Mongo has been a member of ebay for about 5 or 6 years now. Has not sold anything and only purchased about 8 small items in all that time. All care free.


In the space of about a week and a half now, he has found and reported 2 very large scams involving some high end good quality lenses Mongo has been looking to buy. The dummy listings were very professionally done and would be difficult to pick. It was only in the language used and approach that made them at all detectable. That, and the fact Mongo is extremely untrusting , suspicious and a pain in the **** with the sort of short questions intended to catch people out.


Its clear these scammers do not trouble themselves with lower priced lenses. They will only get involved if there are many thousands of dollars to be made with the one transaction/buyer.


Mongo only writes this to remind and warn others that this sort of stuff seems to be alive and well and living on ebay and, no doubt, similar places. Whilst ebay was very grateful for bring this to its attention, Mongo has some real doubts about what is being done about it or can be successfully done about it. Also, one would think Paypal (which Mongo uses) would have a very big interest in this sort of thing as it could potentially cost then a fortune otherwise.


Beware ! ask questions and scrutinise the answers. Do not fall sucker to these guys - they are not that smart - they only succeed if buyers are not smart enough. call ebay if you are suspicious before you part with any money. Ebay only took less than a minute and a half to verify the fraud/scam in both the above cases Mongo mentioned.