More suspicious purchases - likely unauthorized use of buyer accounts

[somanypostcards]

Eleven days ago I reported 16 suspicious purchases.  I reported this to eBay's fraud department but never heard back.  In the past when I made similar reports eBay closed many of the accounts and/or sent me letters indicating eBay cancelled the sales due to the unauthorized use of buyers' accounts.

Today there were 11 suspicious purchases of $1.00 postcards made by 11 different buyers, all with low feedback ranging from 1 to 11, and all old accounts dating from 2012-2017.  All 11 purchases had a shipping address to ***.  There were 2 different recipients (buyer1 & buyer2), neither of which were the purchasers' names.  Buyer1 was also the recipient of 15 of the 16 suspicious purchases reported eleven days ago, so obviously eBay has taken no actions to block this suspicious recipient in ***.

I have 48 hours to decide whether to cancel these sales, which I am 99.9% certain involve fraud, or mail them since I got paid and eBay will penalize me if they are not mailed in a timely fashion.  Any suggestions?

[somanypostcards]

Today I got a message from eBay titled "We had a concern with a buyer's account."  It also said "All bids or orders from (xxx's) account have been canceled and any associated fees have been credited to your account."  Note:  This was a postcard I sold on 12/14/2021 and reported to eBay as 1 of 7 suspicious sales by 7 different eBay buyers all going to the above mentioned BEAVERTON, OR address with the faulty 11-digit phone number.  Here are the problems:

1.  I cancelled the sale on 12/15/2021 and got a refund of the variable FVFs at that time.  I have to assume that eBay is not also cancelling an already cancelled sale.

2.  eBay says the member ID is xxx (I can't enter the real member ID, so xxx is my example of eBay's entry).  My Orders awaiting shipment and Payments -> All transactions shows a member ID of yyy  for this transaction (I can't enter the member ID , so yyy is my example of the member ID shown).  When I click on the member ID yyy it takes me to member xxx and says member xxx is "no longer a register user."

3.  On 12/14/2021 member yyy had 27 feedbacks:  6 in the past month (3 from dell and 3 others, 6 from the past 6 months (4 from dell and 2 others), and 15 from the past year (10 from vipoutlet and 5 others).  This feedback has vanished - poof, gone, nada.  However if I click on See all feedback for xxx, I can see  199 feedbacks, 3 made more than a year ago and 196 made more than 5 years ago.  Again, I must ask, why is eBay removing recent positive feedback?

[itsjustasprain]

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@somanypostcards wrote:

2.  eBay says the member ID is xxx (I can't enter the real member ID, so xxx is my example of eBay's entry).  My Orders awaiting shipment and Payments -> All transactions shows a member ID of yyy  for this transaction (I can't enter the member ID , so yyy is my example of the member ID shown).  When I click on the member ID yyy it takes me to member xxx and says member xxx is "no longer a register user."

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Sounds like the buyer changed his ID at some time after he bought from you but before he got nuked. Ebay actually tracks us by an internal ID number and not the alias that we choose for ourselves - so changing your ID does not really change anything.

I forget the details now but when Ebay nukes an account they will remove the feedback left by the account as well. That may only apply to an account less than 30 days old though.

[somanypostcards]

The above account was established on 7/5/2005.  eBay only nuked the past year's feedback.  It left the old feedback.

Of the 12 accounts that are no longer registered users (of the 29 suspicious sales reported on 12/6/2021), all except 1 still show feedback.  One still active account from the 12/6/2021 sales also shows 2 different user IDs for the same buyer, which tends to be confusing from a seller's point of view.

[gwzcomps]

It is interesting eBay is finally taking some action.  I think I am up to 26 transactions with the Beaverton location now.  So far crickets so all I can do is keep documenting everything.

[somanypostcards]

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@gwzcomps wrote:

It is interesting eBay is finally taking some action.  I think I am up to 26 transactions with the Beaverton location now.  So far crickets so all I can do is keep documenting everything.

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I'm not sure if eBay is taking effective action, even if they close all 261 buyer accounts since the accounts were all likely hijacked.  eBay, as recently as Dec. 21 on my other selling ID, is still allowing the fraudulent buyer(s) at the BEAVERTON, OR address with the faulty 11 digit phone number to hijack a long-time user's account to make a purchase.  eBay needs to go after the recipient(s) of the sales, NOT the inactive, long time eBay users who likely don't even know their accounts have been stolen.

When I mailed 20 identical postcards sold on 12/17/2021 to addresses that appeared legitimate, I left the following feedback:  "Mailed.  Do you recognize this purchase?"  None of the 20 buyers have responded, but these are all old, very inactive accounts, so that does not surprise me.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

I don't have time to read the whole thread, but I did want to lyk that I sadly have had some experience being targeted of late, though with pricier items (not super expensive though, mid-range).  In one of the cases, where a supposed US account holder bought an item & then via a re-shipper tried to ship it overseas, then got their re-shippers confused & it came back to me & they did it again & I realized what was going on & they are now targeting me again. 

It's a long story & this was not the only red flag, but I did speak with someone in Trust & Safety at the time.  They looked up the info & advised me in no uncertain terms & very vehemently not to ship the item & that they would investigate.  This was a high level CSR I spoke to who understood me & clearly saw that it was a scam, likely an acct that had been taken over.   I heeded the advice, but recently took a look at the offending account & sad to see that now, 6 weeks later, it is still active 😞   I expected it to be NARU within days.  So IDK what's going on in the fraud dept, but this was disappointing to see 😞 

BTW, in my case, after speaking with the rep & being told "absolutely NOT" to whether I should ship, I searched the buyer name, which was very unique & was able to see that the actual US account owner had passed away a few years ago.  I already knew it was a scam, but this was the icing on the cake, as I now knew for certain.  IDK if Ebay googles as part of their 'investigation', but it took me all of 30 seconds to know that the acct had been taken over 😞  

Keep watching out, as mine have tried to come back multiple times now to purchase again.   

[gwzcomps]

This is interesting because between eBay staff and the support I have talked to they have insinuated that we have no way to know if these sales are legit.  T&S refused to talk to me about it even.  I'm still convinced eBay cares more about collecting the fees from the sales than maintain site security and safety. 

Kinda makes sense that they are using stolen info from people who have passed away.  The sales I have fulfilled have gone off without a hitch so far.  In the past it usually took eBay 4-7 days to figure out hijacked accounts.

[laughingjester]

I am not sure of the technical term of it. We call it fishing, person is taking little nibbles of cookies before eating a whole cake. stolen cards are treated the same. very small purchases at random areas then BAM! couple grand. 

[somanypostcards]

Today I got another message from eBay titled "We had a concern with a buyer's account" and that the recent bid or order was cancelled.  This was one of 80 suspicious sales that happened on 12/17/2021 and that I reported by private message on 12/19/2021 to Bay for Business on Facebook, stating I felt all 80 sales were unauthorized use of eBay buyers' accounts.  Many of these sales had a send to address in BEAVERTON, OR and used one of two faulty 11-digit phone numbers, and I cancelled those. 

 Back in March, eBay's message title conveyed more information:  "Unauthorized use of buyer account - Transaction(s) cancelled."  Now there is just the "we had a concern" which is not particularly helpful or informative...  Hopefully eBay also notified Dell and cancelled the 8 Dell transactions (2 in the past month, 5 in the past 6 months, and 1 in the past year) and the other 17 transactions made by this buyer account in 2021.

[somanypostcards]

Actually the 2 last messages from eBay are titled "We canceled a sale for your security."  When I open these messages, they says in bold:  "We had a concern with a buyer's account."  So the title is another eBay lie, as I cancelled these two sales... and reported the sales as suspicious so eBay would hopefully provide security to the other sellers this hijacked account had made purchases from.

[gwzcomps]

Speaking of the devil.  I just got a "We had a concern with a buyer’s account" email.  The question now is what happens with my money?  eBay is a little over a week late to catching this.

[gwzcomps]

Interesting tidbit.  Apparently the account was suspended due to "unauthorized access".  Also they paid with eBay certificates. 

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@gwzcomps wrote:

This is interesting because between eBay staff and the support I have talked to they have insinuated that we have no way to know if these sales are legit.  T&S refused to talk to me about it even.  I'm still convinced eBay cares more about collecting the fees from the sales than maintain site security and safety. 

Kinda makes sense that they are using stolen info from people who have passed away.  The sales I have fulfilled have gone off without a hitch so far.  In the past it usually took eBay 4-7 days to figure out hijacked accounts.

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I may have lucked out in that I was talking to someone about a VERO issue & then brought this one up as well, so it was not your run-of -the-mill CSR.   

I agree that in the past hijacked accts have been NARU'd very quickly, within a week.  It is really sad to see that this acct is still open well over a month later.   I doubt they will get closed, even though I believe the rep fwd'd it to the right dept.  The acct is going to victimize others who aren't as aware of some of these red flags.  Oh well.  I did what I could do.   

[gwzcomps]

Well things have slowed down for me, but part of that is because I haven't been listing any new inventory.  Seems I ran out of stuff the suspicious buyers want.

[shopwithdianne]

Thank you for this information - I have been having the same issue and was told by Ebay if I ship to an name / address that is different from the order - It is my responsibilty however, I can cancel the order without any negatives because of the different address  - 

I am now doing a bit more digging for new customers with little feedback and have actually written then to verify the order -