My friend was buying a horsetrailer from Ebay. It had a buy it now price and the seller, who showed he accepted paypal, had something within the text indicating to contact he via email address and NOT go through ebay/paypal. My friend wired him $2500 (which was such a dumbass thing to do!) and now has lost the money. The FBI are now involved. I went to looking on Ebay and there are still several more auctions like that under different seller names but the text is the same and the pictures are too. So- to all those that buy on Ebay- BEWARE!! I would hate to hear that any of us got ripped off like this. $2500 is a heck of a lot of money to lose. I am still mad over my son getting ripped off for $15!!! A dollar is a dollar and can be used towards other things. I hate a damned thief!!!

E-bay is not the good place it once was, far too many crooks.
They don't really advertise that well on e-bay, they need a warning label a front explaining that crooks do exist on e-bay.
But to trust someone for $2500 over e-bay, when God knows who is on the other end?
Talk about a hard lesson.
Tell him not to talk about getting ripped, cause people will be smart alec about it.

ive noticed alot of them on ebay where they say to contact them through a dif email adress.... i figured most of themn if not all of them are scams. like i found one for a 2004 gxsr 750 for 2500 buy it now. and it said the guy was in ohio... so i was likke sweet. so i emailed him though ebay and he emailed me back saying to email him through this adress. well i emailed him back and he said he was in england and i would have to pay for shipping to the us... but the listing stated he was in ohio and if you tranfer it to someon outa the country good luck doing anything about getin it back,

Agreed! I used to love ebay, but now you have to be very cautious. I just had my ebay account 'hijacked' last week. All is fixed now.

I think somebody was keylogging my computer (only thing I can think of) because I had 2 unauthorized motorcycle listings under my account 4 minutes after I had placed a bid for an item??? Only thing that tipped me off was an email from an interested buyer. Very strange.

Anyway, ebay was quick about it and luckily I didn't have to pay nearly $700 in listing fees.

My friend has purchased cars and such without any problems until this happened. The tip off was when he tried to get a tracking number and the guy said Ebay never gave him one. At least if it went through paypal there would have been some recourse. A very hard lesson to live and learn from.

How bout a link to one of the "bad ads" so we know what to look for.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...5415%26fvi%3D1

This link is one of the ones. They get removed pretty quickly by Ebay. These people sell stuff like horsetrailers, cameras, boats, motorcycles. Any high dollar items like that.

how did he get all those good reviews? maybe doing transfers with friends and not even spending money or trailers....thats really bad...i didnt care about the xbox problem because they clearly state they are selling boxes but this is just plain out stealing money.

I think it is an inside job. They would have access to photos, etc and are trying to burn people. They will be caught but they change identities quickly and if you contact them about an auction they will close it or if Ebay catches it they will end it.

Just Beware!!!

Sheesh, that'* so obvious that its a scam. As soon as they say "do not go through ebay" blah blah... yea, real easy to tell.