Hi, there's a scam that's been going on on eBay for quite a long time now and it's quite difficult to capture. It's a fleeting scam, but it keeps coming up again and again and again. and I was able to capture it. So I'll show you what's going on here.

and in particular, it actually targets high value test equipment, so a lot of people in the community could easily get uh called out with this if you're not aware of it and it applies to other high-value used items in other Niche uh, you know Industries and hobbies and things like that. So I got this uh email alert here because I set up email alerts for you know, all sorts of various Brands and specific instruments that I'm after and stuff like that. People ask me, how do I score all my Bargains on eBay well diligence. I set up my watch list and then I get emailed alert as soon as one uh pops up.

Yeah! so I don't have to search all the time. So I've got this email alert and I've had this many times. This is about the fifth or sixth time I think from memory that I've had this actually pop up in my email for this specific fluke. It's the 8508a and it's a uh, if you don't know, it's probably the industry's best eight and a half digit multimeter.

It's incredibly expensive, even second hand. Like, you know, between five and ten thousand dollars these things would typically go for they're quite rare. Uh, which is why a lot of people in this sort of you know Niche thing you want one of these, they put it on their eBay alert and you you know it pops up like this. Okay, so what the scam is here is the listing which is now gone.

By the way it's it's completely vanished because people usually report these things and they get taken down within like 24 hours. I've seen them go down within hours of me getting the email alert, but that's more than enough time for our people to get caught by this. So these are real eBay listings and you and they usually like starting bidders like zero and you think oh, I can get a fluke 8508a for you know, probably you know, really low prices starting at Zero. They don't know what they're selling and stuff like that, right? And look, if you look at the seller information over here, Man 7183 13 728 Feedback right? 99.9 Positive: This is a legit seller.

Okay, so you might like think wow, right? they've just I don't know they've scored this from. You know they don't know what it is and they've put it on there and started at zero and you think you're gonna get a bargain and that's what they're preying on. And they've got a couple of, uh, legit looking photos over here. You know it's powered up.

it's all looking good. Sounds that they'll even have a calibration certificate I Don't think I captured that image but you know they show you like calibration certificate might even say it comes with a cow certificate and everything like that. And if you go down to the bottom of the listing, um, all it's got is item description from the seller. the Buy It Now price 6300 us and Ding-A-Ling First warning: Bell Okay is this is a auction starting from you know, 99 Cents or whatever and they're saying Buy It Now price is 6300 US Stock number Boom and there's no other the description.

But the thing is this is a legit uh eBay account. You can go in there, you can check all their feedback and you can do everything right. But the scam is is that this is a hijacked email account. They have actually scammed this poor seller who worked like so hard to get 13 000 feedback.

that would have totally been like their full-time business and everything they have unfortunately been scammed into duping. uh, their you know login details for the eBay account and somebody has hijacked their account and taken over. so it's an absolute legit account. This at this account almost certainly didn't uh, sell anything like this.

And here's some other stuff in their listing right? If you go down and see their other items. look, they've got a keysight 3458a here, right? And they've got other high value items now I'm You Know Tiffany and Co probably high value Pokemon stuff. You know, signed things from players and stuff like that, right? And they've got. look.

they've got some fluke stuff over here so they deliver really? Target like high value? Uh, you know, big name test equipment items and other items right? Dungeons and Dragons wood game box set and all this sort of stuff right? What else have we got? and then they've got HP our Vector Network analyzer 20 gig VNA right once again starting from 99 Cents They've had one bid and all the bids are genuine. Of course these are people bidding on these things not knowing that this is actually a scam account or it's a hijacked up account which is now a scam. It looks totally legit before, but I'm sure if you go and search up all these items, they're probably like all really high value like items in Niche fields that people set watch list for. Now here's the interesting thing though.

one of the other images in here they always replace the the first image is the banner photo which is stolen from legit ads. Okay, you can might even be able to do a Google reverse image search and find them and stuff like that, but there's a second one over here and I was able to capture that. Please read: This item can be purchased at the Buy It Now price only. So the auction is like not not legit even though it'll act legit and even if like the auction finished or whatever I don't know what the Finish date is but even if it did right it the the accounts almost certainly shut down by then.

as a as it's been reported, no bidding allowed. Please Do Not bid. All bids will be removed. Do Not respond through eBay messages If you want to buy it now, please contact us only at info W at Sw2group.com Please include the stock number which we uh showed before and yeah, this is how the scam.

Works They then take you outside of the eBay system. So yeah, you guessed it I emailed them. So as I said even within like hours of them hijacking this account and they put. they've probably got these automated bot scripts which automatically list all these uh items because I keep seeing this same Fluke meter over and over the same VNA over and over the same uh, keysight, eight and a half digit meter over and over again.

So obviously like they've got a uh, pre-done list of these products. so once they've hijacked their account within minutes, they just push a button, run the script and it will upload all of their uh, all of these products which all have legit photos stolen from other places and they know these are high value items that people are really you know watching out for so they know it'll pop up on everyone's eBay uh you know, email alert list. but anyway I emailed them so let's have a look hi how can I purchase the Fluke 8508a reference multimeter stock number on eBay with delivery to California Thanks Marty I didn't put Marty McFly but you know hi Marty The Fluke 8508a reference meter is still available for purchase for a 6300 shipping shipping included and by this time by the time I actually got uh the reply it like they'd already shut like the account was already shut down. We Grant a 30-day money-back guarantee What? Oh, you can't lose for safety reasons.

For your safety, the transaction will be handled by eBay So if you would like to proceed, please let us know and I'll set up a Buy It Now list in for you I will provide the link so that you can proceed so you're starting to sniff where this uh scam is heading. Yeah, you guessed it. Thanks! Martha Please please provide the link and like within like a couple of hours later, here we go. I Sent them this three hours ago and like 55 minutes ago you may now proceed to buy it.

Now at the following link, please let me know once it's sorted so I can arrange shipping and look, this looks like an absolute legit Ebay link doesn't it? Well, of course if you hover over it, you can see down in the corner there it's a tiny URL link. What's the odds? this actually goes to eBay zero just in case they had any browsers or hijack info. I actually uh, loaded up in a VPN browser here, right? So we're all, uh, safe and here it is. Sure enough, it looks like a legit Buy It Now eBay page.

But the first thing you'll notice is the name of the seller store here. uh, Pawn Shop 42.93 Feedback: That's not the same store that we had before because the hijacked that hijack store so they're they're script obviously like, doesn't like insert that. That would have been a bit better in the scam because you might remember the name of it and how many feedback they have and all that. and if it's different one.

But you know, people who are going to get duped for something like this generally aren't going to be looking at the details, they're just relying on sheer numbers And people are just like so desperate to get this instrument. they might have been waiting years for one of these to pop up on. eBay right? And you know it was like this might be cheap I Don't know the going rate for one of these, but like that, that could be very cheap right? There could be like 10 grand somewhere else. All right.

So saving a lot of money. So high value items like this and it looks like look at the URL at the top right, it looks like a totally legit um like URL Ebay.com dash itm dash right and then hash item. all this rubbish.com So This spoofing that URL to make it look like it's a legit eBay uh list in here but it's obviously not right. This is just a fake website that they've set up and there's set up a sub domain ebay.com and then yeah, it's right and I'm sure if you go through the buyer now.

in fact, I haven't done this right. If we actually click on, buy it now and you can see the link down the bottom, there haven't actually done this. let's click on the Buy It Now link shall we and see where it takes us. Where does it take us? eBay Check out.

Look. it looks like a totally legit eBay Checkout right? either. Giving me free shipping? What a bargain, right? Unbelievable and right? Copyright: eBay Inc All Rights Reserved User Agreement: Ah, look, look, see I can't even click I Can't even click on the user agreement link privacy cookies. Those links don't work right.

That Money Back eBay Money Back guarantee. And that actually that's a legit a legit link. It links to the actual eBay page. So if we open that right, we will actually get the the legit eBay money back guarantee thing.

So you think you know it's all part of the scam, you know you think, oh yeah, no worries if it goes wrong I can get my money back. You know, safe as houses. But once again, the message to seller here. If you look at the link down in the bottom corner, it's that same scam uh.com uh domain down there.

So yeah, like if you go through and confirm and let's let's go through and confirm and pay. Okay, and let's what will it do if I fill out nothing. Okay, no you'd have to fill out the whole thing and probably and you know. but anyway, they'll take you to a scam payment Gateway or it might be PayPal You know they might have a temporary PayPal address set up or it might you know Western Union or around.

However, like some you know, hourly pay or you know some other like payment method um that scammers would uh use so that they can get away with it I actually filled out my address as uh Marty McFly 1640 Riverside Drive Hill Valley California and we actually get to an order confirmation page. But here's the interesting thing. I Expected them to use like one of those like the third party payment systems that, uh, you know they're a legit payment systems, but they're not. They're asking for direct deposit into a U.S bank account to complete the transaction.

Payment must be made using bank to bank electronic wire transfer, blah blah blah blah blah. Note: This payment goes to a managed eBay bank account. We will hold the payment until you get the item ordered, then we pay, and then we pay your seller. The payment is 100 secure.

Um yeah, the payment's 100 secure. It's going to go from your bank into their bank and then they're just gonna withdraw it from their bank and then shut down their bank account. Uh, which they open with a false name and they'll just yeah, bugger off with your money. That's how the scam works.

So yeah, they're like they're blatant about it's. not like, uh, they're in a different country they're asking you to or may you know I don't know if you know it. leave it in the comments down below if there's some like I don't know if they can redirect the funds, but this is like Citibank um and with account numbers in uh, Florida Citibank branch in Florida So and then once paid, please upload proof of payment to the listing page using confirm payment button. There's no confirm payment button.

there was there. Yeah, yeah. confirm and pay. It's already there, right? The confirm and pay just takes you to the the page.

we're just on. There's nothing there. why don't you send the money? It's like magic gone. So I really feel sorry for these eBay businesses.

13 000 feedback Just boom gone. I Don't know if they'll and they can ever get their account back after this I don't know what happens I haven't uh tracked it? Um, you know that far. But this is how the scam works so just watch out for it. They're prey in on the fact that it's going to show up on people's uh, watch list.

They might have been waiting years for it. They're desperate to get this thing that they're searching for and uh, yeah, they'll just like throw caution to the wind. Oh I Finally got it. This is my big chance.

Can't miss it And they do the Buy It Now thing and they just get totally scammed and they might like complete the whole thing. once you've done the purchase. They might, uh, you know, send you a fake tracking number and all sorts of things. and you know there's all that whole back end behind payment scams.

And this is just like the front end of a traditional back end. You know, payment scam where you know they'll phone you up. You know, those Nigerian phone scams or whatever. they'll call you up and they'll you know, fake your bank account instead of eBay They'll thank you, fake your bank login thinking that they have accidentally transferred money into your account and you've got to send it back to them.

you know? and they'll give you like a 10 cut or something you know like that for your trouble. And this is. Yeah, there's tons of scams like this, but this is how it works. Just watch out for it.

Um, yeah, if it's too good to be true, it obviously is, but this is a dead giveaway. All of them. All of them have this as the second photo. This domain down here might change, but yeah, they just scam as they get you off the website and then you're in a uh, traditional, um, you know, payment scam category but targeting test equipment.

Watch out for like there's probably more I'm only I get these pop up for you know, just a few things I'm watching. Leave it in the comments down below if you've had watchlist so you've seen these on eBay like I've been getting these for it's probably years now. it's a long time, but like they're usually gone like within hours. So I haven't been able to do this video and capture it.

but this time I was at least able to do some screenshots and capture it. So anyway, just beware out there. Hope you found that useful and interesting. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up.

As always, comment down below. catch you next time.