Check out this message I just got last night from someone regarding an auction I am doing right now... This just smells of scam!
A similar (even down to the type of outfit) thing was commented on another list I'm on a few days ago:
This is a most likely a scam, and a fairly common one at that. As pointed out by Abdon, one of the commonalties of this and other similar scams is the need for very quick and expensive shipping (Fed Ex overnight is normal). This is because the scam artist is often trying to use a stolen credit card that hasn't been reported yet and he wants the items in his (or his accomplice's) hands -- as fast as possible. He will also try and have the items shipped to an address that is not associated with the credit card. It all happened to me just three weeks ago.
A brand new new eBayer (he registered that day) tried to purchase a Mamiya RB67 outfit from me, for my Buy-It-Now price. I told him he would have to exercise the Buy-It-Now option in order for me to sell it to him. The next day he did, and asked if he could pay by credit card and have his items shipped Federal Express to an address in Indonesia. Because the required payment would be higher than PayPal or BidPay would allow, I arranged to run the charge through a friend's antique store. The red flags were already up on my part, and I requested all of his vital information including the three digits on the back of his card. He sent everything I asked and then I went snooping. After 20 minutes of phone calls to various credit card departments, I finally reached the issuing bank's fraud department, whereby it was determined that the card (or the information on it) had probably been stolen -- because there were several expensive telephone-initiated charges placed on it within the last few days. Additionally, the owner of the card lived it New York, not Indonesia. It was my phone call that alerted the bank, because the card had not yet been reported stolen. Did the scam artist actually have the physical card, or did he just have the information on the front and back of the card? I'll never know.
Of course -- wanting the camera shipped to Indonesia was a huge red flag, but the icing on the fraud-cake was when the Citibank official told me that in 15 years of working at the bank she had never known of one Citibank credit card -- to have EVER been issued to someone from Indonesia.
By the way, if I had run the card through my friend's antique store and received approval, the company issuing the approval would have held me responsible and the amount would have been charged-back to my friend's store and ultimately to me.
It always pays to spend the time to check out suspicious behavior. When in doubt -- check it out.
Take care.
-- Javier Pedreira "Wicho" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> * **** ******* *********************************************************** * For list instructions, including unsubscribe, see: * http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/eos_list.htm ***********************************************************
