ebay Crime and Punishment

Summary

If you’re too lazy to read the whole text, eBay + PayPal has a very good staff of moderators / reviewers who reliably protect you as a buyer from the seller-fraudster. This is expressed not only in blocking the deceiver and his lots, but also in preventing his further life in the auction.

Some details of the protection system and the history of one failed fraud - under the cut.

Divorce

On eBay, a huge number of people from almost all countries buy and sell goods. Naturally, this is a very favorable environment for breeding all sorts of dark personalities: scammers, thieves, throwing and the like.
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Small retreat

Everything described below does not concern me in any way. Please do not identify me with a friend who tried to throw buyers on eBay.

One day, a certain experienced eBay buyer (with a rather large rating and three years of “life” at the auction) decided to quickly cut down a couple of thousand green dollars. His technique was quite simple.

He creates a lot at auction with the title "iPhone 4S APPLE BRAND NEW SALE 100% - link inside". Type of sale - “auction only” with a starting price of $ 1 and a week of life. Delivery is free to any point of our ball.
In the body of the lot, everything indicates that a new phone is being sold, in a film and with all the documents.
Except for one thing - closer to the end of the description with an honest red font (without italics and bold, of course) it is stated: “This is an online store. No phone, only link! ”.

Then the lot goes to free swimming in the auction. No additional funds for the promotion of the lot does not apply.

Buyers

Oddly enough, in 3 days more than 20 people decided to “buy into” a fairly frank divorce. Rates increased and the price of the lot was close to $ 500. In parallel with the first, the fraudster creates 5 more lots (greed, she is, yes ..) on several iPhones and iPads. Descriptions, of course, relevant. It remains to wait a week and withdraw the honestly commited money from the account.

Punishment

However, on the fifth day of the fraudster, an unpleasant surprise awaits - he discovers several letters in his mailbox. The content is approximately as follows:

1. Your listing has been stoped
2. Your account has been blocked
3. A few more notifications that the account is suspected of fraud, that it is blocked and all listings are canceled and deleted.

Obviously, some kind of responsible user "snitched" the security service and she removed the controversial listings and the creator of these to boot.

In principle, everything happened very logical and this story did not bring anything unusual. But the most interesting is in the last section.

Effects

In the rules of eBay there is such a point - if you are "banned", then forever. It is not allowed to register again. But the SAT of the auction turns a blind eye to it, and even being banned, the user can register again and continue shopping. But not sales.
In the event that a request for a sale is received again from an account registered by a blocked user, it will be blocked instantly, without waiting for consideration by the moderator. Even if you are trying to honestly sell a set of clips for $ 0.1.
Moreover, if the user changes the PC, name, address, plastic card and PayPal account, it will also be blocked. This time, however, in a day or two. And again when trying to sell something.
How their recognition system works is unknown. Support PayPal says, jokingly, that this is “Our Corporate Magic”. But everyone who has “sinned” is banned. Once and for all.

findings

Although eBay seems to be such a nutritious soup for breeding all sorts of parasitic bacteria, but in fact it’s unlikely to use the gullibility of naive Americans / Europeans. Security auction is unlikely to give you cash in on someone else's inattention.

Questions

Maybe you have a similar case? Have you heard from anyone about the successful cheats on eBay? Tell that!