Once upon a time, there was an e-bay ad that indicated there was a boat motor rebuiling service who would rebuild your motor, or sell you theirs.  Great, we could rebuild our existing motors and not have to spend as much as buying new motors or going to the local boat shops (Only automotive transmission shops are as outrageous as boat shops).   Well, after letting the seller know what I had, and wanted, they replied with an e-mail that said they had two motors from a previous purchase.  Too little detail led to a series of e-mails.  Repeatedly I asked for a phone number so that we could communicate the finer details and expidite the purchase.  No phone number was ever provided.  After a couple of e-mails, I was satisfied that what they were offering was what I wanted and the price was certainly good.  The story was that the father had purchased the motors and had come down sick with heart trouble and the motors were no longer of use.  This is when the questions started.  Remember the statment of an earlier purchase?  well, we could dismiss this as just a simplification of the purchase.  And the idea that the seller wanted to use an excrow service apealed to me as well because this is a way of transfering goods and money (remember your house purchase)  through and independent broker (escrow) to ensure both parties are properly compensated in the transaction.  There are many online escrow services available.

This is where the suspisions went over the top.  We would probably be victims except that someone's server was down at a critical time.  The escrow service they ((I say they as I think this is a professional operation with multiple people operating the scams)  requested was not identified online.  when I searched, it did not exist.  I actually think I was supposed to log onto their server and as requested provide information for ID that would have created even more of a problem.  One of the e-mails requested that I register with the escrow service, yea, the one that could not be found on a search.  Can you imagine what kind of information would have been requested to register with the escrow service?  Just think of the ID infomation you provided to work with e-bay.  Social security information, credit card information, wow, what an oportunity for the purveyors of this scam.

Okay, I let the guy (or them, because I still did not know that this was truly a scam, althouigh my suspisions were at level yellow alert) know that the escrow service he suggested is not legit, and I would rather use an escrow of my choosing or perhaps even Pay Pal, (even though after additional review it seems to favor the seller more than the buyer).  Yea I know, a lot of parenthetical comments but what can I say, it comes from being an engineer.  The next e-mail said that he trusted me and hoped that we would be able to come to a successful completion of this transaction.  He would ship the motors, and trust me for payment.  Great, now the risk is only that I would pay him.  This was deffinately not a problem given that we had agreed to a 15 day check out period.  My confidence was renewed.

Now for the Sting (You remember the movie don't you?).  With confidence renewed they sent an e-mail that appeared to be from a shipping company.  The shipping company was instructing me to send a partial payment to an agent of the company who would hold the funds until I sent in writing a response that the goods had been recieved and were in the advertised condition.  Good news!  An independent agent who would hold the funds.  A couple of things here raised the caution condition to orange if not red.  I had looked up shipping companies the day before in an attempt to locate a suggested shipping company and to evaluate the cost (at this point, there had been no discussion of shipping cost, a flag, that was indicitive of a lie).  One of the things I remembered seeing was the by-line of one of the shipping companies.  This happened to be the exact same by line I saw in the banner for the shipping company that wanted a partial payment.  However, with alert level red, I looked up the company who sent me the e-mail, and it was not found.  Funny, I remember the by-line.  Doing a general search of shipping companies, I found the real shipper with the by-line.  What a gas!  The e-mail contained a link to a fraudulent shipping company that had lifted the entire web site of a real international shipper. Here was a link to a web site that for all purposes looked like the real thing.  Of course it did, it was lifted from the real thing.  Even the animated ducks that flew in and landed on the water to fly off again were present.  The name was changed (slightly) to protect the innocent....perhaps more appropriately to decieve the innocent.  Comparing the two web sites also showed the lack of phone numbers on the fraudulent site, a couple of glitches in the layout, and the addition of a tracking link that allowed us to verify the status of our goods.  This was on the fraudulent site only.  Had we followed the instructions to send a Western Union money transfer to the agent, we would have been out a significant amount of money.  Perhaps even more as the sting continued.  Maybe requesting the remainder after the goods had been sent.Who knows...  With 30 days before my goods were to arive, they could scam and sting plenty of innocents before closing shop and doing it again....

Okay, the exposure.  They did not stay within e-bay, only the first response was within e-bay, after that they operated strictly in e-mail.
The e=mail did not contain a name or handle just --.  The original location of the service was presented as FL.  The location of the shipper and the exporter when the shipping company showed up was Chicago.  The non existent escrow service (This is what saved us) had this been operating correctly, we would have been in deep trouble.  A few thousand would have been nothing compared to the identity theft that would have occured.  The name on the e-bay account did not match the "exporter" identified by the shipping company.  Serendipity prevailed for us on the recollection of the shippers by-line.  This was the final blow to escape the sting.  In the faked shipper web site, all the phone numbers were removed.  Just for fun I pulled up the shipping quote page and without filling it in hit the submit button.  The unexpected respone... Thank you for the payment.  If there had been any doubt as to the legitimacy of the web site, that error certainly put the final nail in the coffin.  Also, the ebay practice of waning all of us to not send payment by wire had a great influence.  We made calls, calls to ebay, and calls to shippers.  Checked the  ID of the registered  ebay seller.  One month old with no sales.  You would think a professional outfit would at least dummy up some sales and show a bunch of positive feedback in a month.  They were probably too busy with the scam.  I predict they will get better and cover some of their mistakes. 

Looking back, the lack of any discussion of shipping cost was also a flag.  Afterall, they had no intention of shipping anything, it was not on their minds.  There was no attempt on their part to respond to existing e-mail.  every communication on their part was a new message.  Why bother?  The lack of a proper name in the e-mail message.  One last thought.  They think this is fun,.the e-bay account was difficult to decipher.  It made more sense later, the name of the originating operator I think, followed by lessdeparte.  Perhaps their name and let's depart is what it's all about.  They (a single operator did not set up the operation and have at least two methods of pulling the sting.) are out to get not only our money, but our information as well.  Only time will tell if the download of a pdf file for the shipper did not come with other more viral software that provides them the information from our electronic processing.  Who are these guys anyway?  Are they just petty criminals?  Organized crime?  Terrorist funding operations?  The local cops really did not care.  We will see what the e-bay security folks do.  BTW, without a loss, no claim witth the FBI.

Be careful out there.