[Swordmaker]

I have reported over 40 hijacked eBay accounts to eBay's Safe Harbor fraud detail in the past two weeks.

These hijacked accounts have been popping up offering Macintosh G5 dual processor computers for sale with immediate shipping. The Dual G5 will not even ship from Apple until mid-October! The same sellers will also be offering the hard to get Nikon digital SLR, Super-high speed PCs,

Each of the sellers had been previously selling something totally non-computer related... often the "sellers" have high positive eBay ratings from their previous activities.

The computers are offered with "Buy It Now!" prices that are less than half the retail value and include many accessories that increase the "deal" the buyer will get... if anything is ever shipped. Some of these scam deals are offering over $5000 of new equipment for the bargain price of $1900... one scammer offers the Dual G5 ($2995),8 gigabytes of APPLE brand Ram ($4800), a 20" Cinema Display ($1299), a 23" Cinema Display ($2499), Fiber Channel PCI card ($500), 40 Gig iPad ($400), Klipsch ProMedia Surround Sound 5.1 speaker set ($350), Bluetooth, AirPort Extreme base station, card, and modem ($500)... a total of over $8500 for a bargain "buy it now" price of $2299... and he would throw in shipping anywhere for free! This seller, before offering several of these impossible packages, was selling used clothing and had a 148 100% positive eBay rating.

One scammer claims that if the auction goes over $450, he will stop the auction immediately and ship the computer to the first person over that amount... but "it will take a longer time for shipping and delivery because I am a drop shipper, which allows me to sell these computers at such a deep discount."

Another suggest the buyer buy TWO!

Often, the buyer seems to have moved to another continent... people who had selling used CDs and books from New Jersey is suddenly offering large numbers of "too-good-to-be-true" impossible to get computers from the Netherlands... or the UK... of Australia. Sometimes the item location is listed as New York, but the price is listed in Australian dollars.

All of these listings were removed by eBay after I notified them of the fraudulent nature... but it doesn't stop them... identical ads appear just hours later with another eBayer's hijacked account.

I have one problem with eBay's commitment to fighting this type of fraud. They make it extremely HARD to find a way to report suspicious listings to them... it is buried under many layers of webpages and options. It took me over an hour to find it the first time I saw one of these scam offerings.

[Swordmaker]

a total of over $8500 for a bargain "buy it now" price of $2299.

Oops, left out one item in my adding... actual retail value is over $13,300 for the ridiculously low price of $2299!

Remember, if it sounds to good to be true, it isn't.

[PatrioticCowboy]

Is fraud very common at Ebay?

Or what?

[Timesink]

They don't want you to know about this number, but it's very easy to remember:

800-EBAY-COM

Also, a general warning to everyone: NO reputable business will ever, ever, EVER send you an email or a demand that you "click here" to reverify your information (nor will they call you and make such demands). It just doesn't happen. If you ever get such an email (or phone call), IT IS A FRAUD.

[Gorzaloon]

Often, the buyer seems to have moved to another continent... people who had selling used CDs and books from New Jersey is suddenly offering large numbers of "too-good-to-be-true" impossible to get computers from the Netherlands... or the UK... of Australia. Sometimes the item location is listed as New York, but the price is listed in Australian dollars.

Well, well...Sounds exactly like the operation that is selling the new Canon G5 digital camera at a fraction of its $800 price!

[tiamat]

Good for you!

You are to be commended for your dilligence in eporting to eBay as well as being clever enough to spot the fraud.

As someone who loves both eBay and Apple computers, all I can say is "Thanks" for making the eBay community a little safer!

Kudos!

Tia

[Fixit]

I have one problem with eBay's commitment to fighting this type of fraud. They make it extremely HARD to find a way to report suspicious listings to them... it is buried under many layers of webpages and options. It took me over an hour to find it the first time I saw one of these scam offerings.

Boy, you aren't kidding about the "report a fraudulent auction" link being ridiculously hard to find. The ebay "help" system mentions it several times, but the pages that say things like "click the link below" never actually have the link below!

I gave up last time I was looking for it and just used google to find it.

Report trouble auctions to ebay.

Ebay UK uses the older (and easier) version of the fraud reporting form here.

(I always figured ebay should have a "report abuse" link on each aucition like how FR has one next to each post, but I guess that would just make too much damn sense.)

[xp38]

I think there is a threshold for me when I am no longer going to send money off to an unknown without the online escrow services. It would kick in way before $1900

[RedWhiteBlue]

They make it extremely HARD to find a way to report suspicious listings to them... it is buried under many layers of webpages and options.

Not only that, because of all of the embedded crap in those fraudulent e-mails, just opening one so that you can forward it to spoof@ebay.com tells the crooks that they've got a "live one." I seem to get one or two of these bogus e-mails on the weekends, and I have already forwarded about 4 of them to ebay when I found this out.

During the initial phase of the blaster/welchia virus activity, I started using a program called b9, which filters crap that it considers "non-standard" out of e-mails. Examples of things that it will filter are read receipts (every one of these e-mails was sending one back), attachments that contain scripts (viruses included), non-standard html tags and attributes, scripting, embedded and undesired tags, images from external servers, images that pass variables to external servers, images that appear to contain identifier information, images associated with cookie information, and 1x1 images.

In one of the fraudulent e-mails, b9 filtered out 48 separate items from the e-mail. If you don't have the ability to filter this crap out before you forward to e-bay, you are better off just deleting the message and making sure that your e-mail is not set up so that you don't view it in a preview pane.

[MarkL]

I just purchased a Compaq server from a vendor on eBay, and decided that just in case something was wrong, I used an escrow service. They guarentee that if the seller isn't legitimate, they will not be payed. Only legitimate sellers would allow the use of escrow. It costs a bit more, but IMHO, it's worth it.

Mark