Online Fraud is Easy Police Ebay Make it Difficult to Report

Recently I became aware of this new wave of online fraudsters attempting motor vehicle sales via Craiglist using fake Ebay pages etc. I remember the first generation of online fraudsters selling fake IT etc via Ebay.

Again, I have made been made aware of how difficult and how difficult and obstructive the Police, Ebay and so on to report actual crimes.

My feeling is that with Ebay ... this is deliberate.

They don't want the work and always they first look for ways out of having to take responsibility and not having to become involved. They make *massive* profits and don't want to spend any of fighting the fraud they are enabling.

My feeling with my local Police ... it is because they are just institutionally thick.

Specifically, their computer fraud/IT department is underfunded and only interested in high value frauds, the fraudsters because of their international nature are running rings around them, and the entirely police force/victim or public interface has fallen into the mire of "customer service" provider mentality, e.g. unmotivated, uninformed, unempowered morons in call or internet support centers, using the same tools and obstructive "customer disservice" mentality as we have become used to from all the other big companies.

Today I wasted 1.5 hours trying to report a fraud and getting now here.

Ebay is the worst. A special room in hell should be reserved for whoever designed their website to STOP people finding a simple way to report a fraud.

The Police are equally bad. They actually encourage people to go and report things to Ebay (as above) which are legally nothing to do with Ebay. Why?

At least Craiglist, God bless the gutter of filth and scammers it has become, offer a simple email address to do so and a "report" button ... who knows what it does.

Question/suggestion: can I suggest we collate a simple list of serious email addresses to send reports of active frauds to?

One of the things beloved of these people are long and often inappropriate webforms that obstruct you from actually handing over information because you cannot jump through the all the hoops they want you to.

The fraudsters know all this. No wonder they are laughing all the way to the bank with innocent victims money ...

I am good with internet technologies and have information of ongoing internet frauds.

Does anyone have any direct email addresses for the right people in the UK Police to give this information to?

(I have no interest is dealing with webforms designed by and for morons nor the idiocy of trying to report emails headers via the telephone!!!).

I know Ebay's "compliancy department" employ ex-UK police, does anyone know if they have quick and direct links to the right department in Scotland Yard and whether they actually do anything with any information given to them?

In the old days, "compliancy" used to mean they did nothing except what enough to avoid themselves being sued.

Hmmmm.

From previous experience it is only worth reporting if you have something concrete to go on.

For example, I received a fake shipping/escrow email asking me to pay money into a UK Barclays account, giving sort code and account number. The account holder was obviously somebody who had been recruited to do the fake job of handlingpayments in and sending payments out through Western Union. That was something the Police could get to grips with. I also reported it to Barclays.

But if it is some hotmail/gmail/yahoo crap asking for dosh via Western Union, they will put it in the pile with the other 100,000 cases.

It is actually very easy to report a fake email link to ebay. Just forward the email with full headers to [email protected]. They do in fact take action to have fake ebay pages shut down, and are usually able to do it much more quickly than someone else, since it is their trademark that is being infringed upon. Ultimately, scammers using fake ebay pages cost them a lot of money too, and they don't want them to exist either. Scammers take away business from legitimate sellers, and eBay gets a cut from those legitimate sellers—so every time a scammer steals a customer, eBay loses money. But…you are right that ebay does not exactly make this easy to find.

eBay cannot be responsible for fake emails sent in their name. They have no way to control what one individual emails to another, and as these emails are not on their servers, they would never even see them. To try to hold them responsible if I was scammed based on a fake email sent from a yahoo account would be absurd.


As for WU and moneygram, they DO profit from scammers. At least one of the two companies was hit for some pretty hefty fines for their policies enabling scammers.
But they also serve a very legitimate purpose as businesses. They now have warnings all over their websites and their physical locations. I can't tell you how many victims I have encountered who have been told point-blank by a WU clerk that they were being scammed, but they sent the money anyway. I have also seen WU block suspicious transfers and blacklist recipients, and the victim just went somewhere else instead. WU is not, and cannot be, responsible for victims who choose to ignore warnings. Many scammers instruct victims to lie about who is receiving the money, just so a WU employee doesn’t set them straight. Unfortunately, many victims do follow those instructions. If a victim walks in to WU and states he/she is sending money to a family member in Africa, the money transfer company has no right to check it.
At the same time, training on fraud does seem to be inconsistent, and there are certainly locations where employee intervention is rare to completely nonexistent.

Specifically, their computer fraud/IT department is underfunded and only interested in high value frauds, the fraudsters because of their international nature are running rings around them,

This is absolutely true. Lack of money and jurisdictional issues are huge barriers to justice in these situations. Training is another big issue, too. While some are certainly knowledgeable, I have encountered many police officers who lack even a basic understanding of these scams and how they work (sounds like this is true of the one who told you to report to ebay.)

The problem is, and what upsets me, is that it is not Ebay's job to investigate crime and catch criminals.

Fine. You report something to Ebay and what can happen at best? ... they destroy the evidence and hide the site of the crime. That does not stop crime, it just moves it elsewhere.

Most of these frauds are happening 'off Ebay' on sites with no connection to Ebay (but faking it) and what can Ebay do there? Send the domain host a trademark 'take down' notice for infringing Ebay trademarks?

Obviously, I am not arguing with you ... but what I would really like to see is more transparency or evidence that Ebay *were* doing something and *had* achieved something.

Does anyone operate a black list of IPs used by scammers just as they do for spammers?

I do disagree with you regards the difficultly of reporting issue into Ebay's big, black corporate hole. If you approach it as a newcomer, try and use their customer disservice menus, you end up no where fast looping around and around, or at best with no brain call center monkeys. Ebay ccms says go to the Police; Police ccms say go to Ebay. Go to you local police station, they have not got a clue and tell you to "go and look on the internet". They claim they have no internal email address. That has to be bullshit. They have them, they are just not giving them out.

Both parties just try and pass the buck. You guys here end up doing more to help or save people and yet you are completely unpaid and unfunded to do so.

I'd also like to know what the Police are actually doing. My feeling is all they are doing is collecting statistical evidence.

In the old days they used to say, unless the fraud was worth over £250,000 they just did not investigate it. I'd like to know what their tresholds are now. My guess would be they do have a threshold and it is £5,000 or something which is why the scammers operate just underneath that. But that is just a guess.

I'd like to know what they are doing and have achieved. Does anyone know?

From previous experience it is only worth reporting if you have something concrete to go on.

What constitutes "concrete" and to where?

For an example, here's a domain with 3 active Craiglist/Ebay frauds waiting to trap their victims via a bogus payment script at approximately £4,000 a time. Is that "concrete" enough?

Which department deals with it? It is the old "Fraud Squad" (now "SO6") or is there some more specific department?

In the UK, there is actionfraud.police.uk but, from experience, it appears to be contracted out to a call centre and employs a call centre mentality. It's not real police. It's probably based in the Philippines or Bangalore or somewhere.

Has anyone had any luck with it?

I tried their IRC and found it to be moronic. They would not even pass on a report. All they could do was keeping looping the conversation back and tell me to use the web form. I could not use the web form and pointed out that it was impossible for me to hand over email headers via the telephone. They told me repeated me to me the same thing.

Local police ... even bigger waste of time. They could not take a report because it did not fit into their computer system ... and, again, how could I pass on email headers verbally or even on paper ... why could not they just give me an email address?

They said they did not know and could not find any ... "have you tried Google or contacted Ebay?"

I merged two threads started by the same OP which are almost duplicate questions / complaints.

While I understand the frustration of the OP, I am concerned at the tone and argumentative nature of some of the replies. ScamWarners is not a place to vent or attack the police or any legitimate business.

ScamWarners is not the police nor do we work for any business. We cannot answer for those organizations or institutions. Questions regarding their behaviors should be directed to them. I will say, don't be surprised if they don't answer you directly. They are as frustrated with scammers, spammers, fake sites as you and I are.

I will lock this topic if it becomes a gripe session or continues to lean toward contentiousness. This post tells what we do here at ScamWarners: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15

If there are questions or concerns, please contact me via the Private Message (PM) system.

I'd prefer if it was not merged.

I'd still like to find a direct email address and merging them, or hiding the title of the second, only makes that less likely.


You have endless and even more pointless duplication of titles. I cannot see the harm in having these two separate.

Please don't apply US cultural values to UK issues.

Thank you.

I have no clue what your last statement means but this is an international forum with staff from several countries including the UK.

eBay/PayPal will act on reports they have had several I have reported shut down. I do agree if you do not know the email address [email protected] it is not easy to find.

As Dotti pointed out eBay/PayPal loose money when scammers spoof thier sites. Not only that but it's bad publicity. Paypals entire business model is they are the safest way to pay for things on the Internet. I agree I would love to see more done by them to educate about scams. If you feel strongly about it contact them and let them know.


There are several places to report Internet fraud in the UK actionfraud.com. We are no way associated with this website and cannot comment on what it does with the information.
You can also report to http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/default.aspx this is the US FBI.

Reporting does help create awareness however the cold hard fact is the shear volume of Internet fraud far outways the resources of Law Enforcment. You may find this interesting on the amout of fraud reported to IC3 http://www.ic3.gov/media/2012/120511.aspx. They received almost 315,000 complaints in 2011. That's almost a 1000 a day. I have no idea how many agents are in this deparemt but if they have 1000 that's a case a day the agent would have to investigate. The likely hood of an actual prosecution is slim to none when you consider the information the victim was given was all fake. Even they knew who the scammer actualy was legal jurisdictions prevent prosecution in most cases.

I think most people want a simple solution to a very complex problem and it just does not exsist. What we do here is educational based. Although its impossible for us to help everyone avoid scams education is the best defense and offense against Internet fraud. Most of the victims who find thier way here do it through searching details that have been posted here. I would urge you to post scams you come across here. It helps a lot of people avoid the scams. I know it's not as glamorous as FBI agents storming a scammers home and arresting a scammer but it really is the best way to fight Internet fraud.

I'd also like to know what the Police are actually doing. My feeling is all they are doing is collecting statistical evidence.

No they aren't jetting to and fro from Nigeria because some lost £5000. Nor do I want to pay the wages of 10,000 policemen investigating 419 fraud out of my council tax money.

My feeling with my local Police ... it is because they are just institutionally thick.

No! Again I dont want to pay the wages of 10,000 policemen. 419 scam isnt the only internet crime they look into there are many more crimes that are nothing to do with scams, such as stopping the planning of a bomb explosion in a city centre.

Does anyone operate a black list of IPs used by scammers just as they do for spammers?

They do but it isnt effective once the scammer has been and gone. Another will duly arrive. Spam blocking works with a chain of websites sharing information so one got it and maybe the rest won't. And what about Dynamic IP, You can't block those effectively unless you want all the decent people who have it after scammer has logged off to be blocked too. AOL is a classic example of that. It's closing door after horse has bolted anyway.

Question/suggestion: can I suggest we collate a simple list of serious email addresses to send reports of active frauds to?

We do, and this site has a long list posted in forum which is in one place albeit spread out. I also have a 50.000 long list of unique email addresses posted in our blogs that has taken many hours to get from various people, and is found in Google searches. Unfortunately today, scammers probably made 100,000 that they havn't used yet. However they are all originating from West Africa etc , and there is a recent post here on SW of a scam which the scammer asked victims to make 15 email addresses, send scam adverts, and then receive scam money. And how do you find these people who use proxy, dynamic and cafe IP numbers? And also email users on Gmail etc that hide IP.
actionfraud.police.uk It is probably in UK. However spare the peope working there, because no doubt over worked and writers cramp is possible if people don't use a form online. You are wasting their time.
We ask people for headers here because victims are inexperienced and don't know where to find the IP number. Most often, I don't publish them on SW as it is long on a page, however I know where it is and on this site people will know I got it right.
Sorry-- nothing you suggest is possible.

Your comments shows that obviously know nothing about successful anti-spam measures and blacklisting work.

Do you honestly think spammers don't use dynamic IPs and that there are no defences against it?

If you go away and educate yourself a little on how they and how such measures could be applied in this area, I am happy to discuss the finer details with you.

ScammerinDundee,

I would suggest you check out 419eater, our scambaiting site in which we deal directly with the scammers.

It is a good place to learn alternative ways to inflict some real damage on these criminals.
It is also a good place to learn more about how these scammers operate, and why blacklisting and standard antispam measures are in fact ineffective solutions.

I also suggest that you alter the tone you are using. Intelligent discussion and debate (within reason--we will stop it when it turns into a situation of beating a dead horse) are welcome here. Personal insults are not. Considering the fact that while you "recently became aware of these scams" but you chose to make that response to someone who has been dealing with these scammers for years, and has literally dealt with tens of thousands of them, it is quite obvious who has a much clearer understanding of how the scammers operate.

Dotti sells me short, since the figure is probably well over 100,000 scammers ( possibly closer to 200,000).
Here is a site that deals with spam http://www.stopforumspam.com/
They produce software/code for blocking spammers with members submitted data. They also amalgamate that data with that published on other anti spam sites like spamcop, but as you see that has little effect. The effect would be just as limited with scams. It just doesn't work.
I got my website boss to add code to his sites to ban chinese spammers. It has made not a bit of difference, they just use different ISP blocks. Take blacklisting to logical extent and we end up blocking everything.
IPv4, most of us use, is being replaced by IPv6 and we then start all over again.

Does anyone have any direct email addresses for the right people in the UK Police to give this information to?

In the Uk You can report a fraud to Action Fraud by speaking to their specialist fraud advisers on 0300 123 2040.

(Monday to Friday between 8am to 8pm
Saturday between 9am to 5pm
Sunday between 9am to 5pm)

Alternatively use their on'line reporting tool:- http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/report ... -questions.

Also (in the UK) there is Crime Stoppers; use this link to contact them:-

http://www.crimestoppers-uk.org/utility ... contact-us