Fraud

Given the information from Roy Herold, I think it might be worthwhile for
Tomas to communicate with PayPal regarding the apparent sale to see if they
would not waive the 45 day limitation on filing a claim. He may have
information that would enable better tracing of the theft through PayPal.
The FBI hs been working at this problem for many months (according to my
information), but it's very difficult because the trail goes through many
"cut-outs". The last information is that the hacker's location is somewhere
in Bulgaria or another Balkan country and keeps moving.

PayPal does not want their system compromised and might have a way to
compensate Tomas. EMailing them can do no harm and might help.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roy Herold" <rherold@yahoo.com>
To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 10, 2010 2:07 PM
Subject: Re: [pbs] Fraud

Bob, I believe you have hit the nail on the head.

Everybody, do a little investigation of the situation before speculating
wildly.

Just Google Scadoxus cyrtanthiflora, and you come up with some eBay
feedback from a member named 'cytisx' who purchased a bulb from
'neonlemmy', the seller in North Carolina. Check out Neonlemmy's feedback,
and you will see postive feedback from two Scadoxus cyrtanthiflora
purchasers, the aforementioned 'cytisx' (who happens to be in Sweden) and
'panamajoe7444' in the US. Seems like good references to me.

More importantly, the second to last feedback entry reads:

-------------------
sale voided. sellers ebay &paypal accounts were stolen. sad for both of us
Member id lunchboxcharlie
May 06, 2010 16:20
*
Reply by neonlemmy (May 11, 2010 19:57):
Buyer given full refund.
--------------------

Furthermore, 'neonlemmy' has cancelled the account, probably because of
this identity theft.

Tomas probably received the second chance offer from the thief, not the
real 'neonlemmy', and jumped at the opportunity to get a rare bulb.
Complaints to Ms Harris may have been ignored because she was NOT the
recipient of the payment, and had not made the sales offer.

I could be completely wrong, but it sounds logical to me.

It's a cruel world out there. Be careful.

--Roy

Bob Rutemoeller wrote:

Tomas,

This reminds me of a similar problem a few years ago when I was bidding
for a new scanner for my office. I stopped bidding when it went beyond
what I felt was reasonable.
Later I received an email message that looked like it came from Ebay
offering me a "second chance" for a similar scanner. The response was not
through Ebay and that made me cautious. I later found out there were some
fraudulent contacts with bidders and that this had nothing to do with the
seller or Ebay. So please be careful when not dealing with a trusted
source. It may just be someone trying to extract money or personal
information that they can use for fraud.

In your case it is possible that someone else miss represented themselves
as the innocent seller and stole your money. The golden age of the
Internet is over. One now has to keep up with anti virus and anti spyware
as well as being suspicious of some email offers.

Bob

Bob Rutemoeller
brutem@mcn.org
_______________________________________________
pbs mailing list
pbs@lists.ibiblio.org
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/

_______________________________________________
pbs mailing list
pbs@lists.ibiblio.org
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/