More Fraud On Ebay

http://www.ebay.com/itm/16188295210...:MESINDXX:IT

The British Cartel continues to sell modified stamps in an attempt to deceive hobbyists. This time, under the seller name tenshillings, they are offering a 'Mint, never hinged' #276 which was previously sold in Kelleher Auction Sale 669, Lot #2792. It has a P.F. cert which identifies it as being hinged which the Kelleher auction notes clearly. It was sold at Kelleher the first week of May and a few months later is now miraculously Never Hinged.
Don

Sorry for a couple of naive questions -

How do you eagle-eyed folks spot these listings on ebay and line them up with specific lots in past auctions? I'd like to be able to do that efficiently, not only for my own sake but also to help identify other such dodgy situations for others.

Also, on this specific one, why would someone buy the item at the auction for $502, doctor it up, and then start an ebay auction at such a low price that it's still only $280 with a day to go? Are they standing by with shill bidders to make sure that the thing either sells for a generous profit or gets pulled to try again at a later date?

Only ebay can prove shill bidding and they refuse to do so. I think the question you asked, why would anyone be willing to risk losing money by starting it at 0.01, pretty much answers itself. This seller also moves material around between different sellers, so it is a given that he has many, many ebay accounts. Here is another place ebay could step up and greatly improve the issue if they desired.

As far as spotting these, save searches/links for ebay and the other major auction houses. Before buying a higher end stamp, especially a MNH one, save the image to your desktop. Identify a couple of the corner perfs that make it unique. Then search other sites for that catalog number and compare perfs.
Don

It won't sell for $280... Ten Shillings will shill bid it during the
last few seconds of the listing to well over $500 if no legitimate
bids get up to well over what they paid for the stamp...

And... they probably want to sell the stamp for hundreds beyond the $500
so, the shill will likely enter in a snipe bid of $800 or even $1000 to
make sure nobody can win it...

Then, it will appear again on ebay under a different seller name...

quite a racket

Great detective work Don.

Since they are located in the US, isn't there the possibility for someone to sue them?
It is clearly a fraud!!

They are located in Great Britain, they use shippers in USA to increase obfuscation. stallzer, this was pointed out to me so it wasn't my detective work.
Don

Ok the original listing 'sold' on Nov 19 for less than the buyer bought it from Kelleher.


The stamp was supposed to be located in US. Amazingly, the same stamp now shows up a few days later listed once again by a buyer located in England.




Obviously not enough time to get paid, ship and receive this stamp. And then the 'second' buyer is also willing to start the listing at $0.01? What a joke.

Is this an example of just how little ebay cares or how apathetic we, as collectors, are? (Or both?) Obviously this guy has been finding some buyers over the years, are we so driven to find 'good deals' that we support people like this? Should we keep promoting ebay as a good place to shop to new hobbyists?

Frankly, I have given up on ebay trying to improve these kinds of situations. Sellers who troll for suckers and sellers who promoting wallpaper may be justified with 'buyer beware', but total fraud is another thing. I do not think that humans will ever change, greed and those who will take advantage of others will always exist.

Education is the key here. Education of not only our subject matter, but also in learning to differentiate between quality sellers and those who are not.
Don

How many times is he going to list, sell, and resell this stamp? I guess until it finally goes over the price he originally paid for it.

I think there is more to it than just reselling it until it hits a certain dollar amount. Look at it this way, If he ever does sell it to a legitimate bidder then he probably makes a decent profit.

Each time it goes to one of his pseudo (shill) accounts the money gets transferred to a "clean" place. The money is most likely from some other scam or some other illegal venture so every time he creates a sale of a stamp, other illegal money gets transferred or laundered (cleaned).

So Stamps probably are a front for something larger so he uses his fake ebay sales to move money to himself.

Agreed, there are other possible reasons too. He could be building up the books for these various names to eventually sell the companies off; pumping sales to make them look better then they really are. I do find it strange that three of the four listings closed at the same $341 price, almost like he was trying to establish a market average price for a #276.
Don

I find the $341 figure really odd. Can't be a coincidence.

$341 is GBP225 at current exchange rates, which is a rounder number. Perhaps that is the target.

Here's one I just came across on ebay.




They misidentify it as a 276a imperforate, and only want a mere $2500!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/276a-XF-OG-...AOSwDNdV03vw

Reusing the image so often reminds me of a case I once saw on Judge Judy. This gal sold a cell phone on ebay for over $300 except it wasn't a phone at all - it was a printed image of a phone. The seller had no shame about selling the image for that much money, as she claimed there was no representation made that she was selling an actual phone vs. just a picture of one.

As you can imagine, Judge Judy was not amused.

Maybe the next level of fraudulent criminality for this seller will be to sell photocopies of this stamp.