Auction Fraud Victims Fighting Back
from the getting-attention dept
It seems that victims of online auction fraud don't get much attention from law enforcement officials, so they're starting to fight back on their own. In many cases groups of victims are teaming up to track down the scammers, and to give more reasons to law enforcement officials to go after them. In some cases, individuals are actively tracking down who scammed them. They have one story of a guy who bought a sports jersey which was never delivered. He took a day off from work, drove 10 hours to Canada to wait at a post office (he only knew the seller's PO Box) and track down the guy who scammed him. In that case, he was successful, and it turned out the guy had been stealing shirts from the sporting goods store he worked in (while not always delivering them to auction winners). It's one thing to steal something. It's another thing to steal something and then auction it off - but never deliver it. That takes an extra level of stupidity.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team