[benja123]

A couple of years ago there was a talk at defcon by Nina Kollars where she described how in her search for cheap Nespresso she came across a large number of eBay merchants selling Nespresso at prices that were significantly below the market price. She ends up discovering that this was triangular fraud. For anyone interested in understanding how this works I highly recommend reading the article below.

https://mashable.com/article/nespresso-money-mules-ebay-cred...

[miki123211]

There's apparently a similar type of fraud currently popular over here (in Poland). It works like this:

1. You order a product, preferably something expensive and easy to sell. You request delivery to a package locker and payment via standard bank transfer. The site you're ordering from gives you an account number to transfer to, as well as an ID to put in the reference field.

2. You list something at the same price on our local equivalent of Craigslist.

3. When you find a customer, you tell them that you only accept payment via standard bank transfer. You give them the account number and reference ID from step 1. You never ship the offered item.

4. The customer makes the transfer and the item ordered in step 1 is delivered to a locker of your choosing. You can retrieve it and sell it legitimately.

5. When the customer from Craigslist doesn't receive the item they paid for, they go to the police. However, there's nothing linking you to their transaction, the seller of the item in step 1 is the primary suspect, as they're the ones who took their money in the first place. Even if they discover that there was a third person involved, they're usually extremely hard to find, as the footage from any CCTV equipment near the locker will be long gone.

[avianlyric]

Once saw a spate of this, but using Bitcoin and websites like local Bitcoin.

Fraudsters would setup a Cash -> Bitcoin transaction on local Bitcoin. Scam someone else into fulfilling the payment, then run off with the Bitcoin.

Then the victim looses their money, the Bitcoin seller is now in possession of effectively stolen funds. You don’t want to be the seller in this equation because from the banks perspective you look like the fraudster, and it’s likely you have bank accounts closed.

[stef25]

So the shop receives an order from the scammer named Joe but gets a payment from a customer called Bob, wouldn't that raise a flag?

[miki123211]

The shop doesn't receive anything except a confirmation that the payment went through.

Those traditional bank transfers are set up by a payment gateway (Przelewy24, DotPay, Payu), which is linked to the marketplace (eBay, Allegro), on which the seller actually operates.

The seller definitely doesn't get your payment info, not sure about the marketplace, but I don't think they do.

Besides, if you live in Poland and opt for payment via traditional, old-style bank transfer, you're probably a very unsophisticated customer. Most likely, you're completely unbanked and will hand over cash to a relative who will make the transfer for you. Most people who own a bank account and have enough tech skills to make a purchase over the internet will use a different payment method.

[brazzy]

A naively operating shop will pay zero attention to whom the payment comes from as long as it has a reference ID and amount that matches a real order.

And such payments can also be entirely legitimate, e.g. when Joe is a kid who wants to buy a gaming console and Bob is their father who pays for it.

[gjvc]

Well remembered! This was an excellent talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IT2oAzTcvU

[Terry_Roll]

There is another "fraud" which is sometimes considered to be financial arbitrage where an Ebay or Amazon seller sells a product in a country or territory that was intended for sale in another country or territory. An example being electrical goods from Hong Kong being sold in the UK market.

Many electrical products come with a plug adaptor for the main three types of electrical sockets and range of voltages, obviously due to British ties, there is English speaking manuals but manu manuals in practice have a range of languages in the documentation, and for all intents and purposes the product will work perfectly fine if used in the UK, yet exchange rates & taxes (or lack of) means its cheaper to get the product from Hong Kong and then ship to the UK.

People in Hong Kong ship goods in bulk from Hong Kong so they are already in the UK and then operatives in the UK set up an Ebay account so even Ebay or Amazon dont know.

[irthomasthomas]

That is simple geographic arbitrage; a common business model, not even "fraud". It may, at most, be a breach of some companies T&Cs, but breaking T&Cs is not normally a crime.

[Terry_Roll]

Fulfilment of the warranty is the fraud when the vendor goes bust. Whilst a contract is with the vendor and not the manufacturer, when the vendor goes bust/closes/stops trading, the warranty obligations transfer back to the manufacturer. So its a fraud because the manufacturer could refuse to meet any warranty obligations especially if they can prove it was a product sold in an over seas market and not the local market. This does happen, but its complex.

[nl]

The vendor going bust isn't fraud. It's the vendor going bust.

If the vendor can't handle warranty obligations then (depending on your jurisdiction) they might be in trouble, but it still isn't fraud.

In the US, grey market good are generally legal (under first-sale doctrine). In the UK they aren't (under R vs C and others).

[Terry_Roll]

>The vendor going bust isn't fraud. It's the vendor going bust

Whilst its not fraud, the fact anyone including the former directors of now deceased company can also appoint their own liquidators, and liquidators generally work for who ever is paying the bill, it is all but fraud in name.

[yial]

I actually think I just stumbled across some websites doing this, this week.

They were selling power smart generators for <$100 USD. Both listing an address in Canada, but having a PayPal address that seems to go to someone in China, and not properly setup so any purchase becomes “goods”.

I couldn’t figure out exactly what the scam was… but it’s suddenly making sense !