EBAY 3RD PARTY SELLING Drop Shipping - BEWARE

This will be the first email you receive

From:Andrew Bogush <[email protected]>
> To:
> Sent:Wednesday, August 15, 2012 7:33 AM
> Subject:Job opportunity , (ID : T0237R1157267583756).

> Good day!
> I'm looking for a seller assistant to help me run my sales on
> e-Bay. This part time position will take up you 1-2 hours a day and
> your possible wage will reach $500 per week after a short test period.
>
> Our requirements: Excellent communication skills and Excel experience
>
> Please write back if you have an experience selling on eBay and we
> will give you the detailed job description.
>
> With Best Regards,
> Andrew Bogush

Once you reply, this will be the second email you receive

Re: Job opportunity , (ID : T0237R1157267583756).
FROM:
[email protected]
TO:
Message flagged Friday, August 17, 2012 8:24 AM
Hello ,
Nice to meet you ! My name is Andrew and I will be your supervisor.
Let's clarify our primary tasks step-by-step:
1) I provide you with the list of products, terms and prices.
2) You list and sell them on YOUR eBay account.
3) Buyer pays by PayPal to YOUR PayPal account.
4) You send buyer's shipping information to me.
5) We ship product out from the USA warehouse via FedEx or UPS Ground.
6) We send tracking number for each transaction to you.
7) Buyer receive product and leave positive feedback.
8 ) You pay eBay and PayPal fees from buyer's money.
9) You send 70 percent of net amount to our supplier and take 30 percent. We cover transfer’s fee.

For example you sold item for $100. This amount is transferred from buyer to your paypal account.
Then you pay ebay/paypal fees (about 15 percent = $15). The rest amount is $85. $25.5 are yours. $59.5 should be transferred to supplier.
So you'll pay all fees from buyer's money.

This job will take no more than 1-2 hours per day any time.

Your duties:
- List items according to my instructions.
- Put tracking numbers on each PayPal transaction
- Transfer funds to supplier upon request.
- Check and answer e-mail every day. Forward shipping information to me.
- Answer buyer's simple questions and forward hard questions to me.

My part is:
- Processing shipments for new items paid. It usually takes 3-5 business days.
- Regularly providing you with tracking numbers.
- Handling some customer support on my items: you forward important questions from our buyers to me and I'll generate an answer.
- Checking and answering your e-mails each day except Sundays.

We have about 7000 items available for sale from different categories (toys, electronics, houseware, cookware, etc.). Too many items to manage all sales myself. That's why I'm looking for assistants, at this moment I supervise about 40 remote sellers.

We may sell 25-35 items per week and make good profit for both of us! Price range for our items is between $25-$300.

This is legal.
You can find some additional info on eBay:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/product_sourcing.html

Money transfer will be requested only for confirmed shipped items! (there are many scammers asking people to send money for unshipped items).
We have to ship all items because our income depends on it directly.

TRIAL: You can list at first just 7 items.
Please let me know if you are ready to start, so I will send you all technical details (prices, terms, requirements etc.)

Investments are NOT needed to start.

Best regards,
Andrew Bogush mailto:[email protected]


I requested from Mr. Bogus(h) the name of his suppliers and the names and emails of 5 of his present sellers. This was his reply.


Hello greg,

Go to hell you stupid idiot !

Best regards,
Andrew Bogush mailto:[email protected]

Oh my goodness! I am ashamed to say that I replied to this man, have been working with him, and even listed one of his items on Ebay, sold the item, and then just received an email from him requesting that I forward my PayPal information to him and payment. I luckily HAVE NOT sent the payment nor have I sent any of my information to him other than my email address. I had a gut feeling it was a scam, I mean, come on, but I do have a friend that works in dropshipping and does do a similar thing with people but he IS NOT a scammer, and by his emails he sent me I figured it could possibly be legit. I am SO GLAD I JUST CAME ACROSS THIS INFORMATION!!! I googled the name and didn't find any information, then googled the website (higz.biz) and it just has a section to request additional information. Finally after googling andrew bogush+higz.biz I came across this site. I will be blasting this guy all over craigslist for being a scammer and everywher else I can find. People are total scums!!!

The website higz.biz is in the process of being reported for fraud.

I just made the same misstake, but I didn't realise I'm being scammed until now!

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=73456

What would scammers get out of this scam? Seems like scammers are using innocent victims as money mules?

That is, innocent victims will be ebay sellers. The scammer(s) pretend to be buyers to buy the goods. Naturally, paid with stolen credit cards/money. No goods are actually exchanged but the scammers expect the 'victims' to wire 70% of the funds to them. Money mules right?

While the fake buyer scenario is one way this scam can be run, often it is simpler than that.

When sites like eBay started becoming popular, it didn't take long for criminals to realize they had a perfect opportunity. All they had to do was open several new fake accounts, post designer items or electronics at prices far below retail, and wait for the unsuspecting buyers to come along. The buyers would pay, the scammers would collect. They would then either ship fake knockoffs or nothing at all.

When customers realized they were scammed, they would take measures to reverse their payment. But the scammer, knowing this was going to happen, immediately withdrew the money out of paypal, and vanished. This meant that essentially Paypal would end up having to pay the buyers back.

Clearly, this was not good for paypal, so in 2008, they established a new policy:

In a small percentage of cases where it has been determined the risk of dissatisfied buyers is higher, PayPal may delay release of the payment funds to the seller until the buyer has left a positive feedback or 21 days have passed without a dispute, claim, chargeback or reversal filed on that transaction.

This policy made things much more difficult for the scammers. In most cases, the buyer would complain before that 21 days was over, and then Paypal would not release the money. If they wanted to collect the money (and if they want to lure buyers), they would have to create an account that in good standing, which means a lot of time and work for them (and real transfers); or they would have to use established accounts that had good histories and would not be subject to a hold. Obviously the 2nd approach is much faster and cheaper for them.

There are 2 primary ways to get hold of long-term accounts with good reputations: 1) obtain the info from a hacking/phishing approach and take over legitimate accounts or 2) convince the account owners themselves to act as middle-men and place your bogus ads. Scammers routinely use both approaches.

The ad vivvi was lured with has been around for at least a year. You can see a variant of it here: http://beta.salehoo.com/forum/scams/help-needed-is-this-offer-a-scam-t12952.html

The fact that vivvi's account has been closed suggest that there have been buyer complaints, which means the buyers are likely real. If the buyers were fake, vivvi's account may have been frozen while it was sorted, but it probably wouldn't have been closed.

As far as dropshipping goes: There are legitimate dropshippers out there (though many sellers have learned that it is not actually easy to establish a profitable business dropshipping, especially since several wholesalers have decided to eliminate the middle man and sell directly). In a real arrangement, the seller does not work for the dropshipper. The dropshipper may provide photos, descriptions, etc. The dropshipper will charge the seller a base item price, plus some kind of handling fee. The seller will typically choose what items to sell, how much to charge, etc.

The ad vivvi was lured with has been around for at least a year. You can see a variant of it here: http://beta.salehoo.com/forum/scams/help-needed-is-this-offer-a-scam-t12952.html

Actually following that link lead me nowhere, unless being a registered member

Here's a different linkaddress to the post you mention:

http://www.salehoo.com/forum/scams/help-needed-is-this-offer-a-scam-12952#post411607

The fact that vivvi's account has been closed suggest that there have been buyer complaints, which means the buyers are likely real. If the buyers were fake, vivvi's account may have been frozen while it was sorted, but it probably wouldn't have been closed.

No buyer's complaints had been registered at the time Paypal froze my acct.
I did a research on the salehoo forum regarding frozen/closed down Paypal accts. This is what I found (and is more likely the reason why they red flagged the activity):

http://www.salehoo.com/forum/scams/paypal-has-restricted-my-account-help-9540#post397234

Comment from fudjj: "Wow, you must have moved into a product range that they have a heavy focus on at the moment, because that is extreme in anyone's language. How old is your PayPal account?

That has to be playing a factor here, because I've never heard of anything as stiff as this. It almost seems to be a combination of a product line they are sus about, and a newish account that has caused some serious red flags to fly up."

Comment by planes: "Just a little more on this. You may have been flagged because the IP# you are using was used by a scammer or you signed in from a public access point or your address was used by a scammer etc..."
Furthermore planes writes: "Go to places like rip-off report and the like and printout similar complaints for part of your case. If the judge is not well versed in Paypal this will help him get the picture. Printout like 50 similar reports to add to your case."

Comment by Alanwakelintrading: "I called Paypal on Skype all the way from South Africa, they have received the invoices and things which was a delay tactic it seems, because I bought from a guy on iOffer who disappeared and made a claim, they did not like this, nor the fact that I was doing video games which in Paypals eyes are all scamming, so they decided, because I had a claim for $120 and because I then had a further claim for $4856 from the Alibaba supplier, two claims are no good, also, I deal with video games so they shut me off, closed my account and I can only get money back in 180 days."

Here's another post on the subject:

http://www.salehoo.com/forum/selling/need-help-with-ebay-and-specially-paypal-8963