Strange ebay Gaggia offers

Snip For example, after bidding on just

Looks like the above is part of a total scam program somebody is running on ebay. I hope this thread continues with the people who bid on these machines so they can tell us about the next scenario in this scam when it boils up.

Would be really interesting to know who is behind this one-wonder if they are offshore are home grown.

I'm pretty sure they're all the same person--I used the ebay contact seller button and asked them to tell me a little bit more since they were new and had no feedback, and in return I recieved the same msg using the same mail program (identical quote marks, etc.), identical headers--the only difference was the actual "from" address--all the emails came from the same computer, even though they were supposedly from all over the country.

I inadvertantly bid on one (I was looking at two identical machines, one from a seller with feedback, and had too many windows open...) (it was a really low bid, though) and as soon as I was out bid, I started recieving "have I got a deal for you" emails from the seller offering to sell me the machine I was outbid on for much less (direct quote follows):

"Look what I can do for you:-you will make the transfer to my location but not to my name(you will use your best friends name for example as receiver's name)so you can be sure that i will not pick up the money untill you get the product.So you make a deposit at western union and you will give me the transfer's details(SENDER NAME,RECEIVER NAME,MTCN) so i can check that the deposit was made. After i verify I will send you the product imediately and email you the tracking number from UPS. -only after you will receive the product and check it if it ok you will have to change the of the transfer to my name so i can collect my money...I think it is better to not inform western union that you will change the receivers name in a few days because it is possible they to ask you to pay the fees twice also when you go to an western union office to make the transfer,please don't tell there the reason for you send the money because here in this country I must pay somes aditional taxes when I recive the founds..."

And it goes on... This is a well known method of scamming--they take the money and run, and you're left with an empty wallet.

the seller of my item did not respond to several emails and finally sent an email not answering any of my questions and with a different paypal account than was on the original item! seller also suspended from ebay.

The is a classic scam (as I predicted, part II of the scam), usually run from Romania (where law enforcement is non-existent/paid off by the scammers, who are part of organized crime there and make big money doing this on a mass scale). This one is cruder than most because they didn't even bother hijacking the account of someone with high feedback. I think that they've figured out it doesn't make any difference - people will bid anyway, even on zero feedback. And you can generate dozens of 0 feedback accounts in minutes, hijacking a high feedback account takes time and effort (you have to run a separate scam where you harvest ebay passwords off phony emails from ebay "security"). Imagine if hundreds or thousands of these auctions could be generated by software "bots" - the whole ebay system could break down once the fraudulent auctions exceeded the real ones. As it was, as of yesterday a substantial % of the espresso machine auctions were frauds.

And since they don't really speak English, they just hijack the descriptions from another site. They don't even bother reading them (or don't understand what is written) so that's why some of the decriptions (really Amazon reviews) are negative. And yet, that doesn't stop people from bidding either.

And, not only can you scam the winners, you can scam every single person who bids. This one scam alone could yield tens of thousands of $ if ebay doesn't shut the whole thing down and notify all bidders before they send money (which I doubt they will).

The "send Western Union to a different name" scam is well known. It turns out you don't actually need the name, just the confirmation #, especially if the Western Union clerk in Bucharest is getting 10% of the take and/or the scammer prints up a fake ID with your friends name on it. As soon as you send the money to your "best friend", it is picked up immediately. Western Union warns you that their service is to be used only for trusted recipients - it is the equivalent of putting cash in the mail and they give you no refunds ever, no buyer protection at all. I like the twist about not telling WU that you will be changing the name of the recipient. WU has been thru enough fraud complaints that they are now instructed to warn you about these scams if you mention this, so the scammer has to get you NOT to mention it.

I assume (hope) that you notified ebay about this email.

Here is the text of my correspondence last year when I asked a seller about a Krups Superauto offered on eBay:

----- Original Message ----- From: "sdg lhsdr" To: Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 11:33 PM Subject: Re: Question for seller -- Item #2345127475

Hi! Item is new and sealed in the box. It has all manuals and full warranty. I have two such items, I can sell one to you for 320$ including shipping now, without bidding. Please, e-mail me if you agree to buy it now. Thank you

----- Original Message ----- From: "sdg lhsdr" To: Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2003 6:48 AM Subject: Re: Question for seller -- Item #2345127475

Hello. To pay with wire transfer here are my bank details. It is our European office, because I'm at our warehouse in Europe now and will ship item from here by express oversea delivery. It should not matter you, I'll pay additional shipping fee myself.

Account Number: 334158190004 Account Name: IVAN BELAN Bank Name: AS Sampo Pank Bank Address: Narva mnt 11, 15015 Tallinn, Estonia S.W.I.F.T: FORE EE 2X

I pay all the fees, so send them only amount you owe me. Please, wait untill money come. You'll get your item in a 3-4 days after the payment. Item is brand new and factory sealed. I ship either via UPS or Fedex, tracking number will be send after your request. Please give me your shipping adress. Let's not detain each other. Thank you.

Hi-

Thanks for the prompt response. I'll consider your offer. However, as we have never done business, I would prefer to use an escrow service to handle payment. As you have graciously offered to pay for shipping, I am willing to pay the escrow fees.

If this is acceptable to you, let me know, and I will arrange for payment via escrow.

regards,

No response, of course. Classic scam.

essentially the same here! at least we are smart enough not to pay!

I've bought and sold about 50 items on eBay over the past few years. Only once did I have a problem. I bought a Starbucks Barista grinder, and the seller didn't ship after two weeks and wouldn't answer emails. I got both his PayPal and eBay accounts suspended, and started the process to get my money back (less $25) from eBay. Seller did finally ship, but it took almost a month. Seller had good feedback (around 40 or so), so who was to know. That's really been the only problem.

When I buy from someone new, in addition to checking feedback, I also look at what else they have for sale and what they have bought or sold in the past couple of months, just to see if there is anything that looks suspicious. You really need to be cautious-- there are people who will take advantage of the trust element of eBay and try to scam others.

A more recent twist on the scam (scammers are endlessly clever - if these people would devote their energy to slightly more legitimate businesses they might actually do very well) is that the scammer directs you to a fake escrow service controlled by him. People have been defrauded of tens of thousands of $ on a single purchase (automobile) when they sent their money to one of these fake escrows.

The funny thing is that most of the fake escrows use the same web page template (a rather good and convincing one - I don't know whether they stole the content of a real site or hired a good web page designer. If you go to site #1, you'll see a photo of a serious loooking man, and beneath it a caption "Mr. George Grainger, our managing director". You then go to site #2, where the same exact photo appears, but this time he is Mr. James Wolfson. Funny if it weren't such a crime. As quickly as these sites get taken down, new ones spring up in their place.

If you do use an escrow, you should pick it and it should be one of the recognized services such as escrow.com. Of course the scammer will never agree to this..as you say, once you back them into a corner they just drop you and move on to easier victims, of which there are apparently plenty.

Billy,

You're welcome, and you made my day. I hoped it got there in time!

If you're still looking for a grinder, I ordered a Cunill Tranquilo (new) today for $175 from Cora

Jack

After canceling my paypal payment to sibosyl for the Innova grinder auction I won yesterday, I sent him an e-mail requesting his phone number and address before proceeding, as I was concerned about a possible fraudulent listing. I thought that I might not hear from him again (which would be fine with me), but I just got the e-mail below from him (with no phone # or address of course). He is asking me to pay to a different paypal address than my payment attempted to go to when I clicked "Pay Now" on e-bay. ( snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com instead of snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com). Any recommendations on how to proceed without loosing my $160 (and without getting slammed for not paying)? Thanks.

Hello callahanw,

Thank you for bidding. This is my first transaction on Ebay and I'll do my best in order to make it flawless.

The total by our deal is $160.50. PLease forward your payment to the following paypal account: snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

I assume I'll have your shipping details from your paypal payment, right?

Thank you and have a nice day Brandon

Once again, I am the purchaser of the most likely "imaginary" Innova grinder. Luckily, sibosyl didn't get my money.

At the recommendation of Paypal, I have submitted a request to e-bay with the user names listed in this thread to see if any of them can be connected to previously canceled accounts. Supposedly, they investigate those within 24 hours. In the meantime, I sent this response to the seller (I like how his name in the e-mail is "Brandon," his yahoo username to send the paypal money to is snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com, and the other e-mail account listed on paypal (which is accessible to me if I go partially through the payment process)is mi_trang snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com):

Brandon,

How about providing me that phone number and address that I requested? The quicker that you convince me that you are a legitimate seller, the quicker we can proceed with this deal. I expect you to work with me on this since you have a brand new e-bay account with no feedback and are selling expensive espresso equipment. If you really want to convince me, how about e-mailing me a digital photo of you with the grinder?

Billy

__________________________________________________ Lieutenant William E. Callahan, USN

University of Missouri Naval ROTC

888-MU-NROTC

-----Original Message----- From: sibosyl PP [mailto: snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 8:10 PM To: Callahan, William E. Subject: Hello

Hello callahanw,

Thank you for bidding. This is my first transaction on Ebay and I'll do my best in order to make it flawless.

The total by our deal is $160.50. PLease forward your payment to the following paypal account: snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

I assume I'll have your shipping details from your paypal payment, right?

Thank you and have a nice day Brandon

Contact paypal immediately and notify them that snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com is being used for fraud. I assume they caught up to snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com and he is scrambling to stay ahead of them. Copy the emails and some of the information from this thread to lay out the full picture.

Also contact ebay with the same information. Don't worry about negative feedback. Scammers don't leave feedback. If you are really concerned, and you shouldn't be, his refusal to give you a name and address is sufficient grounds for canceling your bid. That and the fact that he's some kind of scum sucking lower than dirt Romanian scammer.

Do not send money. Repeat do not send money. This man ain't sending you a grinder, no way , no how, never, so don't bother losing your money. Even if you get it back someday (probably you couldn't once you send it to an address different than that specified in the auction) it will be a lot of time and effort to recover. Buy a grinder from a reputable merchant, not a bucketful of aggravation from a scammer.

This is the amazing thing about scams. Even though you (the collective you, not Billy specifically) know on some level that the seller is a complete fraud, somehow in a corner of your mind you still hold out hope that your purchase will show up. Scammers often extend the time they have to get away by then dragging the process out for weeks.. they lost your address, the package is being sent, the package is lost, etc. all the while preying on your wish to believe that you have not been cheated, even though at some point you know you have but won't admit it to yourself.

Tell him you don't feel comfortable with the transaction and you want to use an escrow service and you will pay the escrow fee. If he is legit, he will agree and you'll be protected (but, it will cost you some $$). If he won't agree, your suspicions are likely correct. Or, wait a few days to see what comes back from eBay on their investigation.

Also, do you know how to read email headers? You might find some info in them that can help you in determining if the seller is legit.

BTW, it is not good practice to post personally identifying information to Usenet. It can be abused by others.

Yes and we have Paypal to thank in part as they have made it infinitely easier to perpetuate scams like that. At least with a real credit card vendor you have some recourse.

Hmm interesting email addy. Full of hot and stinky air wouldn't you say?

I am not sure if you are still interested in getting an Innova but I bought mine 6 months ago from Caffesolo. They send it to me within a few days and have been working fine ever since (outstanding grind control). They have even been nice enough to send a hopper replacement free of charge.

Your response does not compute - the email from the scammer specifically asked that the scammee use Western Union money transfer, not Paypal . Even if Paypal didn't exist, the scam could go on.

Nor is this WU's fault either. The WU money transfer system is specifically for sending cash to known recipients such as family members. It is not meant to be a system for merchandise payments. They don't require that you have ID, just to know the pickup #. This is because the reason many WU money transfer happen in the 1st place is because the recipient has lost his wallet while traveling and has no ID or cash.

If you mail the scammer a check, is it your bank's fault?

Trust me, if there was no WU and no Paypal, the scammers would figure some other way to have the gullible pay them. They are endlessly inventive and can think up endless lies and schemes.

The real problem lies with credulous purchasers who have forgetten the maxim "buyer beware". We live in a society with (what we hope) is an effective system of law enforcement, so merchants usually do not feel free to cheat and lie with impugnity. If they do, eventually the legal system may catch up with them. This has conditioned us to have a certain level of trust. When we mail the check off to L.L. Bean, we expect that they will mail us back some hunting boots and this is a reasonable expectation. However, "rumenah2000" or "sibosyl" is not L.L. Bean and it is ultimately the buyer's responsibility to figure that out. Not Paypal's, not ebays, not visa's, not WU's. You've got to make your own judgment and in this case, if your eyes and ears are open, there are red lights flashing and alarms sounding like crazy.

OTOH, these scammers live in semi-lawless "Wild West" type societies such as Romania, Nigeria, Albania, etc. In addition, there is often desperate poverty and no alternative legal employment that would net you as much as scamming. Add to that the availability of internet connections that give you a pipeline to Americans with bulging wallets and slim common sense and you have an irresistable combination.

Don't worry about negative

Scammers don't leave feedback?

Richard " the Paypal and Ebay fraud cases have already been filed" F

Just as you say, the person you dealt with was not a real scammer, just a good ebayer gone bad. Although I note that all his positive feedback was on the buy side. The 2 times he tried to sell something, both went wrong. Note that when you lookup feedback, ebay now makes it easy to distinguish buyer vs. seller feedback. Obviously when you are buying, feedback from fellow buyers is more important, though I admit that I might have bought from someone with 100 positive feedbacks from sellers even if they had no feedback from buyers.

The people running this espresso machine scam, I doubt they speak enough English to leave a feedback (not that they would anyway). You'll note that many of their emails are canned and not even responsive to what is being asked. In part, that's because they're probably being innundated with emails from all the "fish" and can't take the time to craft individual lies. Better to cast a broad net and see what you haul in than to tease them in hook by hook.