<VV> Vert on e-Bay

[Tony Underwood]

At 06:28 AM 4/3/2007, Jim Houston wrote:
>I just looked at the ad, and checked seller's other listings and 
>discovered that ALL of the seller's items (lots of "classic" cars) 
>have been removed by PayPal.(including the Corvair in question) . . .


Once again a "seller" (usually with a hijacked Ebay account) posts 
various photos of someone else's car with stipulations in the 
description, usually to e-mail him FIRST before bidding whereupon he 
offers the car to you, cheap, for money up front.   Smoking deal, 
with a deposit to "hold" the vehicle sent via bank draft or funds 
transfer etc. until you can show up to take possession.   That's the 
last you ever hear of the guy or the car or anything else... and by 
the time you contact the *real* owner of the Ebay account to 
complain, the hijacker is long gone with your money and about a dozen 
or so other people's money as well, leaving nothing but a closed 
account behind him.


Why do you suppose there are all those bogus "Please resubmit your 
logon information or your account may be suspended" etc ad nauseam 
Ebay e-mails floating in and out of everyone's IN box anymore...?

Next time you see a batch of cars advertised for sale like that, 
cheap... too cheap... look at the seller's other auction 
items.    Usually dinner ware, wicker furniture, baseball cards, 
knitted sock puppets, dinner dresses, fuzzy bedroom slippers, 
whatever... it's never cars or associated items.    It's usually 
stuff sold on EBay by little old ladies or hobbyists/collectors who 
are trusting people that never would think that anyone would wanna 
steal their EBay account.


>something strange there as well.  It looks like the guy just posts 
>ads with pictures for kicks.


Hardly.   He expects to collect bucks.   Especially telling is the 
old excuse that something is wrong with the posted seller's e-mail 
account (which still links to the original account owner's personal 
e-mail) so a prospective buyer is NOT to e-mail that address, instead 
he must e-mail the seller via a "throwaway" web mail address usually 
at Hotmail or Yahoo etc.  which can be acquired and set up 
anonymously with no way to trace who actually set it up.


>I wouldn't think that anybody could have that big a collection of 
>old cars and be selling for the prices he has listed...  quien sabe?


Oh, the cars exist...  they're not his, however, and they likely 
could be found the previous month on Ebay in someone else's 
auction.    It's the same old story about if it seems too good to be 
true...  ;)


A few months ago, somebody was selling a mint condition '70 Barracuda 
convertible with the 440 6-Pak engine option for 6500 bucks if you 
used the "buy it now" option.    A click on the seller's other items 
included, among about 9 different cars, a Cougar Eliminator and a 
Shelby Mustang GT-500, each also with a buy-it-now price of 6500 
bucks...  IF you contacted him via e-mail to arrange the sale and 
discuss "details".


Oh boy what a bargain.


I'm all the time getting bogus Ebay "questions" from "buyers" and 
"sellers" who want to know why I've not sent them their item... or 
they wanna buy something I have listed...  never sold anything on 
Ebay, always been exclusively a buyer...  and of course the fake Ebay 
letterhead has a link to click to "logon" to what you think is your 
Ebay account.

My e-mail handler picks up these bogus links and flashes an alert 
even if I DON'T spot the bogus link first.


I like to go "logon" to these links and include a user "name" and 
"password" that signifies my opinion of them...  about a dozen or so 
times.

Then I go to an Ebay link and e-mail the details to them.



tony..