bogus auction for Altair system on eBay

[Lyle Bickley]

On Tuesday 21 February 2006 21:40, Jack Rubin wrote:
> I exchanged several emails today with an eBay seller offering an Altair
> system with disk drive for a starting bid of $2 in a one-day auction.
>
> This is a bogus offer - I became uneasy when the seller solicited an
> offline offer in response to a query about shipping but insisted on
> payment through Western Union rather than PayPal, even though the
> orginal auction listed PayPal as a preferred option.
>
> It is interesting to note that the auction I saw this morning (offered
> by seller DOCHANDS) was cancelled by eBay almost immediately but the
> _identical_ auction (same pictures and extensive text) is currently
> (2/21/06 @ 11:31 pm) being offered by two different sellers - as auction
> 6038449898 by GUNDAN760 and as auction 6038549050 by SHARISINA. It looks
> like the "seller" is hijacking legitimate eBay accounts to use as bogus
> fronts for his dealings.

I agree this is fraud. I posted a "Fraud Alert" email to eBay. It'll be 
interesting to see how (if) they deal with it.

Regards,
Lyle
-- 
Lyle Bickley
Bickley Consulting West Inc.
Mountain View, CA
http://bickleywest.com

"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"