Fraude alert ! Beware of sales@auctiva-corporation.com

[DirkO]

Hi,

 

I recently won an Ebay-auction of fwic2803 (Mitsuhiro-san). After which I started receiving mails from sales@auctiva-corporation.com.

This person said he was fwic2803 and that his PayPal account was having problems, so I needed to send the payment in another way. Seeing these mails were sent to me directly I started to suspect him. Even more so when he said I only had 24 hours before making the payment, otherwise the sale would fall through.

 

I then sent a mail through the ebay-messaging system, asking fwic2803 to verify. He said there were no problems with his paypal-account and that my payment had gone through. I asked him to report this to Ebay and sent him the mails I received from our fraudster.

 

I did a quick WhoIs on the domain name found something very interesting and clever. The technical contact can't be reached by email seeing it's a bot. You have to a member of the domain's site to submit a help request, so there's no way for an outsider to reach them. Probably this is een SMTP-spoofed email address, but still, it doesn't hurt to inform people and make some inquiries.

 

So people, when buying through Ebay or any other auction-site, be very very carefull !!!

[kusunokimasahige]

Thanx for the info Dirk, try to resolve the X-originating IP adresses from the mails you have received to get a bearing on the general location of the culprits.

 

Whois and IP search work well for this:

 

http://www.ipaddresslocation.org/

 

Also a good tip on ebay can be not to disclose your email adress immediately to the seller and keep all messages through ebay.

 

KM

[DirkO]

IP tracks back to NY, USA - and the reply-address is 38c44a90811110039t6f98c2e1t1af457901e98 ... .gmail.com

 

So obviously bogus ...

[Kevin]

This person said he was fwic2803 and that his PayPal account was having problems, so I needed to send the payment in another way. Seeing these mails were sent to me directly I started to suspect him. Even more so when he said I only had 24 hours before making the payment, otherwise the sale would fall through.

 

I had that scam tried on me several times - by the same guy - eighteen months ago. On each occasion he purported to be the seller and wanted me to pay by Western Union. He was bang out of luck. :-) On the first occasion I checked with the real seller, then strung the con artist along a bit before letting Ebay have the correspondence. However not long after that, bugger me, he's back. Different mail account (though always eastern US), different name, same writing style, identical mis-spellings, identical approach, with the details of the scam the same. And again after that. Eventually, after several unsuccessful attempts (and oodles of reports going to Ebay), I asked him just how stupid was he? And didn't he realise that he was trying to scam someone in the equivalent of the Department of Justice? I never heard anything from him after that. :-)

 

I am still mystified as to how he managed to link my email and my Ebay account.

 

Wonder if it is the same guy, having perfected his technique after a stretch inside?

 

Kevin

[Hermes]

I am waiting to get a sword from the real fwic2803 on Ebay, paid through Paypal, so this thread put me back for a minute or two.

 

I would not pay any other way then Paypal though.

[Kevin]

I am waiting to get a sword from the real fwic2803 on Ebay, paid through Paypal, so this thread put me back for a minute or two.

 

I would not pay any other way then Paypal though.

 

Don't worry - the real fwic2803 is one of the good guys. :-)

 

Kevin

[shan]

Hi Guys,

Please don`t for one minute think that paypal will help you to resolve any issues or protect you in any way,because they won`t in most cases.(and even if originally found in your favour will reverse the judgement without notifying you)

This credit card chargeback scam is always found in the favour of the buyer regardless of postal proof of delivery,teh seller just states that the item was an weighted empty box and can get a full refund almost immediatly.They get the goods and the money.

I also have a claim that was found in the sellers favour regardless of proof that the clearly Fake tsuba was returned and his signature was emailed to them with the official proof of postage sent by Royal mail UK confirming his signature for the registered postage delivery.They said they could not confirm reciept of the goods from the proof supplied!!!! (work that one out if you can) they closed the case in his favour without even investigating porperly so now i have no goods and no money and they have irrifutable proof the item was sent and recieved.

Paypal don`t seem to want to assist with anything in the UK anyway,perhaps its better in the US.

I have closed my paypal account as it is not as safe as you think.

regards

Shan

[DirkO]

Shan,

 

I, for one, have never had troubles with PayPal and even now, this scam-attempt has nothing to do with PayPal an se.

I am wondering however how the fraudster knew that I won the auction and how he got hold of my email address. (usually it's something like x***y)

I guess this can be done by sniffing the traffic towards the ebay servers. My winning bid came through justsnipe.com, and maybe their traffic isn't fully encrypted ? The password will be encrypted with RSA at least, but maybe the userID is sent in cleartext. Once you have a userID, it's pretty easy. I don't know for sure, but it is worrying nonetheless.

 

But never mind me rambling on here ! The important lesson to take home is : BE CAREFULL WHEN BUYING THROUGH THE INTERNET !!!

[Hermes]

Cheers Kevin, i was not worried after i read the posts above and as far as Paypal goes, i have gotten money back from them when i didn't receive the item a few times without any trouble at all. Getting money back through Paypal on items that are not what they were described as is of course a different matter all together.

[Brian]

Overseas members get treated very differently to those within the USA.

Anyways, warnings noted. I think this one is done now.

 

Brian