Ebay Fraud

[KAYEVO8]

Hello Everyone,
I thought I would pass along my experience on Ebay. This was my first experience selling something and of course I have to get targeted. I put my item up for auction and it is worth over $10K. I listed it at $4000. I got an email about 6 hours later from someone claiming that they would purchase my item for $9500 USD and he was from Paris France. He also mentioned that he would want me to shut down my auction if we agreed.

So, I told him that if we can agree on payment terms, etc, then I would agree to shut down the auction. My first red flag was...why is he trying to do this outside of Ebay? I had no intention of selling my item to him outside of Ebay but I did receive another email back saying that he wanted to move forward.

Here comes the sketchy part. He tells me that he got taken for $9000 a month ago and wanted to use an escrow service for the transaction. Ok, sounds somewhat legit. He gave the website and signed his name Alberto Mancini.

So after a bit of research, this is what we found...

the Escrow company (www.wisbech-group.com) is not listed on any search engine but the website does exist.
The user on Ebay shows his location as California.
The Escrow company is in CA.
The contact for this escrow company was someone in Virginia.
The email as I mentioned was signed by Alberto Mancini but the name is account belongs to a guy named Joshua Freedman.
The best part is...the address of this so called Escrow company is K-Mart and it was created on September 6th, 2006.
Who is Alberto Mancini...A famous tennis player in France.

So, to sum it all up, this is the latest and greatest type of fraud going on right now so I figured I would pass it along. An email was sent to this person pretty much telling him he is a fake without saying it and I have not heard back since. Go figure The good 'ol saying applies...it was too good to be true!

So any Ebay users, beware...especially of pugums4!

Take care,
Keely

PS-I just went back to the website and whattya know, no longer there!

[Celica402GTS]

dang..that sux..that's y u don't end the auction and take care of it off ebay..there's been a lot of that kind of fraud..when they said "escrow" u immediately said this is a fraud..

thanks for the heads up

[hombredelassrta]

yes the escro fraud is very often used since the creation of ebay :( it normally deals with high cost items such as auto's and many people do fall for it. Unfortunatly the only safe way to deal without of country buyers is money order/cashiers checks. Occassionally on smaller $ items i do paypal but i try not to much jsut becasue there are few countries that will do confirmed address on paypal

[Automaton]

Nothing wrong with using escrow services. Just make sure that YOU choose the escrow service so you know it's legit.

[KAYEVO8]

I was reading on ebay about the auto fraud and they have their own escrow service which I offered but of course, no reply. :)

[Dudz]

Be careful with money order too. So many fake one out there. My GF got a fake money order when she tried to sell her car. She didn't realize it was fake until her bank asked her to come in. She had sit at the back of the cruiser and brought to police station just because somebody try to scam her.

[emotart]

To many problems with:
Paypal
Fake money orders
Escrow

I ONLY use Money Grams Or Gash in Person on ebay nothing else.

[TRD_Celica00]

dang i hate those scams, and Nigerian scam of course

[BHam00GT-S]

sounds like the same sh*t countless people tried to use on my company when i was selling workstations and sh*t. I told them plainly to f*ck off and never heard back from them

[reguile]

I ordered a new clustergauge from caribeandesigns.com and its been over 2 months. I sent them an email on 1st and 2nd week of no reply. it took them 2 more weeks to send me a message saying "We are sorry, but we just made an upgraded version of the cluster gauge, so you will be getting it for cheaper than what you paid for, we are almost done making your gauge", and I got 2 of those messages, saying the same exact thing. They already took 80$ from my debit card for the custom gauge but they havent shipped it yet or anything.
Just so you all know, I wouldnt do business with customcaribeandesigns.com .. Its been about a month and still I dont have any response from an actual person

[robare99]

Yeah a classic case. Always want you to use THEIR Escrow service. The other good one is that they will send u a money order for more than the amount and you refund the difference. Old as the hair on granny's chest?

[SLVR Stealth]

Another eBay scam. eBay is 50/50 in my book. You never know what's up on the net these days especially with eBay. Ghost in the jar. Sock full of coins. All types of B.S.

[Jintei]

I got scammed recently from a member in half.com, the person's screen name is 'funky_andy66'. It's been 2 weeks and I haven't got any replies nor book, as well as 7 other members. Ebay is full of scammers.

[vegeta4ss]

Back a few months ago when I still lived near my old college, I worked with a couple guys that were into modding 240's and also music industry majors. They lived together and went in on a 1800+ dollar 32 channel mixer board and crown amp racks. The seller was from England, and wanted to do this escrow deal.

My boys lost all their loot on the deal, and are considering flying out to track him down.

I hadn't heard of many other stories like this until I read your thread. Makes me never wanna use ebay again.

[Phatsprinter]

Hate scammers!

[NeXuS-GT]

That's why i like to pay trough paypal. something wrong? you got the cash back! I once ordered the 5 seasons of CSI on ebay and I got homemade japanese dvd in a japanese box of the 3rd seasons ( I have to agree that the print on the DVD was perfect)... They were ok, but was not the real thing!!! I burned all the DVDs(40), shipped back to sellers (cost me about $10) and got my ~$275 back.