The "triangle" scheme rears it's ugly head in the coin business

K6AZ

Those of you who sell on consignment or sell for others, pay very close attention to this.

I just received a very sad call from a really good, honest seller. Most of his eBay sales are consignments. He is now liable for about $40,000 for selling coins in over 300 eBay auctions. The scheme works like this:

The scammer loads up on stolen credit card numbers, mostly from phising emails. The scammer then picks out coins on online dealer websites, copies the images, and then contact the dealers to hold the coins. He then edits out identifying parts of the images, and sends them to the eBay seller who thinks he has a windfall selling these coins for a 20% comission. Six weeks go by, and he thinks everything is peachy, and has forwarded the money to the scammer once the buyers have received the coins (by wire of course). The coin dealers start getting chargebacks for unathorized use of credit cards. Not surprisingly, they can not contact the scammer who ordered the coins, so they go after the eBay buyers who they shipped the coins to. In turn, the eBay buyers file disputes with PayPal against the unsuspecting seller. The seller gets left holding the bag for $40,00o, and the scammer is long gone with the cash.

Please don't ask for particulars, he didn't even tell me which dealers were involved, but he did say it appeared they wanted to keep this under raps, probably because it is very embarrassing.

The moral of this story is do not sell anything you do not have in your immediate possession, unless it is for someone you know and completely trust.

Russ

<< <i>The moral of this story is do not sell anything you do not have in your immediate possession >>



That's kind of a no brainer.

Russ, NCNE

greymars

mrearlygold

Wow!

Hopefully the crook will eventually be caught and hung by his private parts.

Tom

K6AZ

<< <i>

<< <i>The moral of this story is do not sell anything you do not have in your immediate possession >>



That's kind of a no brainer.

Russ, NCNE >>



What makes this scam so convincing is that the "consignor" tells the seller he is perfectly willing to wait until the buyer receives the coin and is happy with it. So the seller, not really thinking about CC chargebacks, figures everything is on the up-and-up. In this case, it took six weeks for the chargebacks to start showing up. By that time the seller had wired the scammer over $26,000.

TUMUSS

This is very scary. I am truly sorry that any dealers took a hit. I agree that selling ANYTHING that is not in "your" possesion is very risky.

ON another note:It simply F*&%ing amazes me that people get "took" by those phising emails. I bet I have received at least a Thousand of them....opened very few...and NEVER clicked on any links.

lloydmincy

I dont see the 'convincing" part at all. The EBay seller is STILL selling coins he never had possession of. I would of thought this was fishy from the get-go. It is still too bad....

-----lloyd

K6AZ

The dealers are going to get their coins or the money back. The buyers will either keep the coins or get their money back. The victim here is going to be the seller. Fortunately he was just about to wire another large sum to the scammer when he caught wind of it from one of the buyers. He figures as of right now, he will be out about $28,000, $26k he sent to the scammer and about $2k in eBay and PayPal fees.

K6AZ

<< <i>I dont see the 'convincing" part at all. The EBay seller is STILL selling coins he never had possession of. I would of thought this was fishy from the get-go. It is still too bad....

-----lloyd >>



Llyod, while you and I would never agree to such and arrangement, others are more trusting. In this case, the convincing part was 20% commission, and funds would not be sent to the "consignor" until the buyers received the coins and were happy with them.

RKKay

Thanks for the heads-up, Eric.

Rampage

All I can say is Wow! Good luck to the seller. The scammer must have had this planned. Very sneaky way of not getting caught.

Hopefully, all will turn out okay for the seller.

coynclecter

<< <i>amazes me that people get "took" by those phising emails >>



I get daily reports from the Dept. of Homeland Security and FDIC. New schemes are coming out that are even more sophisticated. Expect trojans that will copy your banking passwords and send them out to the criminals. If you have any banking information then you need virus protection and a firewall, (zonealarm is great). The main targets will be small businesses.

relayer

I don't even list anything of my own unless I physically move it into the "For Sale" box

MAD4MORGANS

Great info!! Thanks for posting it!!

I thought I read a thread here recently where the seller had blocked out the serial numbers on a slabbed coin. Perhaps this was one of those situations.

---

<< <i>unless it is for someone you know and completely trust. >>

My ICON motto is: "IN GOD WE TRUST" let me add..."all others pay cash"... especially on eBay

Conder101

<< <i>Expect trojans that will copy your banking passwords and send them out to the criminals. >>


Those have been around for some time.

coppercoins

<< <i>

<< <i>The moral of this story is do not sell anything you do not have in your immediate possession >>



That's kind of a no brainer.

Russ, NCNE >>



I completely agree. I'd never sell anything I don't have in hand - no way no-how.

Russ

<< <i>Having the coins in hand would not have provided any protection since they were paid for with bogus accounts. End result

would be the same. >>



In this particular scheme, the scammer is not going to take delivery from the dealer, then turnaround and ship them to the seller. That creates far too much of a time lag and forces him to provide a shipping address. Requiring that the coins be in-hand would have stopped the slimeball in his tracks.

Russ, NCNE