So I’ve mentioned that I was shopping for a jeep. Man, I’ve been looking for weeks. And I almost won an auction on ebay on Monday. I was outbid in the last 40 seconds. It was a sweet jeep but somebody else was willing to pay just a bit more than I was. So after a full day of moping, I’ve been back on the hunt.

Last night I saw another possible ride. I emailed the guy about it and then noticed an update that was added late last night. A “Buy It Now” option for $2900. This wasn’t an actual Buy It Now, but a comment left at the bottom of the auction to email him about.

Now $2900 is extremely low for this jeep. But, hey, worth looking into, right?

I asked some specific questions about the jeep which he basically glossed over with “it runs great, no problems, A+.” He said he’d ship it to me for a fee but I said I wanted to pick it up in person.

Then without anything finalized, he sends me an ebay invoice for $2900 to be wired to him. Let’s look at the bits to see what doesn’t add up.

• It’s a private listing, meaning you can’t see who has bid on the item.
• You can’t just bid on it, you must be pre-approved to bid.
• His email signature has a name of Jeff Harris.
• His email address is chrissbennet2.
• I’m supposed to wire the money to his “agent” Antonio in Chicago.
• The jeep is listed as being located in Virginia Beach.

Here’s my reply to his request for payment.

“Ok, I’ll have my banker in Nigeria wire you the money, just send me your bank account info.”

Jackass. If he replies, I’ll post it.

Update: His reply, and I quote “?????????????????????????????????????????????”

My reply “The auction says the jeep is in Virginia Beach so why am I supposed to send the money to Antonio in Chicago? Isn’t your name Jeff? Or is it Chriss?”

Update the 2nd: His reply “My name is Jeff Harris. We have been assigned by eBay to one of their representatives to complete the payment. Mr. Antonio Paredes is the eBay representative and he is in Chicago. eBay has agents all over the US territory. Whats wrong with that?!?”

At that point I was tired of playing along and I decided to end it. I looked at the mail headers to see where the “ebay invoice” had actually come from. Surprise, surprise. It didn’t come from ebay. It came from some domain hosted by hostbaby.com. I let him know:

(names, addresses and phone numbers have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent)

Well this has been fun, but too bad you tried to scam the IT guy who can read mail headers. That invoice did not come from ebay. It came from user ‘luser’ at www.ebayscammer.com which is owned by

Loser, Bob someloser@aol.com
Random Street
In Arkansas
us
+1.2345678900

You may or not be Bob Loser but rest assured I will be contacting hostbaby and letting them know that one of their domains is being used for ebay scams.

Have a pleasant night,

-kary

I haven’t heard back from “Jeff” or “Chriss”. I’m thinking he shit his pants and moved on.