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eBay vs. Romania's Online Scammers
spinctrl links to an interesting story in the L.A. Times about the cloak-and-daggerism of fighting online scams in Romania, summing it up like this: "The country is the top source of auction site scams. One company is trying to do something about it, with increasing collaboration from local law enforcement over recent years. Ebay has sent over equipment and a team to help the authorities combat this form of cyber crime, which is run with all the organization of an industrial-scale business."
You'd think Nigeria would have a host of auction scammers.
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I'm all for something being done about the scammers, eBay sometimes looks like all it cares about is getting their own share of the auction price. However what I don't understand is that people still fall for these scams, even the tiniest amount of logic applied before sending money to the scammers would eliminate >90% of the cases. Havn't everyone by now heard about, "If it's too good to be true, it proberly is"?
Resistance is not futile - www.gnu.org
It's easy to avoid scams. I say they just educate people to the point where these scams are no longer profitable.
-Don't purchase/sell to certain countries.
-Avoid any auctions that don't allow a well-known escrow service.
-Request delivery confirmation on everything you send out.
Problem solved.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
It always amazes me the effort criminals use to commit crimes. However, I finally realized what the issue is and it comes right back down to supply and demand.
....
The demand for legal use of the skills required to pull this off, is already saturated with the supply of legal workforce, so the criminal moves to a more lucrative marketplace, the black market. When applying the same skill level and effort of his legal counterparts, the criminal maximizes his/her profit potential by moving to a marketplace that has much lower supplies.
The only thing that can counter act this phenomenon is making getting caught extremely expensive, thus driving up the "cost" of the black marketplace. I suggest to you, that financial or incarceration penalties are not nearly enough to drive the markets to unprofitability, that it requires something more costly and more effective
I'll leave the particulars up everyone else to ponder.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
What exactly is dating fraud? Is this where you setup a date with some hot Russian gal online, only to wake up in a hotel room a week later married to the scariest woman you have ever seen?
... his best joke was:
What's the recipe for a Romanian omelette?
Step 1: steal a dozen eggs.
Let's teach people about tech so they don't ask irritating questions and make the same mistakes.
Why stop there, though? Let's teach people about economics so there are no more money problems. Then we should teach them how to drive so they don't have auto accidents. Perhaps we could teach them about copyright law so there is no more maf-IAA... etc. Point being that educating the general populace and getting them to act on their newfound knowledge is usually easier said than done.
Slashdot story about ebay sitting on its hands and doing nothing when given proof of fraud, complete with stories from slashdotters who used to work for ebay: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/16/1316203&tid=95&tid=98&tid=123
This guy adds in his own personal experience, where eBay wanted a $25 fee to handle a fraud case: http://danwarne.com/ebay-fraud-under-scrutiny/
In 2002, ebay sits on its hands and does nothing when given evidence of fraud: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078736/
FTC says Ebay is the #1 source of online fraud complaints (circa 2003): http://www.news.com/FTC,-states-take-on-online-auction-fraud/2100-1017_3-999009.html
Still a problem in 2004: http://www.nclnet.org/news/2004/internet_fraud_stats.htm
...and the beat goes on! Just google "ebay fraud" and see hundreds of news stories and personal accounts...
I recall reading a few years ago that eBay was a source of something like 75% of all complaints about online fraud. Just yesterday I saw an item for sale by a guy with a positive rating of something like 24,000. Unless he's selling 6 items a day for the last 10 years, I see nothing has changed.
Please help metamoderate.
Every time I'm on eBay both buying and selling I get like ten Nigerians and only five Romanians trying to scam me. Heck I can't even post anything on Craigslist without having some Nigerian try to scam me.
The following statement is false.
The previous statement is true.
Welcome to my world.
Nobody is immune from scam's
Happened to a good friend of mine , who has been working in the IT industry for > 15 years.
The money he lost in the scam was nothing compared to the loss of credibility it had a really bad affect on his contract work when word got out.
common if you see 'Nigeria'+ 'transfer money'+ 'you get 20%'+ 'obvious bogus name'
you don't think somethings wrong you are not worth the paper you're degree was printed on.
Now he is really interested in the Security Area.
The article sort of looks like an Ebay ad. So, the billion dollar corporation has devoted one (whole) employee to fighting Romanian scammers and donated some pc's etc to the local police. Unless that one person is John Rambo, this is not enough. It is however enough for Ebay to claim "hey look, we 're doing something, when we don't even really have to".
From the horror stories I have heard from people around me about Paypal (owned by Ebay) scams and the indifference with which Paypal deals (or more accurately does not deal) with them, I know that Ebay is doing far less than it should, even when their own payment system is involved, and even when the scammers are here in the US. Deal with that first - it is so much easier - and stop BSing us about hunting down Western Union scammers in Romania...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Why do I suspect that much of this donated equipment has gone straight to the scammers. An operation as big as they say pretty much has to involve the "authorities".
Cause people will screw you over for money. i am so reminded of this case on judge judy. http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZJDK6ctRjqw
All these scams by romanians scammers hurt more for other romanians who would like to buy or sell something legit, but can't get the chance, because they are look upon with suspicion. Aren't there some services (escrow i think they are called) who make sure that the transaction goes according with the way it should?
Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers!
"U.S. Secret Service agents escort her..." Oh?
Is this some special offer that the Secret Service makes to all US citizens traveling to Romania? Or is this something that only big, rich corporations get? Am I, as a US taxpayer, paying for providing security to an employee of a company that can assuredly pay for a private security firm?
Never mind, I already know the answers.
I have no problem sorting through the sellers, but what is not usually mentioned is the fraudulent buyers, and the fact that a seller has no way to prevent anyone from "buying" an item. At that point one is out the listing and sales fee, and the hassle of trying to get it back is not worth it. So we no longer sell on ebay.
I suppose ebay should have an "approve buyer?" button, but to my knowledge they don't.
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I've bought and sold on eBay about 25 times in the past few years without any problems.
Now I'm watching for camera lenses for a new Canon 40D (bought from Amazon), but my wife (who checked out several 40Ds on eBay) warned me about these scam rings and that cameras and camera accessories are a favorite bait to lure unknowing buyers.
Apparently the eBay ratings system can be gamed. Does anyone know of a way to confirm a seller is legit before placing a bid?
What?
The amazing thing is that in Romania, Russia, China, as well as other countries-- online fraud is a full-time business with real offices and employees and everything, just like your job but the mission statement of "the company" is to make money by devising and executing online fraud. They have R&D teams that come up with incredibly sophisticated attacks and they have teams to execute the existing plans, etc. The employees get vacation time, salary, benefits, everything. It's an actual real job, it's basically a wing of organized crime, not just some guy in a basement outsmarting the security folk at ebay. The local politicians are greased to look the other way and impede law enforcement, which is what makes it so difficult to shut them down. There are ISPs in Russia _known_ to be owned by the mob. It takes serious anti-fraud resources to combat these people.
eBay is fine with scam operation as long as they get a cut. A couple of months ago I listed a laptop. It was inmediately "purchased" (via buy it now) by an englishman who wanted it shipped to her daughter who happened to be in Nigeria. Payment via a fake scrow agency, etc. Anyway, I couldn't relist the item inmediately (you have to wait for payment for a few days even if you know that it's a scam) so I decided to just sell it somewhere else. Well, after 10 days or so I could finally notify ebay that payment haven't been received, so they withdraw their action % charge...but still expected payment for the listing! I couldn't even relist it on time, and when they offered to relist it for free the item was long gone. I wasted time on this and they still charged me. BTW, I only allowed shipping within my country, so eBay shouldn't have allowed the Nigerian to bid in the first place... Long story short: Fuck eBay and their antiscam policies.
I find it funny that the article makes it sound like Bitdefender is the greatest anti-virus software. About a year ago I found it caused at least 3 separate problems at two different businesses. It wound up costing one of the businesses about a thousand dollars to discover it was the anti-virus software causing a problem. No anti-virus software is perfect.. but that's quite a bad track record in my experience.
AccountKiller
What's really annoying about eBay is selling. When you buy from eBay, it's easy to know if you are going to get scammed (providing you use some common sense). A buyer from Jersey needs payment sent to India? I'm out. But selling is a whole other issue.
I had this one incident where I was selling something and the winning bidder looked pretty trustworthy; a few dozen positive feedbacks, a member for 2-3 years, from the States, the whole deal. So a few hours after the auction ends I get an email saying they needed the item shipped to India because they were visiting family and didn't want the item sent to an empty house. To the average, non-common sense using user, this might seem like a reasonable request but it's bullshit.
So I refused the deal, reported the account to eBay and the next day got an email saying the real account owner's account had been "compromised" and that they were looking into it. What really sucked is that it took 2 months to get a refund for the cost of putting up the auction (listing fees), and the final value fee from when the item sold. Since it was kind of an expensive item, and eBay already rapes it's users on fees, I was out something like $30 until it was finally refunded.
So again, buyers can avoid trouble with common sense, but wheres the protection for sellers? We can't tell off the bat when someone steals a legit user's account and then tries scamming us AFTER the fact.
I really hate eBay.
I have this scene flash in my mind's eye of these Ebay Huey's flying into Romainia like the opening scene of Preditor....they come in low over the trees sideways, flashing eBay logo's painted on the sides.
Once they land, out jumps Arnie and his crew, packing toughbook laptops, rackmout equipment chomping on a cigar, looking pissed off at having to go to Romainia. Borat runs over, salutes and grabs some equipment and throws it in the back of a jeep. They ride over to the command tent to get their breifing, set up the surplus Carnivore equipment.
Yes, I have a fertile imagination. I wonder how much is true.
WTF? Over?
The city in question used to be a large industrial center and most of its factories were bought by western commercial interests only for the purpose of being closed down. The westerners did not want competition that would certainly undercut their prices, given the cheap labor force available.
Now that unemployment runs rampant, the commercial interests moan about online scams. They are very conveniently oblivious of the fact that they created the situation to begin with. So what exactly is it that they are wanking about ?
I happen to be living in Moldova, a small country which probably scores worse than Romania if you check it with your "country-o-meter".Romania is our Western neighbor (the really long story is that our countries used to be united, but this is just FYI).
A lot of times I have to deal with the fact that an online-store does not deliver to Moldova, so either I have to know someone abroad (who lives in a "good" country and can make the purchase for me) or forget about the product.
But hey, we're people too! We are intelligent, reasonable, we have feelings, we trust other people, and other people trust us. Simply 'blacklisting' a country is not a good solution, because it still leaves a lot of unhappy folk.
I even had cases in which some companies refused to sell software (no export control regulations involved), all they have to do is send me an email with the registration number _after_ the money is transferred to their account; but no...
What the hell will I do? Stick my hand into "teh tubes", grab their necks and then suck them into the abyss?
In other words, item#1 in your list should be removed, imho.
The saddest poem
Why is the U.S. wasting my tax dollars by sending Secret Service agents along for protection? I doubt they're investigating Counterfeiting, or protecting the president... I think eBay can afford to hire their own security guards. But then again it really doesn't come as a surprise when they fuck the public over to protect the record and movie companies, or the tele-co's, or anyone else that isn't required to pay a mandatory yearly bribe (ie. Taxes) and they can squeeze for some extra 'campaign contributions'.
Truly, Fascism at work!
not really... our gypsies (the ones that are not dirt poor) are rarely "high tech", they make their money by sending their children to beg and pick pockets, stealing cars abroad and selling them here, robbing and stealing from our Italian ans Spanish friends; some of them may be at the top of the scamming groups, organizing the business, or at the bottom, acting as decoys that receive the money (the decoys are the ones that usually get to serve time in jail).
Most of the ones collecting the stupidity tax from the US are actually Romanian kids, 13 to 20-22 years old; after the age of 18 many quit, because it's more risky (while they are minors the police can't do much to them, they aren't even allowed to beat the crap out of suspects nowadays), or get in the back, taking care of creating fake escrow sites, handling relations, etc...
The locals call them "hackers" because they use computers and do something bad, but they aren't really that computer literate (my brother had a classmate that needed someone else to start the computer and browser for him, and yet was highly successful in the scamming business), all they need is a web browser and a WYSIWYG html editor like Dreamweaver for creating their escrow sites.
Wrong, the problem is slowly solving itself, as things evolve: the first item a kid that made an assload of money buys is a fast car, and a lot have died in car accidents, some more went to jail for 1-2 years (and our prisons aren't pretty); also, money laundering is a lot harder due to our EU membership.
I have a good friend living in Romania. She's not a scammer, nor works for a scamming company, but because of Romania's label as a scamming country, internet usage can be very hard for her. For instance, Romanian credit cards are worthless on the Internet, even though she will pay for the goods she purchases.
I'm figuring things might get a smidge easier now that Romania is part of the EU. It would still be nice if she could validate in some way that she was a good customer, rather than a "Romanian customer"
If you live in Puerto Rico, Guamm or Hawaii it takes over 45 days for some parcels to arrive. Yet, Paypal and Ebay's policy is that one has to file a claim within 45 days...
It cost me $200 to find that out the hard way. ( following that, on two separate occasions I reported sellers to ebay before 45 day limit lapsed only to get the package they've sent to me a week later )
Posting as AC I think for obvious reason's.
I sold some online products (gaming gold) on Ebay back before Ebay had completely banned it for all games etc...
Anyhow this was a perfect setup for someone to steal from me via the assistance of paypal.
Paypal said they had paid the money and turned the money over to me, I then met them in game and gave them the payed for goods.
After this I left posative feedback. (no feedback was giving to me ever...(I assume it was being left as a bargaining chip for shut up or I leave negative feedback etc).
Anyhow after 30 days (the time limit to leave feedback had I not left any) paypal then informed me that the account and CC used to purchase my goods were stolen, and that I was responsible to pay back the fee owed to paypal. (They 3-4 years later are still trying to collect). Apparently if I had had a signed delivered signature for the product paypal would have then tried to collect from the thief rather than me. (Never ship anything as a seller form ebay that doesn't require signature on delivery).
So getting no-where with paypal, ebay or emails sent to the account. (that had changed emails from when I did business with it). The account wasn't shut down or punished in any way for being 'stolen'. In fact they now had one more positive feedback (provided via me).
Well I thought to myself I better keep others from being ripped off so I looked high and low on how to 'add' to my comment, restract or change my comment, now that I had found out this individual had stolen hundreds of dollars from me. Guess what? THERE ISN'T ANY Ebay purposely makes it so there is no way *I* can tell the world that this user I interacted with stole from me!!!
Be very careful Ebay thieves continue to get 100% posative feedback, Ebay knows of this and continues its policy of tricking honest users into leaving posative feedback before the hammer of theft comes down on you. As a seller your are powerless.
The lesson, feel free to buy all you want of Ebay, in fact after you bought a bunch of stuff and received it tell your CC company your ebay and paypal account were hacked and have a merry free X-mas, paid for by people stupid enough to still sell on ebay!!
Do this every year and continue to collect your positive feedback scores that are left well before the seller is informed the money you gave them well they want it back...
Change credit cards every year of course so that you don't get anyone being smart and putting 1+1 together.
Are you kidding me? Actually, are you kidding yourselves? How are teal_'s opinions informative? I mean, besides informing us of teal_'s willingness to throw unsubstantiated claims left and right?
This is the worst movie scenario ever!
Ian Wylie must be on something stronger than cocaine.
I'm used to read a lot of stupidities written about my country but this one is so full of crap it makes me think it's some kind of a joke.
- Albena Spasova driving the twisting highway (she must be drunk, there is no highway there), escorted by US Secret Service (on horses, with stetsons and stuff)?
- She can't trust the telephone line (what's up sugar this kind of technology is to new for you)?
- Local hackers circling around (probably some pimps trying to offer her a decent job), instead of hacking on eBay?
What are you talking about?
Do you think this is Somalia or something?
The top seller on ebay actually has something crazy like nearly a million sales in 8 years. Feedback of like 688,507 I know cuz I bought something from him, it was a great purchase and customer service was awesome. Just cuz someone has what seems like an unrealistic transaction score or feedback doesn't mean sh!t, I have several friends that quit their jobs to exclusively sell crap on ebay (not fraudulently), one of em makes 6figs/year doing it!
Ebay is just THE place on the internet with the highest possibility of fraud, its like saying the used car lot on the wrong side of the tracks has the highest possibility of fraud, that doesn't mean you are going to get screwed for sure, or else that lot wouldn't exist long. It's the same thing with ebay, if the rate of fraud was really that high we would be hearing a LOT more about it than we are. Probably senate investigations into in and the whole shebang, and I'm not saying ebay is perfect either, but their customer service has always helped me out (although I've never been a victim of fraud, cuz I have at least half a brain).
So remember that cheese goes great with your whine.
Nothing has really changed over the years in Romania. ...says the brave AC.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- G.B. Shaw
Using car crashes as a solution is funny, but seriously now--I live in Romania and one thing I can testify for is that no sane person wants anything to do with the legal system here. I don't mean it's crazy with overuse like in the US; I mean it's corrupt to the gills. The side that shells out the most dough wins, period. A [successful] eBay scammer will have no problem paying his way out of a tight spot.
Where cybercrime is concerned the problem is compounded by the fact the Police is near computer-illiterate, a sad truth which also applies to a large part of the population; but I digress. Also consider corrupt politicians and officials who are just as computer-illiterate themselves and have no interest whatsoever in fighting something so abstract as computer crimes when they could spend the time stealing public money and fighting each other.
So it comes down that the only cyber-criminals ever punished are those who couldn't afford to pay the right people; it's a paradox of a corrupt system: the more you steal, the safer you are. Or, some exceedingly stupid individuals that manage to get the FBI involved and are made an example of as a token of ass-kissing from the pro-American local Government.
Romania made it into the EU as a buffer to the Russian zone, as a marketplace for the other EU countries and as a source of cheap labor. It has absolutely nothing else to offer that the EU didn't already have bigger and better.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
That was probably the case back when you sold your goods, but IIRC, there's a follow-up feature now where you can comment on your comments.
I think this is the link.
Am I the only one finding Ebay is more expensive than the normal on-line shops or even real retail shops. I recently decided to purchase a HP C6180 printer (works great with Linux) and the best price I found was AU$249 from a normal big brand retail chain. When I looked as Ebay the best (buy now) price was over AU$329 at the time with the best on-line retailer price being AU$304 (with another printer thrown in as a bonus). Im finding that if you want to buy any "new" product, ebay is the worst place to go if you want to save money. On the other hand second hand goods on ebay can sometimes be a good deal.
to fall for scams like these. I mean c'mon, if the seller does not accept paypal, or you have to send payment to a different country, then just don't buy the stuff. It is as simple as that.
The article is nothing more than anti-propaganda. And it's an old issue.
Romania is not what it used to be anymore. There are laws concerning Internet just like any other Europe Union country. And FYI, we have online credit cards and paypal transactions working now(both ways) for Romania.
We've paid our debt to international "society", by not being able to receive Internet financial transactions for over a decade. It's over now. Please pick another country if you still feel the need to bully someone.
Encouraging item inflation via a moral hazard just is something that looks for trouble.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
What sort of idiots have seized control in White Plains?