Our eBay business is being harassed/stalked by a known convicted criminal

[5150motorsport]

Our business has been under daily attack, harassment and stalking from a seller/competitor which has been going on since Dec 2022. The seller who is located in Canada in Surrey, BC was convicted and arrested multiple times over the past few years for stealing apparently in upwards of $1.5mill USD using eBay and Craigslist mainly. This started after we noticed he was stealing all our listing and images from our website which we reported to eBay and Vero. He then stepped up his attacks by registering our company domain name in Canada with a .CA extension and sending us fake emails in the middle of the night saying "is this also your website?" which was being forwarded to his own site (what a genius). This was reported immediately on social media (Instagram) and one of the largest Porsche community forums (rennlist.com) since we have a lot of International customers and wanted to make sure they do not somehow end up on this crook's website and get scammed financially.  He then proceeded to impersonate our company by contacting various companies/suppliers and posing as one of our owners to try to cause problems. His next moves were to use different eBay accounts to try to make purchase from our store which were blocked and reported to the eBay security team immediately so they can monitor all his actions. Then he tried to make more purchases using various people/accounts which were all identified by eBay and blocked. He also tried at the same time to place fraudulent orders on our website and all the logs, IP addresses, timestamps, syslog, firewall logs etc were forwarded to the FBI IC3 division. He has now setup a new store and spent every night from 10pm until 5am copying every single one of our store listings word for word. We have filed multiple reports with eBay and Vero but they are taking their sweet time to investigate this crook.  We have provided all the documentation Porsche owners from various forums who were scammed by this guy have provided us as some of them lost $100k and others were scammed via eBay. Another interesting fact is that he gets so many negative feedbacks per week its not even funny but every single one disappears within minutes of being posted. We found out he is paying a service that will remove all negative feedback and provided all the information to eBay as well but again they are slow to investigate. The FBI IC3 has been pretty helpful so far surprisingly and they have even reached out to the RCMP in Canada where he lives to investigate this criminal. What else can we do to get eBay to help us with this serious matter as we are dealing with a life long criminal who was arrested twice and served prison time for the crimes he committed via eBay platform?  This criminal by the way is doing this only to us no other seller so this is harassment/stalking against a specific competitor (us). Why is eBay protecting scum like this on their platform?

[dqdistribution]

Can you expand on what you think eBay can do?

Their abilities are quite limited.

You say things like they are having feedback removed by paying for a service. Is this speculation? Do you have evidence, and if you do how did you obtain such evidence?

Harassment sucks, but it's hard to actually prevent it online. Accounts aren't ID verified for buyers, IP bans are easily avoided. I'm just not entirely sure what your expectations are.

[5150motorsport]

You would think if there is a known seller who was convicted of stealing millions of dollars using their platform and attacking other competitors eBay would not tolerate this kind of behavior?

[inhawaii]

Majority of your post is pure speculation.

"This criminal by the way is doing this only to us"

Unless you live with this criminal and are with him 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,  how would you possibly know that?

[5150motorsport]

Every single listing he has is stolen from our store word for word it's a fact not speculation.  We have tracked his IP address to his house in Canada when he tried to make a fraudulent transaction on our website. IC3 has confirmed with GoDaddy Canada the DNS A-record changes since he purchased our domain name on Dec 10th 2022. What other proof do you need? eBay has even confirmed they are seeing the same thing.

[dqdistribution]

I don't ever see eBay going after someone for copying someone's description or images.

I'm not a lawyer, but I guess you can pursue legal action based on the information you have about that person.

eBay also has no control over what they put on their own website. I really don't understand what your expectations are here.

[inhawaii]

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@5150motorsport wrote:

Every single listing he has is stolen from our store word for word it's a fact not speculation.  

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This is not against the law, or even a ebay violation.

That's like me saying that I know someone is a criminal because they eat cereal for breakfast.

[fab_finds4u]

eBay owns your content. They may even have your pictures in their product catalog.

eBay doesn't care if someone is copying your pictures or listings.

[dqdistribution]

The only time I see eBay doing anything over pictures is if it's their logo and that makes them look bad.

If someone's site ripped ebay.com and made a clone, made a domain similar to eBay's.

Anything produced by a user, I don't see eBay ever taking any time of action.

If say someone made a website that stole user-provided content that was taken from eBay's website, then I would assume it would be the users responsibility to hold that person accountable. 

Same if a buyer sends back an empty box. You can file legal action against the user, but not eBay. eBay is also not going to be taking that user to court for sending an empty box.

[fashunu4eeuh]

Hi @5150motorsport well, you’ve been put through the ringer. So sorry about that.

Read your post in its entirety. (Some may have trouble reading the wall of words.) Had a couple of questions to see if there is something that may be helpful to you—

Have you reported the stalking to your, and his, local police department? Has he made any threats to your life?

If he is using the mail to conduct his criminal enterprise, the US Postal Inspectors need to be alerted and can step in. They also cover other carriers like UPS and Fed Ex. Has he successfully defrauded you through buying your items, then returning rocks, etc.? Just talking about you here, not his other victims. See link below to report.

https://www.uspis.gov/report

“he tried to make more purchases using various people/accounts which were all identified by eBay and blocked. He also tried at the same time to place fraudulent orders on our website and all the logs, IP addresses, timestamps, syslog, firewall logs etc were forwarded to the FBI IC3 division...”

How did you come by this highlighted statement above?  was any of it “official” info or only what you may have been told by customer service ? Did eBay block or did you?

”We have provided all the documentation Porsche owners from various forums who were scammed by this guy have provided us as some of them lost $100k and others were scammed via eBay...”

Pardon me for asking this, but why are you reporting crimes where you were not the victim? Those who were directly defrauded by him need to make the reports. This is important: As this guy is your competitor, you need to be extra-careful of how you are perceived, so that it does not look like you are guilty of any untoward behaviors. As you are a direct competitor, your voice will likely not carry the same weight as a buyer who has been defrauded by this guy. Do you catch my meaning? 

“We found out he is paying a service that will remove all negative feedback and provided all the information to eBay as well but again they are slow to investigate.”

Who says he is using an outside firm?Why are you reporting this activity? Only eBay can remove the negs. This matter is not in your purview. Just concerned that you are not perceived as being guilty in any way.

”This criminal by the way is doing this only to us no other seller so this is harassment/stalking against a specific competitor (us).”

How do you know he has not targeted any others, and why would it have any bearing?

It is incredibly difficult to sue someone living in another country. Have you considered hiring an attorney to advise you? Please forgive the many questions. There is a lot here, and want to help. Wish you much success in all your endeavors.

[fab_finds4u]

The person they are calling a scammer has been selling on eBay since 2014 and they've sold 29K items and they have 100% positive feedback. Some scammer, huh?

[janet9988]

So you are a VERO member?

[5150motorsport]

Yes and he was ordered by the judge in Canada in 2014 not to use the Internet to run any online business it's posted in the news. Also we have proof that he had hundreds of negative removed by paying an external service (proof has been provided to eBay team). 

[5150motorsport]

Thanks for the replies everyone much appreciated. An eBay rep suggested we post here for input, but since we are not allowed to post any links, screenshots or proof it makes no sense to waste everyone's time. Thanks again for your input and we sincerely hope you never have to deal with a situation like this. Closing out this thread have a great day everyone!

[coolections]

Call the cops, call the FBI, call a lawyer. Ebay is not going to go after so called criminals. Curious, someone stealing millions, getting caught, and not not going to jail ? Hmmm... are you sure you are not accusing this person of something without facts ?