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Online Fraud: Drop Shipped LEGO, etc. (eBay, Amazon Marketplace, Bricklink, etc.)
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I highly doubt there are any legitimate transactions actually done this way on eBay. While anything in life is possible, the preponderance of evidence points in this direction.
Claiming that you didn't know, is actually not a legal excuse. The law has an allowance for "you should know". For example, if you buy a $3,000 car on the street from a guy and he wants $500 and you pay him cash, "you should know" it is stolen and the police won't accept your claims of ignorance when they come take it away from you and possibly arrest you for being in possession of stolen property.
Now, this is the Internet, I'm not law enforcement, so you can do whatever you want. Ethnically, you should make the effort to find out from Lego if this is stolen or not (pick up the phone and call them). If it isn't, then by all means, keep it. If it is, Lego will provide you a pre-paid return shipping label to return it to them, which you should do regardless if eBay refunds you or not.
That is the right thing to do, but as well all well know, many people in this world choose not to do the right thing, after all, the fact that we're talking about this crime in the first place proves that there are plenty of immoral people in the world.
Due to me hurrying up the shipment because of your emails i shipped 2 Lego's to your address!
I would want you to please redirect them to my address,
His Name
Address
State
Zip
I will pay you in your paypal account the shipping cost for you to shipped it to me via USPS Parcel post.
I would really need your help in this matter.
Please reply if this is possible?
Thank you in advance,
He appears to be a big lego collector any help or opinions welcome,
That will give you a better idea on what to do next.
In addtion, if the seller so carelessly shiped a second cargo train to you, I don't think he is paying for it with his own money or from his own inventory. I could understand getting a set mixed up and sending the wrong one but sending out a second train because of a couple emails seems odd.
Out of curiosity. how much eBay feedback does the seller have?
The reason I thought the guy may have been a big lego collector, his ebay profile picture is of a huge display of legos . I'll keep you updated as I get more information if you're interested. Thanks for the help everyone
I guess the cost of implementing something like this is not cost effective enough for them to want to stop the fraud.
It happened to me again about three months later with a Walmart order. I contacted them and never heard anything back.so I think it has become a lot worse since then.
I'm getting loads of emails like "do you ship to a different address" or "its a gift for my grandson" - the answer is always: Sorry its against the rules. Its better to loose 2-3 sales and still have lego the than loose lego and your money.
I purchased some new Lego sets last week on eBay. They were auction style, not BIN, and they were from sellers with hundreds of feedbacks and 100% positive ratings. This is typically (though not always) a good indication that things are legit. Scammers usually have between 0-10 feedbacks (and/or are newly registered) and often sell brand new items with a BIN that is too good to be true. When you see an auction style item selling from someone with multiple years of eBay registration, hundreds of feedbacks and a 100% positive rating it is almost always legitimate, at least in my experience.
Anyway, I got the items and right away it was obvious that something was very wrong. First of all, only one of the items was what I had actually ordered. If they had been what I had ordered, I might not have dug any deeper. In addition, the items came frok Lego direct not a private party. I thought to myself at first that maybe Lego was just using third party eBay user IDs to resell some excess stock (companies will do this from time to time) but then I noticed the following: the bill to address was different people from different parts of the country.
Example: Package A: Ship to: (my info) Bill to: Joe Six Pack, California (don't want to use the real person's info in this post)
Package B: Ship to (my info) Bill to: Jane Six Pack, New York
Again both packages came from Lego direct and both were billed to different people but shipped to me. The I started searching online and found this forum. I guess this means I am part of this scam now. I have sent an email to Thor but have received no response yet. I am currently on hold with Lego customer service but I will let you know how that turns out.
Again, i thought I had experienced every scam as a buyer and seller. This is a new one for my collection. I'm so glad that I am now caught up in a multi-hundred dollar scam and am guilty until I prove my innocence to Lego, eBay, Paypal and--potentially--law enforcement.
I will keep the forum posted on what happens.
If you weren't able to get anywhere with them, I'd try again. You could have gotten a new rep or something.
Brent
I'm wondering if the people you need to talk to about this are available on the weekend, I'd be very surprised if you heard from Thor before Monday.
Scroll down under the "New" sellers, rather than "Featured" sellers...
These scammers are on Amazon, this one is offering this set "new" for $204, ships from MS of course... The next two are scammers as well @ 209 and $219. How obvious do you have to be "limit 2 per order". What 3rd party seller on Amazon would ever say that? "We only ship to home address. No business address". That is another clear scammer...
Obvious scammer, for those who know the score... But there is no "report seller" button that I can find. Anyone know how to tell Amazon this is a scammer?
Or Lego for that matter?
who do you call when this sort of crime is going on? No one seems to really care. Shame the police don't. (or any law enforcement, I would think this would be the FBI's can of worms)
Grr... I hate criminals, as you can imagine... :)
This is the sellers shop address:
http://stores.ebay.com.au/Fiction-Toys
All the sets are around AU$100 to AU$200 .
The sets I bought were:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Star-wars-9489-9491-and-9493-Newest-Sets-/250964283521?pt=UK_Construction_Toys_Kits&hash=item3a6ea31081
and
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Star-wars-9488-9490-and-9492-Newest-Sets-/250964282503?pt=UK_Construction_Toys_Kits&hash=item3a6ea30c87
Does this seller seem suspicious to anyone else, or after reading about so many scammer am I just paranoid?
I've sent an email to lego and Thor, but I havn't contacted ebay yet
thanks guys for posting/keeping this thread going. Is there a primer as to what to do? I read through the posts (not all of them, I'm not that insomnia-tic) and the gist I got was, to go through Thor and he'll work with us/ebay/lego to resolve it.
(note to the ppl saying, send it back -- as far as ebay was concerned, it was a valid transaction. The fraud takes place on the seller's side when he 'kicks' the information further down, not realizing that most likely the person 'buying & paying them a commission' and shipping from Lego is using stolen/illicit/etc. Or, maybe Lego offers some huge bulk 'buy 500 units as a wholesaler' offer, and we just don't buy enough/have the proper licensing.. haha). Its only after you dig in much deeper (or someone cuts out and leaves another hanging out to dry) that you find out the fraud
LEGO was no better. They took me off their blacklist (which was good of them). But as far as I can tell have done nothing about the seller. Yes, I got bumped up to a "Sales Support Administrator" (like Jenni mentioned). She was very polite, sympathetic, etc. She's paid to be so. But nothing happened with respect to the seller, who _continues_ to sell LEGO on eBay.
To be frank, I'm getting very disappointed with 'Thor'. As his very first message on this thread makes clear, he is 'collecting information' on scam sellers. Is he doing anything once he has the information? He does not seem overly concerned about the systemic problem of loose online security at S@H. He's 'bumped' up our suggestions to others.
In general, LEGO reps are very courteous. Will bend over backwards for their customers. Will gladly send you missing parts. But they seem incapable of (or unwilling) protecting the victims of these crimes, the people whose credit card information was stolen.
What do you want lego to do? Actually physically arrest them? I am sure they are doing everything in their power to stop this, since its bad for business on their end.
The Internet is like the wild west, this is absurd, where is law enforcement here? Crimes are being committed and no one seems to care, it is incredible.
If someone walked into a Walmart and tried to steal thousands of dollars worth of Lego, the police would be there in 3 minutes. Here, nothing...
No, the problem is the way in which TLG conducts their business. They need to positively identify the credit card owners if the ship-to location does not match the bill-to location.
THIS IS THE ONLY WAY THIS WILL STOP. EVERYTHING WE DO AND SAY HERE IS A WASTE OF TIME.
Thor - why exactly is this not being done? And how can I feel confident giving my credit card number to TLG when I buy from S@H since it is apparant that there is little regard for the (what must be) thousands of victims of this scam?
What do you want lego to do? Actually physically arrest them? I am sure they are doing everything in their power to stop this, since its bad for business on their end.
This is what LEGO has NOT done:
1. Effectively passed on the detailed information about the scammer to eBay or law enforcement to at the very least have him/her stop selling on eBay
2. When I asked if I could contact the victim (whose CC info was stolen) directly, they specifically told me not to (I have the entire email paper trail)
3. They've not made their online store more secure as countless other responsible businesses have.
What makes you think they are doing everything in their power to stop this? Frankly it's probably worse for their cash flow to make it a bit more difficult for grandparents to buy gifts for grandkids than to stop criminals from using stolen CCs.
And as LFT said, what do you think Walmart would do if they found out that crimes were being perpetrated in their bricks and mortar stores? They would call in the police. AND they would hire more internal security (at their own cost) to stop it.
I think the credit card companies are the ones who are getting stuck for these charges. These are all billion dollar corporations and the loses are a very small percentage of there operating bugets. I think it probablly cost them more to combat then its worth. Ebay dosn't care they are making a ton of money off of this . just my thoughts
(For a living, I consult with companies trying to work out internal process issues. That is sometimes nearly impossible. Trying to get these processes sorted out between two companies is incredibly more difficult than it sounds!)
Also - LEGO's website is actually relatively standard. I wouldn't say they have "loose online security." The same thing done on lego.com can be done on almost every eCommerce site out there. The only exceptions are the websites that use "enhanced" credit card verification, like MasterCard Secure Code, etc.
I trust that Thor does whatever he can with the information he is given. eBay doesn't want to remove sellers. They lose fee income from both eBay.com and PayPal.com. Unless they can prove that a seller is a part of this scam, they're probably a bit hesitant to black-list the seller.
Brent
That is why you need law enforcement involved... eBay is not going to do anything because Lego says so. They will take action if the FBI calls them (or they should, anyway).
Brent
Perhaps the quickest way to stop this is to change the laws so that neither Lego nor eBay may profit from this, and in fact lose money on this. Pass on the loss to both companies and they'll figure out a solution very quickly.
Of course, we might not like that solution. :)
I know that Target, Walmart, and Amazon do not have such a policy...
Brent
I made every attempt I could at contacting the people who were listed on the "bill to" section of the Lego invoices. I was able to get in touch with one of the people but not the other one (two total victims). The person was very happy that I alerted them to the fact that their CC info has been stolen.
Here is my question: Why, upon hearing about these scams, does Lego not IMMEDIATELY contact the people on the billing side of the invoice and A. Explain what happened B. refund their money. Answer? Lego would rather let people discover (or not discover) the fraudulent charges on their own and then fight it out with the CC company. This will cut down on Lego's losses for these scams.
I can understand this type of corporate conduct from lesser known companies but I am very surprised and saddened that it is (seems to be, anyway) happening with what I thought was a highly reputable company. It is the moral, ethical (and should be legal) responsibility of Lego to do the right thing once they are alerted to a scam.
I gave two people at Lego the order numbers in question so they have all the info about how to contact the victims but based on what I am reading here they are not doing so.
In the meantime, I recommend that all people like me who get these packages in the mail make every attempt to contact the people on the billing side and let them know that their CC info has been stolen. Just ask yourself if you would want someone to do the same for you if the shoe was on the other foot.
BTW, there are scores of high dollar Lego items for sale RIGHT NOW on eBay with "Olive Branch MS" as the shipping location. It is absurd that Lego, eBay and Paypal all know what is going on but NOTHING is being done.
@bluemoose No one in the community is happy about these scams. Perhaps we can get more info on what is being done by TLG through the Ambassador program?
================
These scams are increasingly very very fast. I've been hit for the first time, and by a number of different people now.
First off I want to say thank you to everyone who I've been talking with over the last week, you've been a great help in finding suspicious sellers via eBay and Amazon.
This month we've had over 50 sellers blocked from eBay; unfortunatley there are still many more on there. I honestly wish I had the ability to click 'Delete Seller' on the eBay site, unfortunatley I don't which means I need to deal with eBay and convince them that sellers are fraudulently purchasing items. Until I can prove it, then that seller stays on eBay. If you look online many of the sellers now have 0 items for sale or are no longer registered users.
To address specific members with questions:
CTWS87- I replied to you about the seller and need you to follow up when you receive the items so we can find out if they were drop shipped from us. Once that happens we can then go to eBay with the information.
Pcirone- The stolen card information was not lost by us, the cards are out there due to large breaches that you hear about (most that you don't) in the news like the TJMAXX hack. Unfortunately many people with cards that were stolen still don't realize it until someone uses their information. From a security standpoint, not matter what site they use a card on, it it's not registered as stolen/compromised there's nothing a merchant can do (which is why it passes all security checks).
JohnnyLemonHead- what is your email address? I'm sorry if I've missed your email; please contact me again with your brickset handle in the subject. I've emailed/called eBay multiple times a day to deal with these sellers, unfortunately more pop up daily.
Brickmatic- I'm honestly sorry if you feel concerned that we're not telling you more information about the fraudulent sales online, if I disclosed all of the information and what we're doing here at TLG to fight fraud and the measures we're taking, it would honestly risk the success of our preventative measures.
snowytiger- if you want to contact me again via email feel free, my email is [email protected] please put your brickset user id in
Thank you all for your help and follow up. My apologies if I'm late in contacting any of you, most of the time it's because I'm waiting for eBay to respond after I send them your information.
Thanks again,
Thor
It isn't so much detailed information about TLG security process that I'd like to hear about, but rather progress in combating fraud, for instance how over 50 fraudulent sellers were shut down. Other information would be if the rate of fraud is going up or down or, when appropriate, if there are any criminal proceedings against the people perpetrating fraud. It's not about procedural details but about confidence that something effective is being done about the problem.
Unless eBay is willing to help start the criminal proceedings with the information they have, our hands are tied...instead of criminal's hands being cuffed (I know it's corny but it's how it is).
We are initiating internal changes that should help prevent the success of the orders that are placed by fraudsters.
Unfortunately, it’s the same story with many merchants I’ve talked to lately; everyone's hurting from online fraud these days. With the job market/economic times, crime as a whole is up.
If you have any other questions feel free to email me [email protected]
Thanks again,
Thor