[email protected] ebay scam

[venenous123]

Do not make contact with [email protected]; he is a scammer. He wants you to contact him for "buy it now" on high value items on ebay for too good to be true prices. However, he will then send you spoof emails to try to entice you to send him money via bank wire/Western union. You will never see the item you paid for, nor your money again. AVOID

[timeiscoffee]

Thanks for this post, I was in process of buying something from him when I noticed some weird stuffs:

-Insisting using bank transfer
-ebay transaction email from email address '[email protected]' (ebay.com exist, ebay.co.uk exist, no ebay.com.uk exist)
-no record of this message in my ebay account
-none of the links on the emails are clickable (money back guarantee link, unsubscribe link, etc)
-mere existence of unsubscribe link on a invoice email
-'© 2013 eBay Inc.,'
-my eBay account name, which he asked for in the email, coming up in the email instead of my actual name
-insistence that I cough up the money by Christmas because there is another 'buyer'

because gmail's stupid proxy which all images go through, I can't find a way to find the real hosted place of the images to compare against other ebay invoices.

are above good reasons to distrust this seller?

[venenous123]

Glad to have given you a reality check, timeiscoffee

Though I have personally not been scammed by these guys I know people who have (too many, in fact). It's a scam that's been going on for months now that always has the same method of operation:

1) hack/steal the account of a trustworthy ebay seller
2) list high priced items at ridiculously low prices, include an image that claims you must contact the seller in order to "buy it now," almost always via a gmail account
3) send anybody that contacts them a spoofed ebay email demanding a bank transfer

Trust me, the guy you contacted is trying to scam you. If the seller actually intended for there be a "buy it now," there would have been a "buy it now" option in the original listing. Ebay does not do separate "buy it now" over email. These guys prey on people in their moment of weakness when they find a screaming good deal. Do not fall for it!