Seattle Man Gets Two Years for eBay Fraud

A Seattle man has been sentenced to two years in prison for selling computers and cameras on eBay but never actually delivering the goods.

Over a four-year period, Jordan Dias, 40, collected more than US$94,000 from victims who thought they were purchasing items from a legitimate seller, the U.S. Department of Justice said Friday in a statement.

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Botnet Steals eBay Accounts

Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

Online auction site eBay has been targeted by identity thieves, who are wielding a botnet that uses brute force to uncover valid account log-in information, a Tel Aviv-based security company said Monday.

The attacks against eBay Inc. may have started as long ago as early August, said Ofer Elzam. He said that he and other researchers at Aladdin Knowledge Systems Ltd. have not been successful in notifying eBay of their weekend findings.

According to Elzam, the product manager of Aladdin's eSafe threat-protection line, the brute-force attacks are launched by a large botnet that the identity thieves have built using a sophisticated, multistage campaign that begins with compromised legitimate Web sites.

"My best estimate is that there are at least 300 compromised sites," said Elzam, who noted that they are spread worldwide and in several languages.

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PPR threatens to sue Ebay over fake goods

PPR, the French conglomerate that owns Gucci, Bottega Veneta and several other luxury goods brands, is threatening legal action against Ebay if the online auction site does not crack down further on counterfeits sold on its website.

In an interview with the Financial Times, François-Henri Pinault, PPR's chairman and chief executive, said that his company had been in talks with Ebay for several months in an attempt to improve the policing of fakes sold by the site's members.

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Auction on eBay leads to military theft charges

A staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force and his mother face federal charges that they stole high-grade equipment used on military helicopters and sold it overseas over the Internet.

Leonard Allen Schenk, who was assigned to the 20th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, near Mary Esther, also is charged with trying to hire an undercover agent to kill a possible prosecution witness, not publicly identified, sometime between May and June.

Schenk is scheduled for an 11 a.m. arraignment Monday before U.S. Magistrate Miles Davis on 21 charges, including racketeering, witness tampering, federal trade violations and soliciting murder.

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'Notorious' eBay fraud sentence

A 20-year-old "obsessed" with defrauding customers of the internet auction site eBay has been sentenced to two years' custody.

Philip Shortman, from Cwmbran, south Wales, was sent to a detention centre for another £45,000 eBay fraud in 2005.

The judge at Newport Crown Court said his deception "strikes at the system" of internet trading "as a whole".

In the latest fraud he was jailed for conning eBay users of £14,000 and breaching a suspended jail term.

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Historical Society Member Accused Of Selling Artifacts

PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. -- Plattsburgh police said a board member of the Clinton County Historical Association stole items from the historical museum and listed some of them on eBay.

Police said the President of the Historical Association called them after a sword presented to Captain William B. Pratt in 1863 was stolen from the museum and posted on eBay.

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eBay fraudster loses home and car (UK)

A Tolworth man jailed for Kingston's biggest ever counterfeit scam has been ordered by Kingston Crown Court to sell his flat and his car to pay back the profits of his crime.

Simon Waugh, 45, was jailed for 12 months in March after building up a criminal business with a £170,000-a-year turnover by importing fake designer clothes from India and selling them as genuine on eBay.

He appeared in Kingston Crown Court on Monday for a confiscation hearing, in which Judge Campbell ordered him to sell his flat in Tolworth Close and his Vauxhall Cavalier car to pay back £55,000, about one third of the proceeds from the scam.

The money will be divided between the Treasury, the Crown Prosecution Service and the trading standards department at Kingston council - with the council believed to be receiving about £18,000 for its role in the investigation.

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Know what you're buying before bidding online

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- The grungy hotel room was reeking of smoke. The bathtub was rusty. The bedspread and furnishings were dingy relics.

But I couldn't leave.

I'd already paid $155 in an online travel auction for the Queen Mary Hotel room -- $91 for the room, $20 commission, $24 in taxes and $20 to upgrade to a room with a window. I'd taken a risk. And lost.

Online travel auctions promise fabulous bargains on vacations, hotels and airfare to glamorous places, playing on travelers' desires to get a steal of a deal. Sometimes they work out wonderfully. Sometimes they don't.

"Since the beginning of man, people have always wanted more for less," says Greg Donewar, manager of the federal Internet Crime Complaint Center in Fairmont, W.Va.

"If it sounds too good to be true, beware."

Ah, the old caveat emptor.

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