Today I saw an item on Ebay that was listed for “buy it now” at a price about one-fifth of the true value. The key things I noted, besides the fact that the deal was too good to be true, was that the listing provided a yahoo.com email address and asked that all correspondence be directed there. In addition, it asked that no correspondence be directed through the ebay contact system and said the item would be delivered to the first person arranging payment of the $6550 purchase price. I bet more than one person allowed their greed to get the best of them and transfer the money for the item that I am convinced does not actually exist. In checking the user feedback for the seller, it is 100 percent positive. I am convinced that someone ripped off the users name and password to allow them post under that persons username. I immediately reported the likely scam to local law enforcement as well as the fraud site listed on ebay.
In discussing this with local police officers in the fraud team, they advised me that something called atm card skimming was of growing concern in the United States. I didn’t know of it prior to today, but it is very ingenious and nearly impossible to observe for even a well trained eye. See this site for more on this issue. Meanwhile, be careful and never act on something too good to be true!
