VERY interesting. But I strongly suspect your post will get deleted for naming and shaming actual user i.d.'s (can't do that here). So I've screenshot your well-written explanation with those i.d.'s blurred out. I think you actually explained it well enough that seeing actual examples isn't necessary.
By the way, I suspect that some of the scammers doing this post their 'lower price' listing copies elsewhere, outside eBay, so as to avoid detection here. @valueaddedresource -remember those Google search results I found, where highly desirable vintage costume jewelry pieces were for sale crazy cheap, on weird websites (alongside brand new designer sneakers, sunglasses, etc.), and I found some of those jewelry pieces to be exact copies of LIVE listings on eBay, Etsy, Mercari, etc.? LOOKS LIKE WE FINALLY FOUND THE MECHANISM! Or a very good candidate for it at least.
@spystreet what you are describing sounds a lot like a variation on triangulation fraud, but instead of using stolen credit cards to purchase the item from the legitimate seller (which will eventually lead to a chargeback once the real cardholder sees the unauthorized charge), they appear to be abusing the return system to essentially get the real item for free.
I've been on the legit seller side of triangulation fraud, when my previous employer was hit by it in 2020.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Warning-Retail-Arbitrage-Credit-Card-Fraud/td-p/30822324
Here's what it looks like when they use stolen credit cards:
And here's a press release about a guy who committed over $2 Million worth of that kind of fraud using over 500 fake PayPal and eBay accounts over a 7 year period. 👀
Using a fraudulent return like you're describing would have the downside to the fraudsters of having to float the money longer, but could maybe be "less risky" in the sense of not having stolen cc chargebacks to deal with....unless of course they are also using stolen ccs and basically double dipping.
@gurlcat wrote:VERY interesting. But I strongly suspect your post will get deleted for naming and shaming actual user i.d.'s (can't do that here). So I've screenshot your well-written explanation with those i.d.'s blurred out. I think you actually explained it well enough that seeing actual examples isn't necessary.
By the way, I suspect that some of the scammers doing this post their 'lower price' listing copies elsewhere, outside eBay, so as to avoid detection here. @valueaddedresource -remember those Google search results I found, where highly desirable vintage costume jewelry pieces were for sale crazy cheap, on weird websites (alongside brand new designer sneakers, sunglasses, etc.), and I found some of those jewelry pieces to be exact copies of LIVE listings on eBay, Etsy, Mercari, etc.? LOOKS LIKE WE FINALLY FOUND THE MECHANISM! Or a very good candidate for it at least.
@gurlcat not sure if you saw it, but you might be interested in this:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Fraudulent-Website/m-p/34275229/highlight/true#M2351980
I did some deep digging into the site the OP in that thread reported and found over 3,000 obviously fraudulent websites doing the same thing. I suspect that's also similar to what you were seeing with the sites selling those jewelry pieces too.
