P-P-P-PowerBook for a S-S-S-Scammer... 540
kormoc writes "It all started with a ebay auction when the seller got a email from a dude who wanted to scam him. It was a normal setup and it went horribly wrong... for the scammer. This has turned from a awful plight for a ebay user to a wonderful prank on the scammer. Throw in some crazy brits with digicams and you have the making of a great story.
Mirror
Mirror"
That should get the coffee out your nostrils on a fine sunday morning. Note that you have to download the PDF to read the story.
A bit hard to follow...... but funny.... (Score:5, Interesting)
What a great way to start a dreary Sunday! (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if they are being scammed, aren't this person and his/her accomplices committing mail/wire fraud?
I just wouldn't want to be on the other end if the scammer tried to fight back.
Scott
Re:Where did I see this... (Score:1, Interesting)
A bit confused (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What a great way to start a dreary Sunday! (Score:5, Interesting)
who says the value is far above the real value of goods sent?
As far as the beef with customs goes:
An artist can take ten dollars worth of canvas, smear five dollars of oilpaint on it, and sell it in a gallery for tens of thousands of dollars
By the same token, a sculptor can take a three ring binder, some magic markers, and a broken keyboard and make a sculpture easily worth two thousand.
Art is in the eye of the beholder
Since the eBay transaction never occured, they have no beef with him -- he merely used the contact made with the person who stole the german account to sell some artwork in a separate transaction
Re:A bit confused (Score:3, Interesting)
There was absolutely zero followup with regard to Mr. Saral Surakul - our esteemed college professor. It would be interesting to know whether his identity was simply hijacked/spoofed for the purposes of domain registration or whether he was in fact complicit in the scam.
An entertaing read nevertheless.
Legality? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The end isn't quite clear... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Truly an awesome story. (Score:2, Interesting)
My suitemate is a SA goon (that's what they call themselves...) and he's been giving me updates on the situation almost every day.
Go read the article/PDF; it's what I'm going to do after posting this. Or at the very least, look at the pictures... they're hilarious. Instant classic. I'm glad this got out to the outside world.
My favorite is the bluetooth mouse....
All for it .... but (Score:1, Interesting)
Potentially the recipient could file a fraud charge against the seller AND against FedEx.
Take this example into mind:
When on the playground as a child if you were hit and DID NOT hit back - you were safe. But if you hit back, even if in self defense, both of you went to the office.
I would also like to point out that this seller defrauded Paypal, Fedex, eBay, the scammer and it just (in my opinion) tells scammers what mistakes to avoid in future, more sphisticated scams.
Lastly, I'd like to say - as I am an Apple parts dealer on eBay - selling or buying a PowerBook on eBay or Yahoo auctions is the riskiest thing you could POSSIBLY do. If you even bid in ANY POWERBOOK auction or SELL ANY PowerBook (newer than 3 years) you are deluged with offers from Romania (usually) for $800 PowerBook G4 17". What's funny, is that some even offer AppleCare.
The story was interesting and entertaining - but the outlets to properly "report a crime" are readily available and much less costly.
Re:What a great way to start a dreary Sunday! (Score:5, Interesting)
So I emailed the person to express my interest in buying the computer. He writes back with a long description of their 'operation'. They hacked into 'major computer makers' and re-routed shipping containers to me because they felt that computer makers were overcharging, etc. They were doing it for the good of the public; stealing from rich computer makers to give to the public.
I almost fell for this, until I started to think about it. What if it was a scam? I couldn't contact the police, because I would have knowingly bought stolen goods. Wait! it must be a scam then!
Scammers come up with incredibly diverse kinds of scams, because someone will eventually fall for one of them.
Bitter Sweet? (Score:3, Interesting)
So he got made the fool and wasted some of his time. Unless he gets caught and charged with various fradulencies he's just going to do it again to someone less astute.
Re:All for it .... but (Score:0, Interesting)
He DID use eBay to sell a real item but ACTUALLY shipped a fake item
He DID use fedex to ship a fraudulent item.
Vigilante justice is NOT legal no matter how cute the story or punishing to the criminal.
Here are the pics mentioned in the article (Score:5, Interesting)
Pics of the shop [somethingawful.com] (scroll down, shitty forum...)
Re:What a great way to start a dreary Sunday! (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically the elements for mail and wire fraud are
A scheme to defraud (about a material fact)
Intent for the person to rely on the false information
and a mail or wire interaction.
What is interesting under the law is that an actual fraud does not need to be commited if the elements are met (unlike commom law fraud/misrepresentation which requires damages). The point is that the orignal scammer is still liable even though he never actually got the chance to defraud MyNameIsJeff (becuase he never recieved the real Pbook).
Now the scarry part is not the M&W fraud but the fact that Jeff had help. This would be a conspiracy to commit M&W fraud which is a federal felony as well. So even if they meet the M&W fraud (which would be real hard considering that they posted EVERYTHING to the web for evidence) there doesn't need to be a conviction on the substanitive crime for a conspiracy conviction.
Conspiracy might be a bit more attenuated becuase the second person (Gizmo_gun) just kind of jumped in, so there may not be the requisite agreement...
But i am going to stop now. I don't like the feeling that i am analyzing stuff on slashdot better than i did on my white collar crime final.
Re:A bit hard to follow...... but funny.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Does anyone else think this is fishy in itself? After buying a new Powerbook, you say "Hey, it looks cool, but I really don't need it...here, sell it on eBay for me".
Couldn't he just return it? He had just bought it a few days earlier. Also, he must have known that he wasn't going to get back what he paid for it...so just for the sake of "looking cool" for a few days, he wasted a few hundred bucks? Yet the writer of the story says that he needed people to "kick in" for shipping to London for the scaming of the scammer...couldn't he just ask his rich friend that throws away money for the cash?
The whole thing sounds like it's totally made up, that there was no eBay auction and the guy that wrote it just was going for basic laughs...and everything in it is pure fiction. I'm probably wrong and everyone will say "but I saw all the stuff and was watching the posts"...but couldn't one person have done everything themself, stringing the viewers along for the laugh?
Funny? yes...real? I'm not so sure. Either way, real or fake, the guy that wrote it is very creative and a gifted writer!
Street Justice (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I think it's pretty horrible to defraud someone in this manner. While I'm sure this guy in the UK is not totally without blame, it seems pretty goddamn stupid to send someone a fraudulent package with a ring binder instead of a laptop and make them pay ~$300 in VAT
It's called street justice, my friend.
This guy wouldn't have gotten nailed for $300 if he hadn't tried to rob someone in the first place.
And as for the publicity, good. Maybe it'll stop the next guy from trying.
I always view calling a policeman or getting the law involved to be a last resort. If you can solve your problems on your own, more power to you. Here, we have crime, and we have just punishment. Bravo, guys.
Weaselmancer
Re:Turning the tables is funny, but also... (Score:1, Interesting)
It is a stretch - but vigilante justice often blurs the diffrences of what is right and what is wrong. It's really hard for me to see that no one understands this.
This guy went too far and HE stretched a lot of venues to get back at this scammer.
You CAN NOT COLLECT money through paypal (even from willing benefactors) to defraud someone. He collected monies for the SOLE purpose of paying for a FedEx package that was listed as a PowerBook and insured for $2200.
Although it would be a bad PR move, FedEx should prosecute, then "settle out of court"
Re:All for it .... but (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong!
As far as PayPal is concerned, he received funds to ship an item - they have no involvement in what item was involved. Since he shipped an item, he has completed that transaction properly and PayPal has not been defrauded in any manner.
He DID use eBay to sell a real item but ACTUALLY shipped a fake item
Wrong!
He used eBay to advertise the sale of a real item. The "purchaser" in this transaction persued the sale completely outside of eBay. Thus, eBay has not been defrauded in any manner.
He DID use fedex to ship a fraudulent item.
Wrong!
He used FedEx to ship an item. They are not a party to the contents of the box - they were simply the transport medium. They were paid to ship a box, they shipped the box. Thus, FedEx has not been defrauded in any manner.
The only debatable fraudulent actions were between the buyer and the seller directly. But since the bogus escrow site disappeared and the seller was never paid for an actual PowerBook - the buyer has no basis for a fraud claim!
This can be wrapped up as: the buyer used PayPal to pay the seller to ship a box via FedEx to his address. The buyer payed taxes on the declared value of the box's contents - which as was said elsewhere, could be a $2000 piece of contemporary art for all the government cares. That the buyer did not receive an actual Apple Powerbook is due to the fact the buyer never paid for an actual Apple Powerbook! So there was no actual fraud from the buyer's side. The seller still has a claim though - since he was never paid for the piece of $2000 art he shipped in the box!
Something similar went down here (Score:1, Interesting)
http://thedvdforums.com/forums/showthread.php?s
Similar story involving a P900 phone and a package including tissue paper, dirt and some old French Fries.
misleading customs (Score:2, Interesting)
Wanted: Missing Conclusion (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it just me, or is this an incomplete prank? I read through the entire PDF and found, to my surprise, that it ended with them waiting for the package to be delivered. Hello? This would be just a little more amusing if there were some sort of punchline. The whole point to this is to get the guy's reaction in some form. So have they waited two weeks without hearing anything more from the scammer? Are there still people staking out the barbershop? WHAT'S GOING ON?
Amusing little prank, but it's just a little prank as long as nobody knows what happened in the end. C'mon, I could send someone a marked-up binder in lieu of a computer anytime I wanted. For those of you who haven't read it yet, don't waste your time. The pictures of the P-P-P-Powerbook itself are worth a giggle but that's pretty much the climax of the whole scenario.
Re:All for it .... but (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The end isn't quite clear... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A bit hard to follow...... but funny.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wanted: Missing Conclusion (Score:3, Interesting)
Assault != fighting... something very wrong here (Score:2, Interesting)
This sounds very, very wrong. If you do not fight back, it isn't a fight; it's assault. My parents were schoolteachers and one thing I had to learn was if/when someone actually picked a fight with me on school property, I had to put my hands behind my back and take it to avoid suspension. The victim had to be completely passive. It wasn't fair, but that was sufficient proof of assault rather than fighting.
I doubt this policy would stand up to due process standards. By the same logic, a girl who is sexually assaulted wouldn't a victim, but a "willing participant in conscentual behavior". A ludicrous notion indeed.
Considering my parents and their friends and families have been in education a very long time, and have never seen a policy where assault was classified as "fighting". Either your school policy was blatantly illegal, or you aren't remembering/telling things the way they actually were.
Re:What a great way to start a dreary Sunday! (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.12/murder_
Murder by Internet
Chris Marquis was a 17-year-old Vermont hustler running a small-time scam online. His virtual business was going great - until somebody killed him.
By Scott Kirsner
On the afternoon of March 19, 1998, a UPS driver named Armand Gevry delivered a cardboard box to the pea-green house at 3 Washington Street in Fair Haven, Vermont. Gevry lives two blocks away, and when Sheila Rockwell opened the door, she recognized him as the deliveryman who often brought shipments of citizen's band radio equipment to her son.
It was a cold, gray day outside - light snow changing to sleet changing to rain - so she quickly took the package from Gevry, thanked him, and shut the door. Rockwell, a weathered woman of 52 with hard blue eyes and wispy brown hair, carried the box down the hallway of her modest home.
Chris Marquis was talking on his new Ranger RCI 2990 radio with his girlfriend, Cyndi McDonald, when his mother brought the package into his wood-paneled bedroom. His 6-foot frame was hunched over the microphone on his desk, his dirty-blond hair was swept forward across his forehead, and a thin mustache fuzzed his upper lip.
Rockwell handed the 2-foot-long box to her son. She didn't recognize the return address, so she sat down on Chris's bed, curious to see what was inside.
Chris continued chatting with Cyndi. The name and address on the box - Samantha Brown, 1863 South High Street, Bucyrus, Ohio - didn't ring any bells for him either.
"I got a package in the mail," Chris told Cyndi. He'd met her two years earlier as a quiet, sweet voice on Channel 1. Cyndi was now in the 11th grade, a year ahead of Chris, but she attended school in Whitehall, the next town over. Their favorite date was a meal at the McDonald's on the far edge of Fair Haven.
"What is it?" Cyndi asked. "Who's it from?"
"Hold on. I don't know," Chris answered, as he grabbed his jackknife from the holster on his belt and slit the box open. Inside was a slightly smaller box made of styrofoam.
"Well, it's probably a bomb, then," Cyndi joked.
The explosion knocked Chris and his mother to the floor.
Not an elaborate joke... (Score:2, Interesting)
I sold my iBook on eBay a few weeks ago and got an email from the same scammer asking me if I wanted to sell it off eBay for well above the market price, with two day shipping to the UK. Sounded funny from the start, but the fake escrow site was the clincher. Glad he's had his comeuppance.
Copies of emails here [ipodbattery.com.au] if anyone's interested.
Re:Was this even a scam? (Score:2, Interesting)
It would be good closure to know whether the actions our hero took, constitute a crime. It would be a completely separate crime. The original fraud might be a mitigating factor, or it might not. It would suck to have to explain to the court why you told customs that your $2.50 worth of stuff was a $2000.00 computer. It would REALLY suck if you weren't allowed to tell the jury about the supposed scammer, but still had to explain what you did.
Re:A bit hard to follow...... but funny.... (Score:2, Interesting)
This isn't walmart or dell we are talking about. This is Apple Computer. Their draconian policy is just yet another reason why their business has been failing all these years.