New (to me) Scam!

[GlockSpock]

For some reason I find delight in learning about scams. Well, I am rather quite aware of how most of them work. However, today there was a new one that I had never seen before but in reality it is genius.

I was selling a MacBook Pro on Ebay via an auction. One thing I noticed throughout the entire 10 days it was up was that 2-3 different "high bidders" were brand new with zero feedback and located internationally. One or two of them were in the "Russian Federation" and one of them was in the Dominican Republic. Well, I decided not to worry about it unless one of those people won the item. Today, the auction ended and I noticed the buyer was located in the United States! I was very happy about this and didn't think anything else of it.

About 5-10 minutes after the auction, I received a message via Ebay from the buyer. Here it is in it's entirity:

hey thank you so much for the auction. please make sure that it will be packed carefully cause I don't want it to get damaged while transit. thank you again and good luck! Here is the address! Name: Giorgi NarsiaAddress : 8 McCullough Dr. U170248City: New CastleState: DEZIP: 19726Country: USA

My first thought was "oh crap", this is going to be a problem transaction. I responded, politely, telling him that I would of course package it appropriately, told him he needed to pay for the item before he shipped it, and that I would only ship to the address listed on the PayPal account for the transaction (for those that do not know, if you do not ship to the address in PayPal it is unlikely PayPal or Ebay would do anything to help you as the seller. Always, always, always ship to the PayPal address).

I thought about it a bit after sending, and thought that I'd just check the listing to see what address the buyer had, hoping that the buyer would have that above address as their PayPal address. If that were the case, then it wouldn't be a big deal, right? Well, this is when I briefly got very confused. I noticed that the member that sent me the above message was listed as "Russian Federation". This couldn't be, I had already celebrated that an American had won the auction! I clicked onto that member closer and saw that he had zero feedback! I was confused. Did the original buyer cancel the auction because they changed their mind, and Ebay defaulted to the second highest bidder (possible).

No, giii-0 (the member who sent me that message) had nothing to do with my auction, period. The person who actually won the auction is in California:)

What giii-0 did was "watch" my auction, just like anyone can. Then, as soon as it was over, he sent me the above message. I suspect he sends a message similar to that to dozens or more members a day as soon as their auction is over. If he sends it to 100 people and one person sends their product to the listed address, I'd say he did ok.

I called and reported it to Ebay. Lets just say, he isn't a member anymore.

https://www.ebay.com/usr/giii-0?ul_noapp=true

The problem is that they will just create another "new" account, just as you can see he was a member for less than a month. 

Out of curiosity I googled that above address, it seems it is some sort of service that forwards packages out of the country, etc. In case anyone didn't read everything, here's what would have happened had I "blindly' followed that message. I would have shipped the MacBook Pro to that address, they would have forwarded it (likely to Russia). The original buyer would have claimed "Item not received" because I never actually sent it to the correct buyer. Ebay would have instantly taken the money from me and given it to the actual buyer. Russian scammer #95829 would have had a 100% free MacBook Pro, minus whatever small fee they have to pay to have things forwarded.

I enjoyed learning about this time of scam, but sad that people likely fall for it.

 

[KahrMan]

Interesting. That is a new one on me. 

[Ronald_55]

I know I have seen the forwarding center trick before. Had a guy buy a for-parts cell from me and then file a claim it did not work. Turns out it was already overseas, so I got lucky. eBay would not refund him unless he returned it. I looked at his address and it was that kind of place. Basically private p.o. boxes that auto forward. 

I don't have to worry lately. Nothing I put up is selling... eBay is just too crowded and has too many pro sellers. 

[GlockSpock]

I have had great luck with the "International Shipping Program" that eBay offers. You ship the item to eBay themselves (the location is in Kentucky, so it's even close!), the fill out customs forms, etc and ship it overseas to the buyer. You only pay for the shipping to get it to Kentucky, the buyer pays eBay directly for the international shipping. If you do it this way, I think eBay removes the option for the buyer to claim "item not received" because eBay sends and tracks it.

Again, most sellers would never fall for the above scam. But if someone was a new seller, I could see them panicking and sending to the address in the message because they really, really wanted to make the buyer happy.

That doesn't mean all of these mail forwarding services are scams or only scams. Could legitimately be used, or could of course be used for scams. When I called eBay, she seemed very pleased that I reported this guy. She took a few moments off the line to type up some report or something, and then came back and thanked me. His account showed banned just a few hours later.

9 hours ago, KahrMan said:

Interesting. That is a new one on me. 

Yeah, it sort of took me by surprise as well. They were smart about it, in the sense that he selected the item in the message so the message titled was literally "x member sent you a message about item y". Then, in the message, eBay referred to him as "the buyer", because apparently when a buyer contacts a seller they always refer to them as "the buyer". That wording alone could throw you for a huge loop.

Ultimately, as long as someone always goes through the same motions of going to the selling tab, selecting the "Ship this Item" button, and not changing the address in PayPal, they'll always avoid this scam. However, it does serve as a warning to verify usernames when replying to messages. I had responded to the fake buyer before I realized he wasn't even the buyer.

Edited August 15, 2018 by CZ9MM