Scam? Money Laundering?

Bought 13 rolls of .49 stamps on ebay for $610.00. Slight discount from face value. Stamps came from USPS Stamp Fulfillment services, with my name etc. Cost seller $638. Obviously 'Seller', who is located in USSR went online and bought stamps with me as purchaser. Taking a loss. What give?

Were the stamps 49c denomination stamps or "forever" stamps? If 49c denomination, this is not a big deal as denominated stamps are often bought/sold at a discount to face. If "forever", you got a slight deal, if not counterfeit.

Let me make this clearer. I paid some one $610 for stamps. Seller then went and paid $637 to have the item that I just paid $610 for purchased from the United States Government and shipped directly to me. AFTER my purchase Seller bought the stamps from United States Post Office Stamp Fulfillment Services to fill my purchase. For a loss of $27 plus ebay and Paypal fees. Why? Seller lives in USSR, which makes me suspect that some kind of scam is going on. But what?

A pure guess, but maybe he's able to purchase stamps through a third party - say, the company he works for. He orders them, the company is billed, and he sells them privately to you for his personal gain.

As I said, purely theoretical - I know nothing about the guy!

Ah, I see - either not too bright or something's fishy.

Sometimes criminals are not the brightest. I read about a guy who was slicing off the ends of $20 bills and attaching them to $1 bills. He was counterfeiting $20 bills at a cost of $21.

Robert

I would bet the seller is using stolen credit card data to pay for the stamps and you're giving the thief hard money in return.

You paid in dollars thru Paypal. He probably paid in Rubles that have taken a major hit exchange wise. There may be laws at his end that make exchanging those Rubles for Dollars impossible or extremely expensive to do. He may be willing to take a hit to get his hands on those dollars outside the country. Though that may be strictly speculation on my part too.

What's scary to me would be purchasing $600+ dollars of anything from someone in Russia

Why? I have paypal protection. But anyway, I didn't notice that he was in Russia until after I bought it.

Scam. Money laundering.

Oh thanks. My scam-o-meter went off so hard it bent the needle.