Amazing Disapearing Fluke Calibrators on eBay

[graybeard]

Yesterday a surplus outfit in Los Angeles posted quite a few Fluke calibrators on eBay.  I posted bids on all of them.   When I went to check a few hours later all of the auctions had vanished.

[Kean]

Usually this is due to hacked ebay accounts listing high value items at really low starting prices.  Generally you'll find one of the images has contact details for an external (fraudulent) seller.  They often get removed reasonably quickly, and most of the ones I've seen have been from very generic sellers (small auction houses, trading card sellers, bric-a-brac stores).

Interesting if it happened to a genuine test equipment seller, or was it a general surplus place?  That could give more credence to the listings, but also probably would be picked up more rapidly.

More discussion here https://www.eevblog.com/forum/metrology/ebay-fraud-datron-4910-voltage-reference/

[jonpaul]

Fraude listings from a serial offender, the same seller lists dozens of high cost items with crazy low start price.

He has nothing and it is some sort of scam, perhaps to harvest ebay buyers info.

After a while all his listings are reported to ebay fraude department and are removed.

Waste of time

Jon

[EE-digger]

In the past few days, Ebay did an excellent job of pulling hundreds of test equipment auctions which were posted from hacked seller accounts.

When a seller is selling knitting supplies AND $100k scopes, that's a clue that something is wrong.

I will not divulge what the posts had in common here.

Not a huge ebay fan but kudos to their fraud dept. for their speed of response.

[Kean]

It isn't just someone targeting test equipment buyers.  When I see them appear based on my search results, I will find the seller will also have recent listings for things like high end cameras, Rolex watches, and musical instruments all listed at very low starting prices.

[nctnico]

Yesterday a surplus outfit in Los Angeles posted quite a few Fluke calibrators on eBay.  I posted bids on all of them.   When I went to check a few hours later all of the auctions had vanished.

You should have looked further for a picture with a message saying to contact the seller through email. This is a very typical Ebay scam that has been going on for many years. Last week I've seen a huge flood of these listings for some of the items for which I have an ongoing search.

[gslick]

I saw a bunch of those listings yesterday.  A legitimate account with several thousand feedback must have gotten highjacked by scammers. Thousands of high value items listed for $1, with an image and text saying to send email somewhere else to actually purchase the item. As soon as I saw the listings I reported a dozen or so of the listings as fraudulent. Around 15 minutes later the listings had been removed, and I assume the account was disabled. I have seen that happen many times. It should be obvious to just about anyone that it must be a scam.

[SeanB]

Simple automated bots taking lists of compromised logins and email addresses, and trying to log in to various sites with them. Then when they get a working login they already have a large list of the items they want to use, and scatter them around, figuring that 1% of the stuff might be bid on, and that 1% of that might be stupid enough to send email outside the walled garden, selecting the sheep to fleece. Then let them win the auction either for a low amount, using other compromised accounts to do the bidding up a little, and use the side channel to get payment plus shipping via some payment method that will not go via fleabay, and simply wait for the money. Then either send nothing, or send some fake tracking numbers, or send an epacket with something valued at $1 in it, using another legit seller to handle the order, and using their tracking info to pass it forward.

Low risk, reasonable return plus they also have valid email addresses that they know are both gullible and read by a human to sell on as well, and postal addresses to use for other scams as well.

[wraper]

Fraude listings from a serial offender, the same seller lists dozens of high cost items with crazy low start price.

There is nothing wrong with $1 starting price, it's even generally suggested to do so. Unless the listing is extremely suspicious, contains errors preventing buyers to find the item, or something like that, bids will reach the normal price.

[jjoonathan]

Yeah, it's just that there is a very common ebay scammer whose MO for years has been to compromise large accounts and blast out listings for high-value products that start at $1. The listings use the same pictures, the same items, and the same telltale red and blue comic-sans text directing you to an email where you can be scammed away from ebay's consumer protection systems.

After you see a few dozen of these $1 fake listings and zero $1 true listings, you will realize that the empirical connection is strong, even if the theoretical connection is not perfectly sound.

[jonpaul]

often a particular seller is in Los Angeles, a tip-off is email images in description. Look at "seller other items" you see dozens of similar listings.

Amazing Ebay robots can't recognize these frauds as soon as listed

Jon