The Internet's John Dillinger

from the ebay-scam-artists dept

MSNBC has an article about Jay Nelson, who has apparently scammed online auction users out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and who has been particularly hard to track down in real life. No one has been able to find him. He apparently keeps moving from hotel to hotel, and in the process continues to run his scams. The basic scam is that he builds up an online persona with a large number of successful (small) auctions with positive feedback (though sometimes he creates that feedback for himself). Then, he suddenly starts auctioning off a large number of more expensive items which he never delivers. He was caught once, but skipped town while free on bail, and no one's caught up with him since.
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  1. identicon
    clous, 9 Jun 2001 @ 7:45am

    talk about beating the system.

    talk about beating the system. holy galoopies this guy is clever.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Peter, 29 Oct 2002 @ 12:51am

    Ebay and PayPal Fraud

    Buyer Beware! That's the message I received from American Express, whom I used to pay PayPal for an item I bought on eBay but never received. EBay was the quickest to claim no responsibility. Despite the simple fact that this item was listed on eBay, they have the audacity to state that this transaction was "outside of eBay". The second insult came from PayPal. They initiated an investigation that essentially protected the fraud artist, and remained tight lipped for the 30 day duration, mostly to ensure the fraud artist to make his getaway. Although the investigation fell in my favour, they claimed that there was no money to retrieve. To add insult to injury, American Express washed their hands from any responsibility by saying that there was no wrong, just buyer beware. So, before you decide to purchase on eBay, thinking that you've got three reputable organisations working to obtain your safe purchase online, think again !

    Peter
    mailto:peter_d@telus.net

    link to this | view in thread ]


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