Sorry Doc Com, I didnt meant to ***** to you. I just figured there might be someone here who could shed some light on the matter. It looks to me like there is a scam going on, and one thing I hate is Sc****g Mo*********s scamming people.
Lord, you did nothing to me.
I have uncovered and reported at least 4 major scams on ebay.
Screw reporting them to ebay. That is what local and federal agencies are for.
One was a multimillion dollar sporting good's scheme in the midwest where the buyer was also the supplier to a chain of stores and artificially raising prices.
One was a major antiques dealer here in the south who's partner was artificially bid schilling on reserve price auctions and who always ran the price up to just one penny below the reserve (that way the next bidder would win the item).
One was a domaining scheme from a person in The Bronx who sold some great domains, I always lost out to the same bidder, and just could not win one of these. That same bidder was a second account set up by the seller. I nailed him using the method I described above. Non of the WHOIS ever changed regardless of how many times they (the same person) left feedback on such a great sale.
My favorite was a 20 something year old punk named David (his real - can not remember all of his aliases used). He bought a rare book from me that was long out of print on airbrushing artists and techniques.
He never paid me but insisted he did and demanded the book. This was after several weeks. I told him I needed proof. He sent me a USPostal Receipt with all my info on it. I fell for it. When he claimed he wanted to buy a couple others I had, I asked him to give me his phone number. He said he would call me and "the dime was on him", an old expression.
He did call and we reached an agreement. He said he would be sending me another money order and to go ahead and ship the books in the meantime.
The more I thought about it, the more I do not recall ever getting and deposited a money order with his sloppy writing. So I decided to wait for the money order.
In the meantime, another seller/buyer contacted me and wanted to know if I had been paid. I told him no. He bought a vintage Fender for over $5,000 through a guitar site. And he got a call from someone else who also bought a guitar from him and they never received the guitars.
This caller was outside the Phoenix area.
Well, I had something no one else did...his phone number on my caller ID.
I gave it to this guy and the next thing I know a couple of days later I get a call from a crime unit in Nevada.
Here's the deal. This guy was a scammer of scammer's. He was selling on ebay and several other sites vintage collector guitars. He did not own a single one of them. He was going around to pawn shops and music shops around the Las Vegas areas and taking pictures of these guitars. He only got caught at this when it was revealed that he had sold the same bass to three different people from three sites. That one guitar netted him a cumulative total of over $20,000.00.
This investigator from Nevada said they had estimated him making about $100-$150K per month on these scams. He was smart, he knew his guitars, he knew the values, he knew the internet, and he worked with a girl and always changed PO Boxes at some other places other than Post offices.
They had a tape of him and the girl at a pawn shop. He was apparently a very good guitarist. He was playing the guitar (trying it out) and then said he would think about it and wanted to take pictures.
The money order thing - he was also scamming people (like me) by demanding merchandise paid for. He would produce the USPS receipt as proof of payment. What he was actually doing was getting USPS money orders for the amount sold, taking the real money order part, tearing that off, and making that out to his girlfriend and using the carbon receipt to fill in the seller's info.
I was the only person who had his number and was able to produce the receipt part.
Can you say wire fraud and mail fraud?
The guy in Phoenix drove to Nevada, filled out a warrant, I gave the authorities a statement, phone number, receipt, and that was that.
He was caught and he and his girlfriend may both be in a federal prison. He had bilked hundreds of thousands, perhaps a mil or more, out of people all across this country.
The last contact I had with anyone was the guy in phoenix who called to tell me they caught him. Thanks to my phone number they were able to trace his him to someplace outside of Las Vegas. The guy from Phoenix told me there were a bunch of people that had given statements and were going to testify.
Heck, that was easy.
He just got sloppy once and that is all it took.
