Black Mask in the mail

[alphaautomotive]

The past few weeks I have been receiving small envelopes with a single black paper mask inside. Buyers are sending these as "returns" to orders, obviously not at all the correct item. I had a buyer purchase a valve cover, opens a return on the item and sent a paper mask back with the return label.

Anyone else experiencing this?

[midwesttoolco]

Hello,

We recently had two transactions of this type come through. We discovered the who, what, and how. 

The seller account that hurt us (and many others) no longer offers products… They took all of their products down this weekend after we discovered and notified about 50 sellers who we were pretty sure had been hit by this scam in the second week of January. 

A massive percent of the sellers we identified as potentially taking losses on this scam actually responded and let us know we were correct.

Since then, we have let those sellers know how they were hit and shared an option to avoid this particular operation… same as we share here.

HOW IT IS DONE

E-Bay Seller YUQ5219 was copying products (pictures and info) from other sellers on E-Bay and posting them on his account. YUQ5219 then posts the products at reduced price. When he received an order he opened a secondary (fake) buyers account and then drop shiped the order through our company and scheduled delivery to the name and address of the person who bought our product through YUQ5219 seller account. 

Here are some example queries we used to start discovering which sellers were being targeted by him.

This is the product he hit us on:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313&_nkw=NEW+CRAFTSMAN+C3+19.2+Vol...

These are some products that other sellers have been hit on.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=1016380R+Nordyne+Frigidaire+OEM+Blower+Control+Board&_in_kw=3&_...

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Black+Widow+Universal+Deluxe+Steel+Mesh+ATV+Front+Rack+Basket&_...

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Rosineer+PRESSO+Personal+Heat+Press%2C+1500%2B+lbs%2C+Dual-Heat...

(We simply took the exact item name and built an advanced search to show which buyers had sold the exact item name… once we figured this out all of the pieces fell into place.)

After the product arrived and was received by the real customer, YUQ5219 (pretending to be the product recipient on the aliased account) filed a return with E-Bay claiming the product needs to be returned per policy. 

The return process was started and YUQ5219 (on the alias buyer account) received the return shipping label (through his aliased buyers account), attached it to an envelope, and put it in the post so the package showed as being returned. In this case YUQ5219 (on the alias buyer account) sent us a used face Mask. 

HOW TO AVOID BEING SCAMMED BY THE SAME OR SIMILAR OPERATION

Based on our research we discovered that YUG5219 will usually only make one purchase through each “straw” buyer account he creates.

What we have done to ensure we are not ever going to deal with this or similar scams is simply limit who can purchase by adjusting our buyer requirements requiring that anybody who purchased from us has made at least 2 prior purchases on the Ebay System. 

Yes, we may lose a few orders from first time buyers but will not have to deal with this particular scam again.

Here is how to do it:

Go to Settings → Selling Preferences → and “edit” Managing Who Can Buy From You

Scroll down to “Buyer Requirements” and click box, “Only set this requirement to block buyers with a feedback score of” “2” (or whatever number you like,)

NOTE: When you click this check box the box above it (Block buyers who are currently winning or have bought) will automatically check itself as well. You need to adjust this drop down and make sure that the number there is high. We are currently set at “only block if they have ordered (100) times in the last 10 days”. If you do not confirm the number is good for you it may limit the volume of purchases by one or more of your high volume buyers.

[kako_5344]

---

@midwesttoolco wrote:

Based on our research we discovered that [seller] will usually only make one purchase through each “straw” buyer account he creates.

What we have done to ensure we are not ever going to deal with this or similar scams is simply limit who can purchase by adjusting our buyer requirements requiring that anybody who purchased from us has made at least 2 prior purchases on the Ebay System. 

---

Parade, rain. It's a one and done buyer. Even gets away when eBay shuts down their MBG.

And you can't block zero-feedback buyers, nor any below some arbitrary feedback rating. Sorry, but that won't work.

[obdcanex_llc]

We have been hit by this same individual too!!!!  Multiple times!  Always a black face mask...  And, he always buys the same product as well...   Our first round was in November, more recently, in January. 

[mikes.stocks]

I am up to three of these replacement/ returns for items  that are in 24x6x6 inch boxes and weigh 4 lbs.  They attached a picture that wasn't even my product when they requested a return and I notified ebay  at that time.  They said to wait until the item arrived to contest it.  Easy to say when it is our money and not theirs that is on hold.  We also have to pay for return shipping which is 10 to 15 dollars on most of my items.  Ebay needs to screen new buyers  better just like they do us as sellers.  This gets old reporting scammers and taking pics and hoping that somehow we will be protected by buyer protection.

[mikes.stocks]

I didn't say that very well earlier.  I received 3 black facemasks instead of the large 24 inch boxes containing the actual items I sell.  SImply another rip off because they file a claim on their credit card if ebay doesn't charge us as sellers

[autocarpets1]

Yes! I have had three returns, all of which I had to pay return shipping so a label was sent to them. All three were wiper arms and blades. Once I received all three and opened a case, they sent the same three to me again (which I thought was a little strange). One ebay refunded, one they did not and the other is still under investigation. The one that ebay did not refund and sided with me had the balls to open a payment dispute with his bank. That was a blessing in disguise. Boy did I send everything I could. Hopefully his bank will see the fraudulent activity and prosecute. I also took all six poly mailers to my USPS office and they sent them to the Postal Inspector. They were all three the same poly mailers, the same blurry thermal printer (that by the way cannot be scanned according to the USPS office) and the mask were all folded the exact same way (offset). 

Hopefully they were catch them and do something about this. 

[oldschool718]

You can go to seller preferences  in your account , go to manage who can buy from you, there is an option to block new accounts who have 0 feed back you can set the requirements as to the minimum amount of feed back a buyer has before making a purchase from you. 

[obdcanex_llc]

We need to find a way to band together and take this to the next level.  Face Mask guy won’t stop until there are major consequences.  He’s wracking up large financial losses at this point on all of us…. Not to mention wasted time.  I’m also looking into copyright and trademark violations and filing complaints.   He’s using privileged marketing material.

https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-fraud/report-fraud

[trains_a_53]

buyer did ship my stuff back and ebay gave him a full refund

[buyservertech]

update for me never seen this before but

in 1 week alone 3 returns 

different people ? got a black face mask with my return label

sent appeals and spend hours to get a real person on the phone but

"when we let your buyer return the item to you, we also want to make sure that you will receive it in its original condition. Otherwise, we will consider this as a Fraudulent Return, and this is against our policy. However, as we don’t handle items directly, we’re unable to make that determination."

I sent pics and videos nothing so im out of money , product and time 

[mistkistcranberry]

Sounds like eBay will have to come up with a solution because if this starts happening to multiple sellers and there is a class action lawsuit, then it will be problematic.  

Maybe eBay will have to start to accept video of opening the returned item as proof.

[blackberry_hills]

Had it happen to us 3 times now, once months ago, twice recently. Oddly, eBay system will likely initially side with the buyer. I was told by an eBay agent, that is not actually a real person siding with the buyer, but rather the system (AI). I appealed that decision the first time this happened, and got good results from eBay. I now have two more cases escalated (after they were first sided in the buyer's favor) waiting to hear from eBay. I'll keep you posted. 

EBay seems to take fraud very seriously, and has always taken the right action in the end with us. They know it not only hurts us, but eBay as well, to allow these people to get away with their fraud. 

Just be sure to appeal any decision made in the buyer's favor with this issue. This is fraud and it must be stopped. But it won't if decisions are left in favor of the buyer. If these fraudsters make money, they will keep doing it.

[blackberry_hills]

We've had it happen to us 3 times now, once months ago, twice recently. Oddly, eBay system will likely initially side with the buyer. I was told by an eBay agent, that is not actually a real person siding with the buyer, but rather the system (AI). I appealed that decision the first time this happened, and got good results from eBay. I now have two more cases escalated (after they were first sided in the buyer's favor) waiting to hear from eBay. I'll keep you posted. 

EBay seems to take fraud very seriously, and has always taken the right action in the end with us. They know it not only hurts us, but eBay as well, to allow these people to get away with their fraud. 

Just be sure to appeal any decision made in the buyer's favor with this issue. This is fraud and it must be stopped. But it won't if decisions are left in favor of the buyer. If these fraudsters make money, they will keep doing it.

[generic_store_name]

I think there's a relatively simple solution to this.

1. Have your returns held at your post office. You can do this on the USPS website.

2. Pick them up and open them in front of a USPS employee, on video, if possible. Explain what's going on to the postal worker before you record anything though, because even though it's a 1st amendment protected activity and allowed in USPS Poster 7, most postal workers aren't familiar with it and get iffy at the thought of being recorded.

3. Ask the postal worker to file a report with the postal inspector.

4. Get documentation of what occurred in paper form, from both your post office and the postal inspector. Even if you can't get a copy of the final report in time to meet Ebay's ridiculous deadline for such things, at least get a copy of the report you filed.

5. Give that to Ebay. I'd personally recommend chatting with an agent and/or emailing them vs the phone.

[spygal999]

We've now had 2 sales in the last two weeks where a buyer wanted to return the item, and sent a small envelope with a face mask inside instead of the equipment.   It's infuriating.   Both buyers had no feedback (new users).  One was in Texas, and one in New York.  What's with this?!?