Almost got scammed on eBay

[FB3783]

Hello all,

In the interest of helping the community I wanted to share my recent experience on eBay and how I almost got scammed. When you get caught up in the thrill of the hunt it makes it easy to miss minor details.

I found a stainless Submariner U serial number that appeared to be be in good condition. Pics were good and the seller said that he had box and papers but there were no pictures of those items with the listing. Also all the pics were from the same source. The seller was kind of like me, not a specialized seller, just a guy who buys and sells once in a while and had been around for a long time.

The first red flag is that in the description he said that you could message him for a buy it now price. Some sellers do this to test the market and to get the cheaper insertion fee. This was kind of popular before they had the make offer option.

This type of buy it now transaction could be problematic if the seller asks for the payment directly through a blue dot card, wire transfer, or other unsafe means. There is no protection or easy tracing for those sources. The risk could be mitigated if the seller changes the auction to a buy it now auction through eBay and allows payment through PayPal. This still could be risky because scammers will send you a fake eBay link through a message that appears to come from eBay. When you log into your PayPal account they steal your user name and password.

So I asked for a buy it now price at around 2200 hours my time and got an immediate message back saying he would offer a buy it now price of $4400 through PayPal. Pretty reasonable and close to the market price of the watch in my opinion. What is interesting about this exchange is that I'm in AZ and the seller was in VA, three hours ahead of me. So this guy is up selling his watch at 0100 hours. Another minor red flag.

When I asked for pictures of the paperwork with the serial or partial he replied quickly. I also asked for a better picture of the clasp with the date code. The date code came back to a watch made in 2009. The U serial number should be from around 1998. I asked the seller what was up with that and he said that he didn't know, he was the second owner of the watch. I thought about this and was going to see if the seller would change the auction to a buy it now but I got sidetracked and had to go into a meeting. When I got done the item was gone and I figured I missed out.

Yesterday I got a message from eBay that the account had been taken over.

So my point to the story is when you get caught up in the hunt for a watch you have to start to paying attention to seemely small inconsisticies and walk when they start to add up. Also if you don't have time to reflect on the deal then walk. eBay is an open market. You are not going to steal a watch on it. Things sell there for what they are worth within a few hundred dollars.

I have a lot experience in fraud investigations and got lucky I didn't get taken by this auction. These eBay take over frauds are extremely dangerous, especially when the seller has the watch in their possession. Basically they are using an eBay account to actually sell you an item that they may actually have they are just never going to send it.