From: Sarge (micdunn@ev1.net)
Date: Tue Jun 06 2006 - 11:17:40 PDT
Sarge here,
I'm all over this one. The actual seller had his auction hi-jacked last
Saturday.
I contacted E-Bay who said "We will take appropriate action" , which of
course translates into English as "We won't do doodly-squat unless it takes
a penny out of our pocket".
I then contacted the FBI Internet Crime division and made a full report.
At least they are honest enough to not bother to lie to me. In other words,
they will read my report in 2008 and take action when hell freezes over.
I contacted the real seller who seems to be nice enough and quite honest.
I contacted the scammer who I am going to keep on the hook for a while.
TJ's tribulations inspired me enough to have a little fun here.
The scammer is most definitely not a native English speaker and I will post
our communications on this list if anyone requests it.
Mandatory MV content: This scammer is attempting to scam MV'ers to the tune
of $5,000 each.
Here is his plan:
He hi-jacked an MV'ers password and took control of an MV auction.
The MAN truck was previously listed with a starting bid of $17,500 and a buy
it now price of $22,000.
When the scammer got the real seller's password, he immediately changed it
so that the real seller could not access his own auction.
Then he changed the item description to remove the original sellers name and
telephone number. Then he inserted his own e-mail address.
He changed the starting bid price to $1,500 and the buy it now price to
$5,000.
Here is where he got clever: Only pre-approved bidders were allowed to bid.
Meaning you had to e-mail him for pre-approval.
That caused a feeding frenzy amongst the MV community.
Here is a 20 ton 8x8 MAN prime mover for $5,000!!!! Who wouldn't jump on
that?
Well, E-Bay had 10,167 hits on that page. Let's say 10% of lookers thought
it was a good deal.
So now 1,000 MV'ers e-mail this dork and ask to be pre-approved for bidding.
But! The scammer does not pre-approve anybody. Why not? Why mess with the
theft of $5,000 when you can make millions?
He waits until the sale is over with zero bids. Zero bids because he did not
pre-approve anybody.
Now he e-mails those thousand (I'm one of them) and offers the truck for the
buy it now price of $5,000.
If he can scam one thousand buyers of $5,000 each, that's a cool $5 million.
Or even if he can only scam 10 percent (100 buyers), which is not so
far-fetched, that is still $500,000. Pretty soon, we are talking about some
real money.
Now you are in e-mail contact with him and he starts offering you the "E-Bay
Purchase Protection Plan"
There is such an animal and it usually works pretty well. However, E-Bay
only offers the plan if you buy the item by using the Bid feature on the
auction. Otherwise, you are on your own.
The scammer then sets up a real bank account and has you wire the $5,000
into an escrow holding company. This is an impartial third party "money
holder". He then says when he has shipped the vehicle to you, and you are
happy with it, you release the escrow funds to him. Of course the escrow
company is a fake, the bank account is emptied, he's rich and gone. You are
Screwed!!!
Anyway, that's the scam, now you know, happy bidding!
-Sarge out
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Tue Jul 18 2006 - 21:47:06 PDT