Here's the e-mail I received from the guy that won my G70 last night:

Hello.
How are you doing today? I am XXXXXXX from MD, a us army, presently in Afghanistan serving our great country and am proud of my job, I need to buy a surprise gift for my grandson who is working in the American Embassy in (Lagos Land, Nig) and his birthday is coming up next week and luckly i came across your item,as i see that your item is in good condition for that.I will be making the payment through Paypal.kindly send me your Paypal Account Email Address Or Your Invoice,So i can make out your payment immediately & Paypal will notify you of my payment as soon as it has been comfirmed by them & your paypal account will be credited as soon as possible..let me know how much it will cost you in shiping the item to my grandson in (Lagos Land, Nig) Using the courier service* US Postal Service (Express Mail International)EMS 3 - 5 days shipping & send me the total amount for the item including the shiping cost to (Lagos Land, Nigeria).So i can make out payment Immediately.I also had to choose the Postal Service, Cos i believe It`s safe, shipping there & Affordable too.So Make sure you get the package ready for shipment, You can ship the item as soon as you recieve the paypal confirmation.Please mail me now Cause it`s urgently needed.


This is the shipping address below.


NAME:- ......................................XXXXXXX
ADDRESS:- ................................#110 GLOB ROAD
CITY:- .........................................IKEJA
STATE:- ......................................LAGOS STATE
COUNTRY:-.................................NIGERIA
ZIP-CODE:-..................................23401
PHONE:- ....................................2348053600207


Awaiting your fast reply.
Regards
Col XXXXXXX.


Gee do you think it's a scam?? :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: What are these guys thinkin'!

It must really suck to actually be a foreigner in Lagos trying to buy stuff on eBay... :p

Yep. Same crap I saw about 5 months ago.

If I remember right, it look to be word-for-word the same message.

wallace

This has happened to me no less than 4 TIMES!!! I **** you not. Twice trying to sell a Playstation 2 and twice when I was trying to sell my pj. A new eBay member with zero feedback (and sometimes set to private) would buy my item and send me an e-mail in broken English requesting it be shipped to Nigeria (despite the fact that I clearly noted I only ship to the US and Canada). I reported everyone of them and low and behold within 2 days they had terminated their accounts and I got my final value fee back. Lesson learned: I now require immediate payment via Paypal for any Buy It Now items and I don't dick around with auctions.

Yeah, the last two items I listed ended up the same way. Ebay immediately noticed that it was a hijacked account and completely removed the auction. The bummer thing about them removing the auction is that I could no longer contact the serious bidders. This is really getting to be a problem.

Doc

I wish my grandfather would buy me a G70! :p

You have no choice but to tatally screw with the guy:

http://www.419eater.com/

This past Sunday night on NBC, Dateline did a show on these Nigerian scammers. Since folks are becoming more aware of the Nigerian scammers, they have started using addresses in the neighbouring country of Benin.

Happend to me word for word Sunday night on a projector I was selling. Eby cancelled his bid and I was able to re-list.

How does the scam work?
You ship the stuff out and they tell paypal to refund their money leaving the seller with no projector and no money?

How does the scam work?
You ship the stuff out and they tell paypal to refund their money leaving the seller with no projector and no money?

The most common ploy is an overpayment mechanism... "I have a check for $1000 that I'll sign over to you for your $500 item... The check was for another purchase gone bad. Then you can send me the item and wire me the difference..."
The check, of course, is bogus.

I'm sure there are other mechanisms...

Heh lol, if you believe that then you pretty much deserve to be parted with your money.

But paypal doesn't do checks do they?
I though it was stricly electronic payement with paypal?

But paypal doesn't do checks do they?
I though it was stricly electronic payement with paypal?


So far as I know, you are correct. All I can think of is the scammer will try to direct the buyer to a phoney Paypal site. Maybe they'll use a stolen credit card. Or the seller will demand a refund for some reason and Paypal will comply; Paypal protections - such as they are - don't work so well outside of North America, or so I've heard.

Thank you all for documenting this on here. The very same thing ended 2 of my Ebay auctions last night. Jerks even sent emails IDENTICAL to the one posted at the beginning of this thread. Now to deal with Ebay on their charges for the bogus purchase.

With much gratitude,
Adam

guy, It isn't that hard to combat this BS on e-bay. Scammers don't use Sniping programs because they create new accoutns daily. SO, just watch your auctions daily and CANCEL BIDS from the losers. Basically, anyone with zero feedback or "new account" get's booted emmediately from my auctions. Not that I have auctions on e-bay, that place is a cess-pool. :D
Go to E-bay and under HELP. search for cancel+bids

When you sell on eBay, you're working directly with the eBay Community. eBay provides you with ways you can limit your transaction to people you feel comfortable with. There are several ways you can manage bidders and buyers. You should review all of the information provided before using these tools.

For your listings you can:

Block bidders and buyers for any of your listings
Cancel bids for your item listing
You can set up buyer requirements for your listings by going to the Seller Preferences section in My eBay. These requirements are based on characteristics, rather than specific User IDs. For example, you can block all buyers that have a negative feedback score.

Blocking bidders and buyers
If you know that you don't want to sell to certain eBay members, you can put them on your blocked list. Members on that list will not be able to bid on any of your listings until you remove them from the list. You can block up to 1000 User IDs.

To add a member to your blocked list:
Go to the Blocking a bidder/buyer page.
Enter the User IDs of the eBay members you wish to block in the text box.

Click the Submit button.

To remove a bidder/buyer from your blocked list, delete the User ID (s) in the text box and click the Submit button.
Note: You should inform the eBay members after lifting the block, so that they can resume bidding on your items.

Canceling bids
In general, sellers should not cancel bids on their auctions.

Legitimate reasons to cancel a bid include:

1) A bidder contacts you to back out of the bid.
2) You cannot verify the identity of the bidder after trying all reasonable means of contact.
3) bidder is a scum-bag scammer from Nigeria :D
Important:Bids cannot be reinstated once they've been canceled.

Note: You are also able to cancel bids when you end your listing early.

To cancel a bidders bid:
Go to the Canceling bids placed on your listing page.

Enter the Item Number, the User ID of the bid you are canceling, and the reason you are canceling the bid.

Click the Cancel Bid button..

The above is well and good unless the bidder uses Buy It Now. Ebay doesn't allow a seller to cancel a bid if BIN was used. That's what happened to Acony35's auctions.

I know these things....My coworker was so naive (read stupid)!

She actually shipped a laptop to Nigeria (sold via Craigslist) even BEFORE getting a cleared payment !

Good for her that the next day she mentioned it at work, raving about how nice the transaction went when we told her the truth!

The story did end nicely as the fed ex stopped the package in London ...... it finally came back after 1 month or so.

Thank you draganm for the pointers... I totally agree that Ebay is a cess-pool... I renewed my club membership here and don't plan to bother with that other mess anymore.

It was exactly as alan stated, they used "buy it now" and I couldn't cancel the bid because the auction had ended... Looks like a place Ebay could make some changes in policy.

Thanks again all.......

2) You cannot verify the identity of the bidder after trying all reasonable means of contact.

Does anyone actually do this? I never have and of all the thousands of auctions I have bid on no seller has tried to verify my identity. How would you go about verifying a bidder's identity?

well yeah BIN is a can of worms and best avoided. If someone really wants it they will go through the normal auction to get it.

Does anyone actually do this? I never have and of all the thousands of auctions I have bid on no seller has tried to verify my identity. How would you go about verifying a bidder's identity?
I do it every time, the conditions are that you can only get personal info on someone who is actively bidding on your auctions. E-bay makes it very hard to find this page, it's under e-bay community" or some such non-sense. yuo have to enter the uaction, and the user name. Then, they automatically send you their info and also send your personal infor to them. Name, Adress, phone number, etc.
I started verifying every bid, and people who didn't answer the phone would get kicked off emmediately. some people would answer the phone and had on idea someone was bidding on their account. Turns out the teenage son was trying to "buy" my Plasma TV on the family computer :rolleyes: it was all too much trouble, really not worth selling on E-bay.

Requesting a member’s contact information
If you cannot contact your trading partner through email, you can request this person's contact information (name, city, and telephone number) directly from eBay.

To protect the privacy of eBay users, you can only obtain contact information for eBay users who are involved in your current or recent transactions.

For example:

Sellers can request contact information for all bidders in an active transaction and the winning bidder in a successful, closed transaction.

Bidders can request contact information for a seller during an active transaction and in a successful, closed transaction if they are the winning bidder.

In addition, due to International laws, access to contact information for International users may be limited.

To request a person’s contact information:
Click the “Advanced Search” link, located under the Search button in the top right corner of most eBay pages.

Under the Members section on the left side of the page, click the “Find Contact Information” link and provide the User ID of the member and the Item number of the transaction you have in common.

The information you request will be sent to your registered email address. This information can only be used in accordance with eBay's Privacy Policy. The user whose information you are requesting will also receive your contact information.
Sounds pretty simple, you get an e-mail back that say's your high bidder is

Name: Matubu Scamawumba
Adress: Lagos , Nigeria
Phone: 555- RIP-OFFF :D