eBay Scam

So my guy bought a 72 Impala convertible off eBay. We all thought he got it for a great price... $4,200. Rebuilt, and very clean looking. Coming from Neveda. I thought it was a great deal, and said to get all the info about everything. Seemed like something was wrong with it in my book. He got more pics of the car, emailed the guy many many many times. I told him to get a phone number, which he never got.

He sent all the money in payments from Money Gram. Everything was pretty legit. Then the car got sent out, had a tracking number. Went through www.rshipping.com . I didn't do any research on anything as this was going on. Should have.

The car was supposedly here in IL and was going to make an appointment to drop it off. Never heard from them, or the guy. Yesterday he checked the Money Gram thing and it was shown as being cashed overseas. He freaked. I finally looked into that shipping website, and found out its on the Scammers lists and site NOT to do business with.

So he contacted eBay, and they don't know what the deal is. Says he has to file a police report and then contact eBay before they can do anything. So, when doing large item and stuff like that... make sure everythings legit, like the shipping companies and so your research.

ouch man ouch.... i hope they get what they deserve and i hope you get your money back along with kicking this guy's ass

holy smokes.....damn. That's terrible!

Man. Sorry homie, I got taken for $300 and I was pissed I cant imagine being $4500 short.

That sucks, but people who don't take precautions get burned everyday. It's just unfortunate it was a friend of yours. Next time he won't be so loose in making a transaction like that. Could have been worse...

Damn dude, NEVER under any circumstances, use a "money gram" NO Western Union, none of that shit...

I say Paypal only... that or a trusted escrow service...
Now that he's cashed the moneygram, there's not shit that can be done, unless they find the guy...

I've already come close to this with a few cars... A 3000GT(which was beautiful), A Supra, and a Skyline...

The only way I caught them, is I use two different e-mails... Paypal has one, and Ebay a different one... when I got an e-mail from ebay at the Paypal e-mail, I sent it to their spoof center, and they confirmed it a fraud...

they then report it to the ICB and FBI(< I think it was ICB, might be IFB)

His friend or something traced the last email to a public computer over seas. It was in a public computer in a subway syste. Crazy.

His friend or something traced the last email to a public computer over seas. It was in a public computer in a subway syste. Crazy.

Yeah, on the 3000GT, I traced the address in the e-mail from the "ebay rep" to a post office in FL...

I always suggest googling the info, seller's e-mail, address, phone numbers, etc... do your research on them, and search the vin's too, sometimes they're posted on several auction sites, and that's a dead giveaway...

Not only that, I had a friend who really bought a Supra online, but he told the guy he was going to fly out and see the car before any money was exchanged... Everything worked out perfectly...

Does Carfax have a service where they send a representative to physically confirm the condition (and, obviously, the existence) of a car you want to buy? That would be pretty handy for buying a car on-line.

Does Carfax have a service where they send a representative to physically confirm the condition (and, obviously, the existence) of a car you want to buy? That would be pretty handy for buying a car on-line.

Though that thought sounds nice, to my knowledge, they offer no such service. The fee would be outrageous most likely, possibly in excess of $500 (plane tickets, paying the employee, gas, blah blah blah) even if they had local offices, it would be a joke to try and handle all the requests they would have... and most likely, the seller would have to take it and drop it off at a service center, b/c to call people on-site would be outrageous (travel expenses again) and they wouldn't have specialized equipment and lifts to check out the cars...

I'd have to say, not likely (from any company at that)...

you might would be able to get the seller to take the car by a dealer and have them do an inspection and write a summary, but that's even doubtful

Here is the old contact information for the person that registered the domain name.

http://escrow-fraud.com/fraud_data.php?id=2594

It's from back in November and running it today shows no such match, but the website is still up. I don't know if it will help or not.

Too bad he didn't check the ebay forums, there is an entire list of fake escrow / shipping sites right in the forum.

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000211628&tstart=80&mod=1165633401075

It's a really long page, but if you search for the word "rshipping" you can find the appropriate section.