Do you routinely shop for cars, jewelry, cameras, electronics or related equipment on eBay?  If so, you need to study up on the latest scams and frauds out there.  Avoid being a victim and loosing your money by know how they do what they do and avoiding it.  As fast as we figure out what is going on in one scam area, they invent new ploys to steal our money.  Join the team and work against them for the betterment of the eBay community!

HOW TO DETECT SUSPECT AUCTIONS:

1.  Does any part of the deal involve off line communication (regular email outside of eBay, telephone or fax?)  Frequently thieves will hijack accounts of legitimate sellers (using their well established excellent eBay reputation) to rip folks off.  Once the scammer has hijacked established eBay user Ids, they will upload a few or many fake auctions of expensive items at rock bottom (really unrealistic) prices.  They know we all dream of the ultimate bargain and they use it against us very successfully.  These "bargains" are designed to lure unsuspecting eBayers into a bad deal.  They will try to negotiate BUY IT NOW sales outside of eBay, paying via Western Union, Money order or cashiers check for this "great deal." Scammers will work hard to get you to communicate with them off eBay to avoid tipping off the real account owner of the scams being perpetuated in their name as long as possible.

2.  Does any phase of the deal involve Western Union money transfers?  BEWARE -- in order to steal your money outright and disappear, they need for you to send money to them outside of eBay and PayPal to avoid detection, location and recovery.  A favorite money route is via Western Union Money Transfer, cashiers check or Money Order.  So they will ask you to pay by Western Union (or other direct CASH method of payment), after which they will take your money and disappear into the night.

3.  The following are BIG TIME signs you are probably going to get taken by one of these scams:

-  Seller is asking an unbelievably low price for a much coveted item.  If it seems too good to be true -- IT IS.

-  Auction offers the above "too good to be true" high priced item in a really cheap "Buy It Now" format.  Often, the "Buy It Now" button is on a page or in an area in the auction listing where it does not normally appear in eBay.  This is a CLEAR sign you have a problem because eBay's formats are set formats.  Anything that deviates from that set format will likely take you to a spoof or scam site that looks like the real one, to take your credit or account details and run off with your money.  Such sites often will record your login keystrokes and hijack your account.

-  Item(s) are listed in the wrong category.  This works for the scammers on many levels.  They can work only a few marks at a time on each item.  This is necessary for their "social engineering" attempts to make victims feel like the sale is actually legitimate and they are getting a bargain because they found it in the wrong place.  It also helps that security experts looking through eBay in specific categories that are routinely used by scam artists are not going to easily locate scam auctions before the thieves have run off with your money.
-  Bidder's User IDs are kept private : There are some eBay members who would easily recognize scams as they run through listings.  When they do see them, they make every attempt to warn potential victims not to bid further or complete the deal before it is too late.  The thieves caught on to this early and realized that by keeping bidder id's private, they could avoid having the "marks" warned off.  Additionally, by keeping the User IDs private it is easier to "Shill Bid."  That is, to bid their own auctions up, artificially inflating the price they get from real bidders.  For more information on Shill Bidding and how to catch it -- please see my Guide on that subject.  

-  Scam auctions are usually conducted in the 1, 2 or 3 day auction (rather than 7 or 10):  Real sellers attempt to maximize the exposure to bidders, especially on expensive items.  So those auctions are usually up for 7 or 10 days because the more exposure the auctions gets, the more buyers will find it (and presumably bid on it) -- netting the best possible price.  A scammer who has hijacked a legitimate eBayer's account needs to conduct the scam(s) quickly before the original account owner or eBay Security Team can discover hijacked account.  That is why the shorter duration auctions are usually what scammers choose.

-  The Seller Location and Item Location are different:  Not sure why this happens but I suspect it is to legitimize the involvement of off site communications.  If you do wind up communicating with a scammer you will find most have strong foreign accents and poor English skills (oral and written).

-  Auction offers Free Shipping or Shipping Charges that are ridiculous for the item being purchased:  No real seller (or competent business person) could afford to sell an expensive item for 1/3 of what its retail value on the open market and then throw in free or very inexpensive shipping.

-  Payment Currency does not correspond to location of the Seller.   If the payment is to be in Euros while the seller is listed as being in the U.S there is a problem.  The reason is clear here -- they want the money they are about to steal from you in a currency they can spend where they are.  They expect you to make the theft really easy for them and some of us do.

-  Selling High Priced items of this type are not typical of this seller.  Or, if the seller is not familiar to you, all the expensive listings took place at about the same time.  If you check feedback and look at some of the items typically sold by this seller, you will see that this seller doesn't typically sell this sort of item.  If the seller suddenly lists a few (or many) high priced items in their  Auctions or Store, it should be highly suspect.  Another way to see if this might be the case is to check their past feedback and look at a cross section of items sold.  If they have never sold similar items before, email them through eBay to ask a question or let them know what you think is happening.   If the sale is legitimate they will email back through eBay to let you know.

-  Seller advertises personal email address directly in the auction text, and/or even offers their own "contact this seller" button in the content of the ad.  The goal is to get you to their own website and away from eBay.  It would not be good for you to ask a question about a Jet Ski to the real seller who sells clothing shoes and accessories.  If you use the self generated "Contact This Seller" button you may encounter a fake eBay or PayPal login screen.  Please DO NOT LOG INTO IT!  -- When you enter your information, the input is recorded to be used to hijack YOUR account(s) next.  Please note that a scammer doesn't generally change the victim's EBay or PayPal account settings as the scam runs its course.  To do so would trigger an automatic notification from either PayPal or eBay notifying the true account owner of the changes they did not personally make.  This alerts the account owner that there is a problem.  

-  Look to see what else this "seller" has for sale or has sold in the past.  Use the advanced search function to look up a suspect seller using the email address the seller provides in the ad.   Put the advertised email address in the eBay advanced search.  Be sure to check the box that says "Search Item and Descriptions."  The search result will often show other hijacked accounts currently used by this scammer or cell of scammers:   Report what you find to eBay's safe Harbor. 

-  Poor English (written or spoken):  Most of the high volume scammers are located outside the US in Eastern Europe and West Africa.  In fact, in Nigeria it is a large part of the economy of the nation itself!  If the ad is written in poor English (and yet the item location or seller location are in the US) this is a problem auction.

-  Seller wants to recommend the escrow you can use for the deal.  By no means should you allow the seller to recommend an escrow company -- this is often part of the scam in which the escrow company is a sham that is easily put together with disposable cell phones and web sites that disappear after the con.

If You think a sale might be a scame take these simple steps: 

-  Do not Bid or buy

-  REPORT WHAT YOU FIND TO EBAY.  User reported frauds or suspected auctions assist the eBay fraud detection teams in keeping the web based warnings up to date and stopping this horrible behavior within the community.  To report a suspect auction simply go to the bottom of the main auction page of each and Click the "Report This Auction" Link

• Step 1"  Choose "Fraudulent Listings"
• Step 2:  Choose "You suspect the listing is fraudulent and you did not bid"
• Step 3:  Click "Continue"
• On the next screen click "EMAIL US"
• On the next screen enter comments that indicate why you believe this auction is fraudulent.  You need only list a few words on the indicator(s) you find suspect (many shown in this blog).  An example would be "email given in context of ad, when searched results in 17 auctions on 12 different eBayer's auctions and stores.
• Sit back and feel great about taking a stand against this insidious blight on eBay!