ebay campervan scam used my account, advice needed help!

I think I may have luckily escaped a very elaborate scam however others have not. I answered an ad on gumtree by a guy offering a £70 payment for using an eBay account with positive feedback. I at first was very concerned but answered the ad out of curiosity. The person claimed he was a legitimate businessman who has been selling campervans for some years but has chosen to take the eBay route but wanted to test the water first to see whether it will be easier. He offered to show me proof of his business but I foolishly said there wasn't a need. I listed the campervan for him at a price of £5500 but after a number of days and a lot of interest I received an email from eBay stating that they had removed the listing due to a copyright infringement. I obviously at this stage decided not to have anymore dealings with the guy and told him I didn't wish to deal with the item any longer. He was angry at this and obviously didn't pay me. I then received a worried message from a member a number of days later as they had paid for the van outside of eBay and not received any delivery info. I contacted eBay immediately who stated that if the transaction was made outside of the site it will have nothing to do with me. I explained the situation to the member who was understandably very annoyed. As I did not repost the listing and was not aware of the payment does this mean I have escaped unscathed? I believe the member has contacted the police but thus far I have had no further communication from anyone although it has only been a few days. Please lend me some advice on this.

Welcome to Scamwarners cfanon.

There's no sense hiding the fact that you appear to have allowed yourself to be involved in what has been a successful fraud. You have operated outside ebay terms in allowing another person to post their items on your site, because strictly if the other party doesn't supply the goods offered, you then become liable.

From a legal perspective, the fact that the buyer then went outside ebay does mean that he possibly may not have recourse to you under ebay terms and conditions. However, that may not protect you in law. I'm not legally trained and what I say isn't intended to be legal advice but any buyer would have problems suing you, even though they could. Alternatively, this type of fraud is becoming increasingly common and it's doing ebay serious harm. You'll be quite fortunate if you retain your ebay account.

If you have got involved in this in all honesty it may be quite simple for any victim to uncover your identity as you may not have seen any need to hide it. That was why the scammer wanted to use your identity to perform his fraud.

Strictly you have participated in a crime, but the worse you may suffer is the loss of your ebay account, though a determined or well-resourced victim could pursue the matter. The situation is similar to acting as a money mule in allowing a criminal to use your identity and account, though in this case, not a bank account.

Your post is valuable to us in demonstrating how it is that fraudsters are able to use ebay accounts to perform fraud.

Of course the criminal doesn't care if he steals your money or that of someone else using your identity, so that if he can find a way to steal your money or run up debt in your name - he will. Giving a criminal access to your ebay puts him a step closer to your bank details and makes it a little easier for him to impersonate you.

Out of interest it didn't take me long to find a similar ad on Gumtree.

http://www.gumtree.com/p/for-sale/genuine-joint-venture-opportunity-must-have-e-bay-account/1031893157

GENUINE JOINT VENTURE OPPORTUNITY - MUST HAVE E BAY ACCOUNT
Berkshire

I am looking to do business with someone with an ebay account which is in good standing order it must have a minimum of 50 feedback, must be at least 6 months old, would be very good if it was a TRS account.

I am unable to make myself a new ebay account as i was banned last year for not paying fees and have been unable to create a new account as it is within their policy that if you make a new account it would also get banned so not even tried it.

Only looking to work with 1 person so will delete this post when i have found someone, it would all depend on how many sales we will be getting but you will earn around £10-20 per sale, please contact me for more information, thanks

This offer doesn't hide the fact that anyone taking it up will be knowingly breaking ebay terms and conditions, and potentially be committing a crime just in enabling a banned person to access ebay services.

It's easy to forget that your ebay account is attached to your bank account/card and that you risk paying for any fraud performed using your identity, and it's your identity that the fraudster wants.

I have seen a much better version of this scam advert elsewhere, but I'll not describe it and encourage scammers to improve their script.

The point is that an ebayer with an account with the profile required by a scammer is likely to be too savvy to fall for such a scam and, of course, they're likely to have a reputation or business they'll seek to protect. It reminds me of the 419 scammers who used to seek out people with account pooling facilities. The scammer is too stupid to recognise that he's profiling people smarter than he is. He is therefore only likely to attract people with low feedback scores, and seeking TRS accounts is plain stupid.

I wouldn't touch any advert site, but the problem then I believe is that ebay places limits on the value of items a seller can sell. To then attempt to sell high value items on a site that's been selling balls of wool clearly won't work, and anyone looking at the feedback will see this. Most scammers fail simply because they don't know what they're doing and are wildly over ambitious.

Out if interest do you have the item listing number for the Camper van??