Scams

Scams

by Mike Masnick




Man Arrested In Huge eBay Fraud

from the scammed...-with-the-help-of-eBay dept

There are so many stories about fraud on eBay these days, that it's often not worth reading the details. However, the latest one has some interesting twists. First, it looks like it was one of the biggest fraud's done on eBay, scamming buyers out of over a million dollars in just a few weeks. The scam followed the path of the most basic eBay scam: build up good rankings for a few months selling all sorts of stuff completely legitimately, and then flood eBay with high priced items that you don't have. In this case, the company "Liquidation Universe" built up 750 positive reviews before selling a ton of laptops that didn't actually exist. However, the real twist in this case is that Liquidation Universe had been "certified" by a new eBay program called "SquareTrade" run by a third party company. SquareTrade "verifies" the seller's identity and gives them a special "SquareTrade" logo they can place on their auctions. The logo specifically reads: "$1,000 Protection" and indicates that they have done something to make sure you haven't gotten scammed. The problem is that the $1,000 "protection" is not per purchase, but per seller. So, in this case, where Liquidation Universe scammed over a million dollars, all those victims only have $1,000 total to split up. Of course, that's not clear at all from the SquareTrade logo, so it sounds like this "verified seller" program might not last very long.

4 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
 

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  1. Jun 13th, 2003 @ 3:34am

    The real winners of the scam

    by RR

    Man the real winners of that scam have to be Ebay and this company SquareTrade. Although your right that SquareTrade will most likely not last very long - or they might just change their logo/name. And of course ebay still collects their share of the lost funds - and really felling bad about it right.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  2. Jun 14th, 2003 @ 4:28am

    Re: The real winners of the scam

    by monkey

    $1000 PER SELLER!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA.... my gawd that's funny!!!

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  3. Jun 15th, 2003 @ 11:41am

    Re: The real winners of the scam

    by tom murdock iii

    the reel winners huh is that the joke of year better the almost 60 million spent on the Clinton and Monica.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  4. Jun 18th, 2003 @ 5:20am

    support group

    homepage for victims of the "Liquidation Universe" scam is http://www.liquidationscam.org

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

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