Inside IT

'I guess I like other people's money'

Even geeks can get scammed by online fraudsters. Ben Goldacre on his eBay shame

As a geek, I consider it a matter of personal pride that nobody can rip me off over the internet. I laugh at my parents' paranoia about buying online. After all, what's the point of being a clever dick if it doesn't save you money? So it hurt pretty badly, last week, when someone came very close indeed to working me over for £1,100.

eBay was made for procrastination. It's not actually a very good place to buy anything collectable, because the prices are always too high: nobody likes to lose, I guess, and I can tell you from personal experience that there is a slightly sinister satisfaction to be had from outbidding a stranger at the very last minute. But when I saw a vintage ARP 2600 synthesiser from 1973 for less than a grand: you'll just have to suspend belief and empathise with my colossal excitement. I've been after one for years.

So I bid, and straight away, the guy contacts me. He's in a hurry to sell. Make me an offer, he says, and we'll do business. My avarice goes into overdrive, and I do the maths. They usually go for £1,800 at least, and this one comes with the original keyboard, but the guy's in a hurry; I offer him £1,100. He goes for it. Then he starts talking about payment and I step back.

He's using an eBay membership number with no feedback, which is weird. But I really want my synth. Strangely, the same item seems to be listed five times by people who all have no feedback. Maybe he made a mistake. He's obviously some kind of fool to sell an ARP 2600 for £1,100. But he's telling me our transaction will be protected by eBay, which I guess it will be, and he does have a very professional-looking website.

But the postcode on his website is for Thornton Heath, just down the road from me: why don't I come and pick it up, I ask? Oh no, he says, it all gets shipped from the warehouse. I call the phone number, a UK mobile. No answer. I look up the number on the internet. As a long shot. And it turns out he's been ripping people off for a long, long time.

Now what's interesting about this is, he's a clever guy, so this is a pretty lame mistake to make. Like most scams, he relies on social engineering, and being plausible, rather than the kind of hacking that lets you take over the Pentagon. I get on to the entertaining which has been looking into him already, and discover a world of scams.

The most common is that the criminal gets hold of a legitimate eBay seller's account and starts taking people's money, before disappearing. So far, so predictable. There's even a fantastic variant where they set up an 'escrow' company, one that takes a cut and holds the money until the recipient is satisfied, but when you set up an account on the criminal's escrow company's website, they save your password, on the off chance that you're stupid enough to use the same one there as you do for your email and eBay accounts, so they can steal your identities too. Nice.

So what about the toad trying to rip me off? I report him to eBay, and the best they can do with this guy, who's been ripping people off for months, is suggest that they might consider erasing his eBay identity. Not very scary, given that he can set a new one up in 10 minutes.

But how cheeky can he get? Jeff at empiresecurity sets up a deal with him. Jeff is posing as a blind guy who needs a laptop to run his dialysis machine. It's a real tear-jerker, and I can't help feeling it's not holding together very plausibly. Soon enough, my scammer calls his bluff. These are his parting words (you can read the whole exchange at

"Hello Jeff," he says. "I must admit, you are good at it, you made me feel terrible with the blind-man failed-kidney stuff, I bought it and felt bad about scamming such a poor man... then I was at and saw what an ass I was. Anyway, it will be my source of inspiration in the future, thanks for it... I really hope I will drop this one day, when eBay will take serious steps to protect the buyers from scammers... You may ask why I am scamming - I guess I like other people's money."

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