There are two articles in tomorrow's New York Times about eBay fraud...
With Internet Fraud Up Sharply, eBay Attracts Vigilantes
By KATIE HAFNER
Published: March 20, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO, March 19 — Five months ago, Klaus Priebe, a soft-spoken building contractor who said he was sick and tired of fraud on eBay, decided it was time to catch the cheaters at their game.
In one recent auction, he bid as much as $2.5 million on a telescope worth no more than $2,000. He knew he would not have to pay for the telescope because he was sure that it did not exist.
The listing was a fake, he decided, because the seller offered free shipping and was registered in Andorra, a small country in the Pyrenees that is often listed by swindlers. Mr. Priebe said his wild bid was an attempt to protect innocent bidders from falling into the trap he had spotted.
Mr. Priebe, 42, is an eBay vigilante, one of a number of eBay members who are stepping in to fight online auction fraud — a problem they say is getting worse by the week — because they believe that the company does not do enough policing of its own.
But in eBay's view Mr. Priebe and his vigilante brethren are pariahs. Rather than embrace these virtual posses, eBay discourages them, occasionally going so far as to suspend the vigilantes' accounts.
"We love it that people want to help, but there's a right way to do it and a way that isn't constructive or in the interest of a good community marketplace," said Rob Chesnut, eBay's vice president for rules, trust and safety, who added that eBay was doing everything it could to make it safe to buy and sell on its Web site.
EBay, based in San Jose, Calif., has 800 people deployed around the world to fight fraud, he said, and does not need amateur help. "Just like in the offline world," he said, "you can't have people running around taking the law into their hands."
Critics, however, say the company is not only slow to stop fraud, but is loath to reveal how much of it goes on.
"EBay's denial of the extent of the problem is out of control," said Mark Seiden, a computer security consultant in Manhattan who stumbled upon a fake deal for a high-end espresso maker on eBay several months ago and has since uncovered hundreds of fraudulent listings. "They probably think their brand will be stronger if they hide the fraud."
Mr. Priebe, who lives in Pueblo, Colo., is not waiting for someone else to solve the problem. Like other eBay vigilantes, he routinely alerts eBay to listings he believes are fraudulent and sends e-mail messages to people who have bid on a fake item to alert them to the fraud.
"That's a part of safe trading," Mr. Priebe said. "I believe that wholeheartedly. Watch my back and I'll watch yours."
Deception is no stranger to eBay, which has 93 million registered users. Within its warm and fuzzy culture, based on trust and honesty, there have always lurked renegades.
There was the spectacular case in 2000 when a fake Richard Diebenkorn painting was nearly sold for $135,000 on eBay. Travel voucher fraud on eBay became such a problem that the company now requires frequent sellers to register with an independent verification company. The sale of fake rare stamps has spawned watchdog groups both on and off the auction site.
Yet far more rampant than art forgeries and fake collectibles these days are fraudulent listings for expensive consumer goods. Plasma televisions and laptop computers, mountain bikes, fancy espresso machines, treadmills, telescopes, even vehicles are prime candidates to be phantom objects on eBay, sometimes promoted with photos and descriptions lifted straight off the manufacturer's Web site. Often, the seller uses auction software to post dozens of items at once, flooding a category with fake listings.
Last year, some $200 million lost to online fraud was reported to the Federal Trade Commission. And nearly half the 166,000 complaints the agency received last year were about online auctions, a 130 percent increase from 2001. While the F.T.C. does not break out figures by companies, the vast majority of online auctions are conducted on eBay.
"It's gone nuts just since November of last year," said Greg Schiller, a computer and network technician in Aztec, N.M., who says he reports hundreds of fraudulent listings every day to eBay.
Against this tide, online vigilantes have had an impact. Last year, they were instrumental in cornering a pair of swindlers from Arizona who bilked eBay users out of nearly $110,000. Often, they are the ones who doggedly trace the source of the fraud to places like Romania, which appears to be a popular redoubt, although many Romanian swindlers claim to be based in Andorra. Indeed, by late last year, Mr. Chesnut said, more than 100 arrests had been made in Romania alone.
"It's very difficult to find people who are hiding in foreign countries where there's a language barrier and it requires cooperation with foreign agencies," said Deborah Matties, a lawyer in the marketing practices division at the F.T.C. and leader of the commission's task force on Internet auction fraud. But she said the agency did not work with vigilantes to ferret out online auction fraud.
Mr. Schiller and others say they engage in self-help activities in part because they yearn for the days when eBay was a much safer place. "EBay is a wonderful thing," Mr. Schiller said. "But a lot of people are getting ripped off for a lot of money."
The company says vigilantism, like Mr. Priebe's bidding tactics, is not a solution and will not be tolerated. The company also does not allow its members to send e-mail messages to bidders to warn them that they are bidding on something that does not exist, or to post details and item numbers on eBay discussion groups.
"If you allow that sort of activity, even the bad guys start posting about the good guys and you end up with a big free-for-all and a lot of finger pointing," Mr. Chesnut said. "That's not the right way to go about doing things."
EBay estimates that of the 20 million or so items that are for sale on its Web site at any given time, only about 2,000 items, or one-hundredth of 1 percent, are fraudulent. But that figure reflects only those cases that are settled through the eBay buyer protection claim process.
Mr. Seiden, the computer security consultant, says the actual number of fraudulent auctions is considerably higher. "EBay's protections don't apply to many kinds of transactions like Western Union scams, so they go uncounted," he said.
Mr. Chesnut said the company was aware of most of the fraudulent listings that the vigilantes report. But he contends the vigilantes can be mistaken. "There's a lot of information that they might not have at their disposal," he said. Hani Durzy, a spokesman for eBay, said it was "not a rare occurrence where eBay has noticed that vigilantes have disrupted legitimate auctions."
The vigilantes argue that the signs of fraud are quite obvious. A fraudulent seller almost always asks for payment via Western Union. Often there is no feedback from other users. And the seller usually offers to sell the item at a much lower price if the buyer agrees to leave eBay and close the purchase privately.
One common ploy is to set up an auction under the identity of a legitimate eBay user who has received positive responses from buyers in the past. Brad Celmainis, an eBay member in Calgary, Alberta, said that warning signals go up as soon as he sees a seller's history and spots incongruities.
"You'll get some lady who was selling teapots and baby clothes and all of a sudden she's an electronics kingpin," said Mr. Celmainis, who alerts bidders and eBay users whose accounts have been hijacked.
Stirling Smidt, a 28-year-old financial analyst in Wellington, New Zealand, could have used such a tip. He thought he had found a great deal on a digital camera on eBay, and promptly sent off 850 New Zealand dollars ($557) via Western Union to the seller who said she was in London.
"There was a lot of e-mail back and forth between the seller and me," Mr. Smidt said. "Her English was really bad and she kept saying, `I'm just a 57-year-old woman with a sick son and a camera to sell.' Things like that." The camera never arrived.
Ina Steiner, editor and publisher of AuctionBytes.com, an online newsletter about Internet auctions, said she was not a vigilante but she sympathized with their cause.
"If I get ripped off by somebody on eBay and I see they're still selling on eBay and ripping other people off, I want to reach out and warn people," she said. "EBay doesn't look kindly on that."
Mr. Chesnut said the company frequently warned its members to be wary of traps set to steal their account information. Further, he said, the site is now peppered with various warnings about unsafe practices, like sending money via Western Union and going off eBay to complete a transaction.
The company also routinely alerts winning bidders of fraudulent auctions, telling them not to complete the transaction, Mr. Chesnut said. Such was the case with the fake Diebenkorn painting.
Still, it was another eBay user's warning that saved Marianne Houkom. Ms. Houkom, 55, who lives in Newton, Kan., received an e-mail message from Mr. Seiden warning her that the espresso machine she was bidding on did not exist. She said she was horrified, and then relieved when someone outbid her.
Mr. Seiden said he felt obligated to inform bidders in fraudulent auctions because he did not trust eBay to catch all of those schemes. That may be because "the people in eBay seem to vary widely in their competence and understanding of claims of fraud and willingness to investigate," he said.
For his part, Mr. Priebe has tried to reason with some of the hucksters. He said he recently had an interesting if fruitless exchange with someone posting fraudulent auctions who said he was a 16-year-old living in Romania.
"He told me his parents wanted him to make money and that everyone in the U.S. is rich," Mr. Priebe recalled. "I said it isn't really that way and that karma was going to catch up with him one of these days."
How to Avoid Auction Scams
KATIE HAFNER
Published: March 20, 2004
Here are some tips for avoiding scams on eBay and other online auction sites.
PRICE Be wary if the price of an expensive item, especially one advertised as brand new, is priced far below the standard retail price. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
PAYMENT Scam artists usually ask for payment by Western Union. Both eBay and Western Union strongly advise against making payments this way. Always try to pay with a credit card or with PayPal, which provide extra security.
THE SELLER Use caution if the seller is a newly registered eBay user with no feedback from other users. Check the seller's history - if the seller has suddenly switched from selling vintage postcards to plasma televisions, the account may have been hijacked by a scam artist.
PHOTOS AND DESCRIPTION Look closely at the photo and the item description. Fraudulent sellers often pull both straight off a manufacturer's Web site.
LOCATION Beware if the seller claims to be in one place, say London, and the item is in another.
OFF-SITE SALES Avoid the temptation to make a quick, cheap deal. Scam artists often reel in victims by offering a cheaper price if the buyer agrees to close the deal off the auction site. This voids buyer protection policies offered by the auction site and is a violation of eBay rules.
PRIVATE AUCTIONS Some scam artists set up private auctions that conceal the identity of bidders and require that all bidders contact the seller before bidding. This is often a ploy to move the deal off the auction site.
The Federal Trade Commission's Web site on Internet auctions, with additional advice on avoiding fraud, can be found at
www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/online/auctions.htm
KATIE HAFNER
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