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.

Comments

Big Nasty Guys With Guns

[T_O_M]

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 Heinlein

[Orbital Sander]

"Michelle" is one of the aliases that the computer personality in Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress goes by. Cute.

Another Brian Silverman?

[hacker]

I had something even worse happen to myself, and about 200 other people with a very similar-sounding laptop scam from "electro_depot", otherwise known as "Brian Silverman".

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:

• Put "several" laptop models online on eBay for sale (note: He never actually has these laptops at all, he has never even purchased them). Let's use 10 laptops as an example; 5 IBM laptops and 5 Sony laptops.
• Get several dozen bidders on the laptops, raising the price around normal MSRP
• Take the highest bidders on all of the auctions, and demand that they send the payment within 5 days of auction close
• 10 people send in their payments for the "10" laptops (remember, he hasn't ever purchased a single laptop)
• Keep the money as long as possible, in a bank account, until people start complaining about shipment
• Delay delay delay, using whatever tactics are necessary. I've heard dozens of his excuses from various bidders.
• Delay some more, making sure to keep that bank account interest rolling in (more profit in his pocket)
• When people get heated enough to start threatening, send 8 people back their money (leaving the highest 1 IBM and 1 Sony buyer waiting) (more profit in his pocket)
• It is now 2-3 months later, and the "top-of-the-line" laptop is now no longer top-of-the-line.
• He purchases the laptops, wholesale, from the absolute-cheapest place he can find, having them shipped ground, factory-direct. At this point, since it is 1/4 of a year later, the laptops cost anywhere from 20%-40% less than the original auction price (more profit in his pocket).

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.

Credit Cards

[superpulpsicle]

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.

Caveat Emptor

[MosesJones]

"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.

Oh yes, positive feedback warning

[telemonster]

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.

I struck back

[jdavidb]

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:

• The seller was indeed at fault and had cheated me.
• My money could not be recoved.

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

Ebay Feedback

[Infe]

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!!!