Today I saw an auction for a Excellent University Magikarp from a big store (+4000 positive feedbacks) where one of the profile pictures said “all bids will be removed, buy now only, see the price in the description”
It was not that suspicious to me…who would scam on a trophy card? Scams happen for set cards the most right? Of course this was Red Flag 1 but I was curious so I wrote them a mail.
The response came quite fast saying the following:
Red Flag 2: The seller name changed but it looked quite legit to me.
After I clicked on “Review offer” I was forwarded to “eBay” (this is what I thought at this stage):
Red Flag 4 - There was no user account on the top left
Red Flag 5 - None of the links at “categories” worked but what did work was:
Feedback from seller
Even a customer chat on the bottom right interacted with me
All pictures where clickable
“Watching” button worked
It was 100% clear to me when I asked a collector from Australia whether he can see the item number on eBay.com and after his clear “No” I stopped any interaction with them.
I did not lose any money but I am asking myself: Why are people spending so much energy in such scams when they could put those efforts in legitimate businesses?
Identify a high feedback account that has been compromised - make sure you don’t reuse the same email/password combination across websites! Usually this account has nothing to do with Pokemon.
Log into account, automatically insert fake, expensive Pokemon listings, probably using Ebay API.
Redirect people off Ebay via email, ask for f&f or bitcoin or some other non-refundable methods of payment.
Profit.
These listing will typically something that looks like this as the second image.
For example, this “Trains Tracks and More” account was a recent victim the account has since been deactivated, here was one of the listings: https://www.ebay.com/itm/166370695285
If you reread the beginning of the OP, @Mussundwerdich saw the listing and reached out to the “seller” first via email. It’s the same email address as the one I posted too.
The fake page is how the scammer gets you after you email them.
@Mussundwerdich if you had to “log in” to that fake page you should change your ebay password immediately
You often see these listings for very popular items, usually from high positive feedback users on eBay. I think they somehow steal these accounts and blast out a ton of listings. I’ve been seeing it for years now, and it seems like it happens a lot more frequently lately.
In the past 2 weeks alone, I’ve already seen it 3 separate times from 3 separate accounts. Usually the items listed are the same.
I explained how it generally works above. There are people who collect leaked/compromised data. If you have a LinkedIn account, for example, and use the same email/password combination on ebay, then your ebay account is available to anybody who has access to the LinkedIn leaked data.
You can write some code that just goes though the leaked data and tries logging into ebay accounts. Eventually you’ll hit one with sufficient feedback, especially given how many boomer ebay account holders probably use their “dog’s name + 123” as their password for everything.
This is also how Gary’s ig account was compromised
Or more famously, Trump’s Twitter account used the same password as LinkedIn (“yourefired” - no joke) and his account was briefly compromised
@pfm did a great job at explaining this scam. I’ve seen it dozens of times just within the past year. Never buy a card with this picture in the listing/notes, and always check links if speaking with sellers off of eBay.
