. This one stated that they were now involved in responding to an investigation from my credit card company. The form email mentioned that paypal had a very generous policy and would have been happy to have dealt with me directly and investigate
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Of course we could all with out breaking the law rember t ouse his address whenever we filled in a form likely to result in junk mail which asked for a snail mail address. granted It wont make up for it but its a step in the right direction i mean he'd get a good post bag of sh*t a day, the number of poeple who read this and have forms to fill in in...it beats "1 long road"
I am a sig
Provided it's a true eBay scam, they have lawyers you can hire for 25$.
I recently had a problem with something like this. Basically, my boss didn't consult me and got ripped off.
Fake emails and the whole bit. I tracked everything down as best I could without court orders for information, but I'm only IT and not a lawyer.
In this particular instance, my manager did everything wrong. He followed links that looked like an ebay page (provided via email), didn't question the cost (too cheap), sent a money order, and didn't consult me when he should have been suspicious.
I'm not privy on a lot of the details, but in the end ebay had said the account was compromised and the final trasaction did not occur through ebay.
Far too many scammers online... people need to be cautious. I guess the real trick is being able to track someone back to some real identity and pray it wasn't a stolen one at that.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
As an EBay Scam victim myself all I can say after looking into it is that EBay supports scammers.
In my case I asked a seller about an existing auction (for a Sony Vaio Picturebook C1MZX). He answered the question and mentioned that he had a couple more for sale. His story checked out -- he had previously sold one with excellent feedback a couple of weeks earlier. And of course had good feedback. So foolishly I bought it (doing everything I caution others against - sending via WU, etc).. And "George Ward - 1703 Amherst St, Buffalo, NY 14214-2019 716-862-9606 jk_fan@earthlink.net ebayid 'jkfan' " delayed shipping, the phone was disconnected, the alternate number he gave me "866-537-7305" answers and says "goodbye". So in the end I'm screwed. As are other people who lost more than I did buying from the same "jkfan" scammer.
Now since I bought "outside" of EBay they refuse to help beyond politely saying "you're fscked." So I made all the rounds reporting it to the police, IFFCFBI, etc.. Great. But funny how none of the auctions are listed as "fraudulent". EBay's response is "We have to leave it up for evidence." Actually what it does is provide the scammer with a way of creating a great history for himself so that he can continue with his scams. While ebay says this is left up for evidence, as the scammer deletes his ebay accounts the auctions and such disappear. So much for the evidence. Asking EBay for any kind of help is of course a waste of time.
This set of scammers has a pretty easy auction page to identify for their auctions -- pointing this out to ebay is met with silence. And they seem allow the auctions to continue (and having contacted some of the buyers the scams just keep on rolling...)
Oh, if you're buying Sony Vaio equipment off of ebay -- don't buy from folks in New York -- it's absolutely amazing how many fraudulent auctions for that stuff are listed as originating in NY.
So while EBay keeps lots of records and seems willing to give them out at the drop of a hat to any law enforcement folks, if you're one of the "little people" who wants to try and investigate (because the cops do the "file and forget" routine) EBay doesn't want to hear from you.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
Take a look at the case of Jay Nelson. This Sal gentleman may face more than 5 years depending what he is doing with Justin's money etc.
Here's a link to the story and background.
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing. -- Albert Einstein
Exactly, I woke up one morning a few years ago to emails from Paypal indicating that the $12,000 "I" tried to send last night didn't go through (really? you mean I don't have that in my personal checking account?), but that they'd try again. And they did. 3 more times. After I notified them of the fraud. Paypal is a complete joke. Though I will say my credit card company and bank did work really well with me including killing all of the account numbers that Paypal was trying to access. That of course prompted more emails from Paypal saying they'd try to complete the transactions again. To this day, if I go near Paypal *my* name gets flagged as fraudulent.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
I got almost scammed on an expensive item and I was pissed.
So after being very civil about it I finally used my resources (I work for a Private Investigation Company) I looked up his house, street and city, and had a guy I knew who lived nearby drop by and take some pictures across the street at this guy leaving for work. (I am in California, and this guy was in Detroit)
I emailed him saying that I would really very much like to have my item shipped and attached the pictures of him along with an arial photo with his house circled in a bulls-eye. (just a photo taken from an airplane that most cities have done and you can buy them as postcards)
I got the item a day later and I never heard about it again. no emails, no responses. Just instant gratification and it only cost some gas money to my friend and beer money and about 15 minutes on a database looking the punk up.
You mean the Lexus club photo of the back of the car? Not easily. It is too distorted and the image too low-res to start with. I tried -- flipped it, used a perspective distortion to reproject it (an approximation of what was needed). I got pretty close to undistorting it, but there are too few pixels to resolve the letters in the result. It was a good idea. If the image were higher-resolution, it would probably work.
Heh, it looks like the silhouette of his head is visible on the curvature of the back edge of the trunk, just to the left of the Lexus logo (the trunk reflects whoever took the picture, anyway).
The front plate is useless -- it just says "Lexus".
How To Buy Big-Ticket Items on EBay
Use the postal service!!! Don't send a check via FedEx, UPS, or any other method. If you get scammed, these people will not help you.
Local police, and even the FBI, will often ignore "petty" scams less than $3,000 or $5,000. I don't know about you, but five grand is a lot of money to me.
Go buy a USPS Money Order, and send it Express or Priority Mail, signature required. Note exactly what goods the Money Order is for. If you get scammed, contact the Postal Inspection service. These people do nothing except investigate mail fraud.
The minute a con-artist signs for his package, or cashes the Money Order, he is on the hook for a federal felony. Unlike the FBI or your Local PD, the USPS doesn't regard mail fraud as a "minor crime".
They will go to bat for you.
Also, Lance Armstrong kicks ass. Just one more reason.
Has anyone else noticed how hard it can be to read the neutral/negative feedback of a seller? They purposely make it this way. The feedbacks used to say Complaint: or Neutral: in front of each feedback, so you could for example view the maximum feedback per page and search the page for Complaints.
Now, you get a stupid icon, and scrolling down the screen with a lot of feedback, good luck spotting the grey Neutral against the green positive, and it's not easy to spot the complaints, either. It certainly was much easier before. There's no reason they couldn't have Complaint: and then the stupid icon. I've bitched about it to them, and got a non-response. I hope others complain as well.
I hope competitors clean ebay's clock, because they don't orient their business for the convenience or protection of buyers. In fact, there should be a way to click and view only complaints. They're afraid this will scare off a few sales, but look how many damn frauds it would prevent!!!
Posted by yintercept - "...science...[is] the study of the 'divine creation.' "