posted on December 28, 2001 01:37:14 PM new
Unit 10 Investigation: eBay Scam
Shoppers on online auction sites like eBay are getting burned trying to get their hands on hot items for Christmas, a Unit 10 Investigation revealed.
• Check Out The Traffic
• Get Email Before The Severe Weather Hits
• Meet The 10News Team
• Comparison Shop For Gifts, Or E-Mail Santa!
Salt Lake City residents Kerry and Brian Wagner were eager to get their 6-year-old son, Nick, a PlayStation 2 (news - web sites) (PS2) for Christmas. The popular video game system was sold out in stores, so the couple went online.
On eBay, the couple found exactly what they were looking for, offered at $300 apiece -- retail value for a PS2.
"Can you say overstocked? We can!" the eBay ad read. "You are bidding on the Sony PlayStation 2 Xmas bundle picture below. New, sealed and unused."
The Wagners jumped at the chance and were delighted when an Airborne Express package arrived just a few weeks later -- until they opened the box. Inside the box they found only a picture of a PS2.
Go back and read that ad again. The key word is "picture." In their excitement to get one of the hottest Christmas gifts around, the Wagners, and 74 other buyers, were duped by tricky wording.
"What we bid on and what we purchased was the picture, and not the PlayStation," Kerry Wagner said.
It was a $300 lesson in proofreading.
But postal inspectors told 10News that a reasonable person would expect to get a PlayStation, and getting a picture instead is fraud.
10News reported that the person who posted the ad, Anthony Van Dean, is also pushing X-Boxes and computer motherboards on eBay, all with the same wording.
By way of a post office box at an El Cajon boulevard Mail Boxes, Etc., 10News was able to trace Van Dean to an address in Clairemont. There, 10News found Tom Schaefer, Van Dean's former roommate.
Schaefer said Van Dean was a student at the University of California, San Diego. Smart, and computer savvy, Van Dean had very few scruples, according to Schaefer.
"He would have been the guy most likely to perpetrate something like that," Schaefer said.
Six months ago Van Dean was working as a manager for a downtown parking company, 10News reported. His records as an employee with the company were not made available to 10News.
But postal inspectors can get their hands on that information, along with records of postal drops at the post office box. Investigators said they plan to follow up on what the Unit 10 Investigation has found.
If you were a victim of this scam, or one like it, authorities ask that you report it immediately to the FBI (news - web sites)'s Internet Fraud Complaint Center.
posted on December 28, 2001 03:06:01 PM new
I don't understand why he even bothered with the wording scam in the item description. Did he actually think that consumers would take a $300 hit and blame themselves for not reading the description "correctly" ?
But he might be able to avoid criminal prosecution since he did send the picture. I don't think they put people in jail for slicking people with fine print- if they did, they would have a lot of people to prosecute.
It will be interesting to see what they do when they catch him.
posted on December 28, 2001 04:33:30 PM new
I didn't catch it, and if I had noticed, I probably would have thought it was a typo.
This is reminiscent of another scam that I heard about when the PS2 first came out. The wording said something about the new box and receipt, and that's exactly what people got; a new box and a receipt; at that time, they were going for up to $1200.
