eBay Sellers Beware!
Tuesday 06 Jun 2006As I had mentioned in my last post, I have a few items up for grabs on eBay. Sellers beware of an eBay member named ope_ope04, emails originating from an “ope moroof,” or coming from “ope4@kittymail.com,”
a Woody Perkins at 70 Seymour Gerdens, London ES4 2DN, UK, or all buyers in general that wish to conduct business outside of your auction. This “potential buyer” contacted me through eBay’s message service to inquire about one of the items I had up for bid, wanting to know if he could buy it immediately and send me a cashier’s check to cover the item plus shipping. I was a little skeptical about the inquiry, the buyer was offering to pay a sizable sum more than the auction was going for and wanted the item picked up for shipment to the UK immediately through his own shipping company.
I informed the buyer that I could not ship anything until payment had cleared.
A few days later I received a cashier’s check for the amount of $3000 with instructions to cash the check immediately and wire the full amount, minus the $500 buying price for my item and any shipping charges directly to him through Western Union and provide all of Western Union’s transaction information.
Ha!
The cashier’s check looked like something left over from the 70’s. The printing was horrible. I could make a better counterfeit on my desktop printer. The ink had bleed onto the sheet of paper that it was packaged with, not all of the security features that were listed on the back of the cashier’s check acutally appeared on the document. The logo for institution that the check was supposed to be from looked hobbled together by a four year old at best.
I contacted the institution that the cashier’s check was supposedly from to verify its unauthenticity. It didn’t take long for the nice lady to confirm that the document was indeed false. For starters, the check had been printed (poorly) on the wrong color paper, the bank account number as well as the RTN number at the bottom of the document didn’t correspond with any existing financial institution, there was no cashier’s check number printed on the check anywhere, and it appeared that the entire document (including a signature) was printed all at the same time. There were no perf marks anywhere on the document to indicate that it had been torn from a ledger, however there were marks along one edge that would occur if the document were cut from a larger piece of paper with a dull blade.
I’m glad that my design and printing background has me trained to look for things like this. Luckily nothing was shipped and no money changed hands.
I immediately filed a complaint with the frauded financial institution, my local authorities, the FBI, and I’m currently working on alerting eBay of this frauder, as well as his local authorities. With this being an international transaction, the process is a little more difficult.
But I’m stubborn.
The scam is supposed to work like this…
The buyer asks to purchase your item outside your eBay auction, because he “needs it immediately” or “wants to make sure no one else purchases the item,” and can only purchase the item with a cashier’s check. Then the buyer sends you a bogus check for a gross amount more than they offered for the item with instructions to cash the check immediately at an ATM or gas station and then, immediately, wire them the money from the check minus the transaction total and any shipping. In my case, that would have been nearly $2500.
The buyer just made $2500, got a free item, and you’re stuck with a high-dollar bounced cashier’s check in a few days. The likelyhood that the con-man will ever get caught much less prosecuted is very minimal, making this type of fraud very attractive to those lowly types. The fact that the transaction takes place outside of eBay limits the types of actions you as a seller can take against the phony eBay buyer and also reduces your protection as a seller through their community.
Be smart. Think. Question any motives of urgency (I’ve received numerous emails from this con-man with subject lines like “GET BACK TO ME ASAP!!!!!” and requests to check my mail for the check “immediately and respond.” Investigate any mental “red flags” that pop up when doing business online. And if you do get caught in something like this (God forbid), take every action available to nail the person that’s trying to sucker you!
According to Clark Howard (www.clarkhoward.com) a lot of these type scams are originating from the UK, making it difficult to see any resolving actions taken against these predators. Be persistant!
Follow…
Only when man’s life comes to its end in prosperity can one call that man happy…
Just curious if you ever got any resolution for this?
Not yet.
I did follow up on it however. It seems that the Internet Fraud department of the FBI keeps a record of all complaints and only after an individual has had a certain number of compliants filed against them do the authorities take action. I was told that they just don’t have enough manpower to follow up on every complaint. I’m assuming that is similarly true for the frauder’s local authorities as well.
I’m not giving up though, I’ve got all my “evidence” printed out and stored in my filing cabinet for the day I get a call from the authorities!
It really gets under my skin, when I know how hard I work to make a living and there’s people like this guy out there trying to steal it from me.
Thanks for your interest. I’ll make sure to post any new news.
-c