I know some (many) of you sell on ebay. There is a new SCAM that I thought you might want to be aware of. The scam is a twist on the NIGERIA scam. Actually it's not the same but still has the Africa connection.

The scammers target high dollar ebay items, with "buy-it-now". They will buy it and ask for immediate shipment to Africa. I have had 3 people try this today already.

They always come from international bidders, always have the item to be shipped to a relative in Africa, on the pretense that it is a birthday or school project, and want FedEx or DHL shipping. Likely as not, they are using a phoney credit card for the purchase.

The real problem here is that anyone that sells with "buy-it-now" has to go through the hassle of trying to get fees reimbursed from these non-paying bidders (SCAMMERS).

Here is the one that bought one of my items today

How are you and your familly, My name is Anita Bush. I want to make an immediate purchase of this item to my fiancee in Africa for his birthday coming up soonest since i will not be able to be present there so i want to know if i can make the payment via PAYPAL so let me have ur paypal address including the total amount of the item and shipping cost to Africa via FEDEX, So that i can make the payment. let me know if i should go ahead with the payment. Here is the shipping information of my fiancee in Africa.

NAME... MARIAM ADEYEMI
ADDRESS..45 DADA STREET IFAKO IJAIYE
STATE....LAGOS
ZIP CODE..234001
COUNTRY...NIGERIA
i will be expecting your reply asap
Thanks.

I have had just today

Two urgent birthday gifts needing to be sent to Africa
Two urgent computers needed for a student project in Africa

It appears they are targeting $1000+ items. None of my lesser priced items have been attacked.

I guess you'd have to be brain-dead to fall for this but this "buy-it-now" attacking is a real pain in the...

Edited: 23 May 2005, 7:40 p.m.

Mike,

This type of scam is already well known. Thanks for the concern.

Namir

Ebay has already cancelled the scammer's account and refunded my final value fees. I'm impressed at that speedy action.

Odd that I have never been attacked before. Then, today 4 times. Maybe they are just targeting laptops.

Didn't take ebay long to whack this one. She's already unregistered. Now I just have to fight to get my fees back. :-(

Edited: 23 May 2005, 8:29 p.m.

me too, seems that eBay - again! - is only protecting sellers and not buyers - I recently bough from a seller (with BIN) who then decided that the price is too low and he listed it again and I never got my package. Now a few weeks later, and lots of emails to customer support and lots of - empty - promises that they will get back to me within 48 hours I still have not heard ANYTHING!
Not to spoil you good experience in help from them, I'm just p... (which I'm sure you would have never guessed from the above language) that they don't do anything for buyers.
Cheers!

Hit 'em back with techniques from the 419 Eater:http://www.419eater.com/

How does this one work? How do they get their money?

This is not the same as the one where they send you a phoney cashier's check and ask for a big chunk of money as change.