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Ebay Scam - Advice required please

Insomniak

Insomniak

Insomniak

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Stoke - on - Trent
Can anyone please offer any advice on the following.
A friend of mine has recently had their Ebay account hacked. He was called by Ebay in the early of the morning and they informed him they had noticed several unusual transactions on his account that were not made from his usual IP address. Sure enough he had not personally made the purchases and his bank account linked to paypal had been emptied to the tune of quite a few hundred pounds. He has contacted the seller who is based in Germany and he has said that he is a legitimate seller. He seems to sell Fifa 13 coins (whatever they maybe) and he has 300+ feedback going back over 12 months so it looks legit. In the meantime my friend has received a recorded delivery letter from what appears to be from the seller but it only contained a blank piece of paper.
Has anyone ever had any experience of this type of scam and how it works?
 
He has changed his log in details and Ebay are monitoring his account and will ask security questions on his next transaction.
He took it up with the bank but they said there is nothing that they can do and to speak to paypal which hes now doing.
Hes basically just had his account cleared out right before Christmas...not funny!! and to make matters worse when he contacts Ebay he has to phone the usa.
What I cant understand is if he is a scammer is how hes managed to get so much positive feedback.
 
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Can someone please confirm what FIFA 13 coins actually are? Would they be some kind of game code? In which case nothing would be need to be physically delivered.
 
You think your bank will cover you when things like this happen but they just seem to pass the buck. Something similar happened to another friend of mine a few years ago. Every month his debit card was being charged for several transactions totaling £100+. The bank said they couldn't cancel them and they said he needed to cancel the transactions at source. Problem was he didn't know what they were. He gave me a copy of his bank statement and from the very minimal information it gave me I tracked them all all down to monthly subscriptions for porn sites. I eventually contacted the sites and cancelled the subs but it was a real pita. The bank were totally useless.

Paypal/Ebay are still looking into it so I presume he will be refunded at some point.
I've just checked Ebay and the guy is still up and running so his account hasn't been suspended. I would have thought this would the first thing to do while he was under investigation but obviously not.
 
Its just really puzzling me how the user gets away with it as I'm sure it wont be the first time hes done it. Maybe the registered post is the key to his success. But I'm thinking he must surely have had other complaints logged against him. Maybe he does them infrequently to disguise them? Or maybe its a one off for some Christmas money.
On the face of it he looks like a legit trader although I still dont get this FIFA 13 coin thing.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Buroklamm...27?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_77&hash=item2ec4af1a77
 
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Nexus said:
So my conclusion is that the Seller is most likely genuine. What I think happened is that whoever hacked your friends account, bought the coins, then had the code or whatever the 'digital product' is, sent to them at another e-mail address, or if its in game, applied directly to their account by the seller.
Click to expand...

I think you are spot on there. looking into this further it appears the coins are similar to buying gold in wow and you use them to buy better players. There's a few threads on the EA forums where it says you actually buy the physical paperclip rather than the game coins as EA dont allow the selling of game coins.
I think we need to find where the "coins" were sent to. My friend contacted the seller and he was fast to respond on a couple of occasions so hopefully he will be able to help with this.
 
norm said:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Buroklamm...61?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_77&hash=item2ec43bf34d

That particular auction 1 buyer bought 10 lots @ 63.99 each.

Given that the buyer then has to communicate with the seller afterwards to complete the transaction sounds like a scam. Why would the seller ever think 10 lots was a genuine amount to buy?

What probably happens is the seller uses the fraudulent money to buy more FIFA13 points which he then launders (sells back to ebay).
Click to expand...

That was most probably the transaction I am talking about. Using in game gold to launder real money...I've seen it all now.
 
He seems to sell one hell of a lot of game coins so I'm now wondering where he gets them all from. It seems like a very complex scam where gaming gold is being used wholesale to launder real money and very profitable it seems too.
 
Looking into this its unbelievable Geoff!!!
He made £1536.47 on 20.12 and £1302.25 on 17.12. So he made around £3k in just a couple of days.
I suppose they hack players FIFA accounts sell all their players then launder the coins generated ingame meanwhile they hack Ebay accounts to buy the game coins and generate real money.
Why dont EA/Ebay do something about this? Hes been doing this for years.
 
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