Slashdot Mirror
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.
Has anyone heard of the P-P-P Powerbook? Its another case of the scammer being scammed, and quite amusing. Theres a full list of correspondence between the scammer and seller, complete with photos and videos. Enjoy.
This is a long and complex story. I dont blame either party but since I'm more intrested/concered in what eBay is doing to thwart crimes.
Ain't revenge a bitch?
Salvatore Wise, Jr., or someone going by that alias for several years at least (verified since 1997), has taken tens of thousands, and perhaps hundreds of thousands, of dollars from eBay shoppers. Whether or not he does other types of online trading is not yet known to me.
"How could that be possible?", you must be asking. Surely there are safeguards against that kind of thing, right? Yes, there are. But Sal has been ingenious in finding workarounds for those safeguards. See, for example, how Justin Spence, a shrewd businessman himself who was initially suspect of Sal's integrity, was conned into finishing the deal. Sal doesn't accept credit cards nor Paypal in any form; he wants his money in checks, cashiers checks or money orders. And he often makes believe he hasn't received your payment when in fact he's already cashed it.
Sal's accounts have all been terminated, of course, but he always seems to have one more on the back burner he can use in a pinch. Lately, his wife Michelle Heinlein appears to be actively involved, since in at least one case a check made out to her name was cashed, in one of the scams. Notice the same trading pattern as Sal's former username needforspeed97, starting off good then, once he gets a good reputation, cashing it in for a few thousand dollars before eBay kicks him off. I'm pretty sure this guy Robin, needforspeed, is the same dude too, but Sal of course denies it.
I'll post more info as I can. Watch out for anybody on eBay from PA who sells high-dollar items. Sorry Pennsylvanians, but you've got a scoundrel in your midst. He lives at 1941 W. Passyunk Ave. in Philadelphia, but he sometimes sets his eBay "area" identity as Pittsburgh.
So if I know where he lives, why don't I just go break his legs? Believe me, I've thought about it, but I don't want to do something illegal that'll get me thrown in jail. Besides, he's threatened to shoot me if I come there. So if the threat turns out to be real, I'd either have to kill him or get killed myself, either of which has consequences I don't want to consider. And on top of all that, I'm a coward.
Well anyway, not to be outdone by Justin, I'm digging up my emails now too... here's the most recent thread which shows the same typing style (being very loose with that word here) as his recent threats to Justin. More to follow!
Wow, that was fast! Here he is again... it's after 2AM on the east coast, so he must be sweating bullets! Aren't you, Sal old buddy?
This is getting to be another blog in itself, so let's just follow the story in my existing blog, shall we?
Check this out.
That guy's hosting bill is going to be huge after we're done with him. Maybe he'll do an expose piece on how slashdot users cost him thousands of dollars in hosting fees.
"Glory is fleeting but obscurity is forever" - Napoleon Bonapart.
So, buying anything in those priceranges is taking a huge risk. I'm not saying that these scammer should get away with it (they should be thrown in jail), I'm just saying that I prefer not to take risks.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
http://www.ibnads.com/sal/salwise.html
Kinda makes you wonder whether Sal posted the story himself..and must be laughing his way to the bank knowing the site's getting its ass raped by millions of pointed clicks..
By the way, hope Sal finds his way to the following conversation.
Sal, meet Bubba.
Bubba, meet thy Bitch.
Rapid Nirvana
Ignore whatever this guys says on his webpage. There are plenty of good sellers on ebay, and plenty of bad buyers.
If anyone is interested I have laptops for sale. Contact me.
Sal^H^H^HJoe
Spur of the moment inspiration based on this article.
[to the tune of: Erie Canal]
I know a guy
His name is Sal
I buy stuff from him
He's my E-bay pal
I send all my money
To his locale
He'll send me his stuff
He's my E-bay pal
Watch out!
He just skipped out of town
Watch out!
'cause in legal fees he'll drown
And all my angry neighbors
They're gonna hunt him down
'cause we're gonna take out this E-bay cloooooown.
Oh...come on! It's funny!
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
Salvatore probably couldn't get him to take his site down, so instead he posted this story on Slashdot and let the /. effect do his dirty work!
Muhahaha!
"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?
or, you can realize that Microsoft isn't quite ALL bad.
TerraServer for the listed address.
Public domain pictures courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Don't do anything foolish, stupid, or illegal with this information, just beware that the internet is very very powerful these days, between phone lookups, address lookups, and now photographic lookups, things can be scary.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
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.
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!
Main Page and E-mail Page
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
"My name is Justin Spence. You kiled my server. Prepare to die."
This is why you only buy SMALL TICKET items off of ebay.
:)
Im talking dvds, videogames, maybe hdds. If you get ripped off, the loss is minimal.
I thought everyone knew this already
no
Link to the bounty.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
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.
Well anyway, since Justin's T1 is being pummeled too, a bunch of slashdotters have come to the rescue and mirrored the site! Here are the ones I've had pointed out to me so far, and more are appearing as I type:
http://pio.longstair.com/misc/salwise.htm6 67.html
http://pio.longstair.com/misc/salwise2.htm
http://www.ibnads.com/sal/salwise.html
http://sd.wiretapped.us/07222004/
http://www.freelancesecurity.com/projects/1089824
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.' "
All you guys need to look at something.I am sal wise but not the one who sold anything on ebay.I got plenty of documents to back up it wasnt me but my father but everywere i look i am seeing my name being jr but it is wrong.Yous are all playing follow the leader and saying guilty before reading facts.I tried to help out with this when i was out of the hospital but justin just toke it as it was me and that was that.I even went as far as asked him to call my hospital so he can see it was impossible for it to be me but he didnt do that right either. Now enough is enough and i dont have a problem with any of you's but at least accuse the right person.I mean if my father acually comes thru with them auctions then all this is over anyway but all the info on justins web page that is now down like i said it would be is mostly of my father.The civil dockets,The emails etc.. etc.. All i want is my wifes name off the web pages being hosted by other people now.Of course if they fail to do so then i guess they will have to get shut down also.I usally dont threaten anyone and for all that want proof it really wasnt me and was indeed my father call the hospital that justin should of provided and ask how long i been in and out of it.That should be enough proof to show you people it was sr not jr and not my wife. Now why would a scammer come on here and even type to you people?Because i did nothing wrong and im tired of seeing people putting my name out there like it was me and like im a crook.Anyone in philly who wants to see me come on down to 19th and passyunk ave right on the corner i have a scooter shop im in partners with and yes its a bunch of mostly old time mafia but so what we do nothing wrong and have a legit buisness and i dont hide from no one. Put yourself in my shoes.Im in the hospital not knowing whats going on and get out and find all this crap floating around and then find out it was my father.I want to hang him more then anyone. Acually he should be fixing this mess but he dont know i know whats going on yet but i have to tell him soon because this is getting out of hand and he must fix this and i dont care what the hell he does after that but im done with him. So people whoever wants real facts i will prove it and end it at that.