Hello,
I have been an ebay member for 6 years now. I have seen it all. The strange thing is that I have been seeing it before the fraud-prevention department at ebay for 6 years now.
"Fraud Prevention" and ebay are not an obvious mix unless you are including the non-staff (bidders) ebay community. It is my belief that Fraud-Prevention is oxymoronic with regard to ebay. It is for good reason that I believe that ebay is complicit in the fraud on their site.
Good reasons:
1). As Joe Public, on any given day, at any given moment, I can find fraudulent listings on ebay in the motorcycle categories, the automobile categories, Jewelery categories, Event tickets categories, Bicycle categories, Real Estate categories, Antiques categories, etc. Etc. Etc. How can it be that I can see so much of it? Doesn't ebay have people that take care of this?
2). As Joe Public, I can acquire an ebay ID in 8 minutes and bid. I can affect or win almost any auction on ebay, and have had to do so on hundreds if not thousands of ocassions, with no intention of buying. I have had to do this in order to prevent innocent people from becoming victims of auctions for items that do not exist.
3). I started out as a seller with hundreds of positive feedbacks and was having a great time until I got taken by a fraudster. After making my case to ebay I was permenantly suspended, at least as a seller. Ebay sided with the fraudster. From that time on I have only had buying accounts, mostly to use as fraud-fighting accounts.
4). Ebay has now suspended at least 200 of my accounts that I use for foiling the fraudsters.
5). I have had several of the email adresses for ebay staff that are supposed to be stopping fraudulent auctions. I found that each time I contacted one of them about a scam, I would get suspended. Why would ebay not place at least a little value in the information I bring to them. Yes, I made a couple of mistakes in judgement very early on, but I am sure that my percentages for accuracy are greater that those of ebay's because they mistakenly suspend good ebayers all the time for suspicion of illegal activities.
6). Quite often ebay will suspend my account but NOT the accounts of some of the most obvious fraudsters that I am working against. Quite often, ebay will allow EXTREMELY obvious fraud auctions to run the full seven days, thus allowing the fraudster to make contact with every starry-eyed consumer that wants that "too good to be true" deal (like a $30,000.00 Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle for only $3000.00).
7). Often enough, ebay will allow a fraud auction to run the full seven days even though the fraudster has installed a malicious code on the auction page that will redirect the prospective buyer to a fake ebay "sign-in" page, thus enabeling the fraudster to acquire even more account name/password info so that they can run fraud auctions with reputable accounts.
8). Reporting fraud to ebay can be a complicated process to any new ebayer. The links are not as readily available as they should be, especially as prevelant and fraud is on ebay. Ebay DOES make you feel OK about it by promptly sending you an auto-response for your report but they do not actually act on reports for at least 24 hours.in a 24 hour period a fraudster could easily get hundres of hits to his auction, dozens of inquiries about his item, and who knows how many commitments to wire money to him... 1 is too many, especially at $3000.00 a pop! Does ebay offer a contact number for reporting fraud... Absolutely not!
From my experience with fraud on ebay (4 years worth) I would estimate that the fraudsters could be getting in excess of $10,000.00 a day, just on the U.S. Site, Just in the motorcycle categories, Just from the Suzuki listings.
I know how they (the fraudsters) operate. I can see the fraud auctions even before ebay, but even when they become very obvious ebay will not stop them in spite of all of the tools that ebay has at their disposal. Even if ebay searched listings that are "restricted to pre-approved bidders", they would find nearly half of the fraud auctions. Legitimate sellers that use pre-approval are only about. 005% of the legitimate auctions posted, but nearly 50% of the fraud auctions eventually become restricted in this fashion. The reason for this restriction is to stop people like me from ending the auctions early with the "buy-it-now" option, and/or to stop people like me from being the "high bidder" with an ebay name like " fraudulent_auctioneer " or " seller_isa_fraudster " right up front for all potential victims to see it.
Don't you think that if ebay had an interest in keeping their community safe that they would consider tracking the activities of such accounts instead of suspending them and allowing the fraudsters to go untouched?
If I were even slightly a conspiracy theorist I would have to consider the possibility that somebody at ebay was on the take, and I would have to think about all of the stolen credit cards that are used to enable fraud auctions to be posted, and knowing that credit card abuse/theft and other scams such as is being run by companies like ILD TELESERVICES INC. Pays much more than the courts will ever fine them, then it makes perfect sense that Meg might want a piece of that enormous, juicy pie herself, AND, ebay, being a publicly traded company cannot allow too much bad publicity about the site. Perhaps that is a reason to keep people like me out.
Face it! In todays judicial climate, crime can pay very well.
I know more than I can say in one email. Depending on how soon you read this you might find these ebay item numbers to be good examples before ebay sweeps them under the rug.
180017356412
4647963224
170021182581 This is a $20,000.00 Suzuki GSXR for $2,600.00
140021132914 A $30,000.00 Suzuki Hayabuse for $4000.00
140021134263 A $30,000.00 Suzuki Hayabuse for $3000.00
170021815069 another one
Joe
cincinnati, Ohio
U.S.A.
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