BEWARE. PLEASE READ!!!

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Posted By: botn

It has come to my attention that an ebay power seller has absconded with my entire web page inventory, images and all and is attempted to sell the cards to unsuspecting people. His ebay id is tonissportscards and he is out of Tacoma, Washington. His webpage address, which has an uncanny resemblance to mine, is http://www.tonis-sportcards.com. Just for kicks I did a Whois search and came up with the following: http://www.botn.com/tonis.doc His e-mail address is t0ni_toscana@gawab.com.

Once again, the cards that he is trying to sell he does not own and they are all still in my possession. Please pass along this information so that nobody gets screwed by this scumbag. I have contacted ebay as he is attempted to sell cards through their e-mail system. I will also follow up with his web host. I will crush this twerp.

If any of you is able to post this warning on the CU Forum I would greatly appreciate it. I will make sure that this gets to the SGC site as well.

Thanks,
Greg

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Posted By: botn

Apparently, tonissportscards' id was hijacked and they are not at all affiliated with this fraud. I did not want to implicate an innocent party.

Thanks,
Greg

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Posted By: Brian C Daniels

on the "Old Putz" obb is off the table!.

just kidding Greg,go get his resale number yanked by calling Interpoll!

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Posted By: Hankron

I doubt that the site is being run out of Tacoma, as all the prices are in Euros. Unless there's a Tacoma near Russia.

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Posted By: Elliot

thanks Greg. I received an email from this person yesterday and immediately forwarded it to eBay. I'm sure they will respond within the next week. In his email to me, he claimed to be from Italy. I have forwarded his email to you, also. This is obviously another example of identity theft as he is using the ebay "handle" of a seller with a good reputation.

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Posted By: Anthony Nex

I emailed the ebay ID, and he said he was the same guy.
Pisa/Tacoma/Canada. One big global scammer!

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Posted By: runscott

The ebay id Greg gave us was created as being from "Italy", but his location is Washington. Doesn't look like a hi-jacking to me - more like a well-thought out scam.

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Posted By: botn

The ebay id was hijacked. eBay has restored the account. Here is the e-mail from safe harbor:

Hello Greg,

Thank you for your message regarding the account take-over situation for this account "tonissportscards." We have since been able to restore the account to the rightful owner. As you may have noticed, the User ID has been changed back to "proctorsportscards.com." The email address has also been changed back. I have notified this member "anex@anthonynex.com" that the email they received is completely fraudulent.

Thank you once again for the report!
Regards,

Athena
eBay PowerSeller
Trust & Safety

I also spoke with the owner of the eBay account and it was clear to me that they have nothing to do with this.

Not sure that I will be able to shut down the site and terminate this jerk but I will try. I just want to be sure that nobody sends this guy money. In the meantime I will be spending time this weekend wartermarking my images on my site and those that are posted on ebay.

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Posted By: Brian C Daniels

"musicman0101" and "phicom"

cgeck this out as well!

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Posted By: runscott

What do you mean by "hijacked"?

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Posted By: runscott

I just got an email from an "ask the seller" that I sent to his ebay i.d. (after you received the email from your ebay "protectors"), and the response was from t0ni_toscana@gawab.com and he said that his store is in Pisa, Italy.

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Posted By: botn

This clown has taken over numerous accounts. This guy is responsible for those a version of those e-mails asking for you to login to your ebay account using the link provided in the e-mail. He gets your password and everything else and the rest as we see is history.

I don't actually think that he is in Italy. His e-mails are coming from within the US. Yahoo is his domain host and he also has a local ISP for his e-mail, www.gawab.com. I have notified ebay, Yahoo and his gawab.com. I doubt that he will get very far with this one.

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Posted By: Hankron

One thing one can do is to use different passwords for one's various services (internet service, eBay, paypal, etc). This way, if someone steals your internet dial-up password, for example, he doesn't automatically have access to your eBay, Paypal, etc.

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Posted By: Scarecrow

Do you remember responding to one of those e-mails asking for you ID and password?
What if anything is E-Bay doing to stop this?

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Posted By: jay behrens

Always remember, eBay is NEVER responible for anything that happens on THEIR website.

I want to figure the next great business where I get get people to apy me money so they can be ripped off and I am not held accountable for it. Man, what a life.

Jay

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Posted By: Hankron

I don't see how eBay is responsible for people giving out their passwords to people in East Europe.

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Posted By: Hankron

If eBay was giving away the passwords that would be one thing (which is a complaint against some Domain Registers). But these are cases where the owners of the passwords themselves are giving them away.

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Posted By: jay behrens

David, I was responding to the question, What is eBay doing about it? And my point was that they claim not to be responsible for anything and don't feel the need to take action to prevent fraud, etc since they are not being held accountable for anything that occurs on their site.

Until such time that eBay is finally held accountable for the fraud, etc that occurs on their site, they will do nothing but watch the money roll in.

Jay

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Posted By: Hankron

Jay, I was responsing to Scarecrow's post, and had not read yours

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Posted By: Tim

I received one of these e-mail messages just a couple days ago. Thankfully, I just deleted it!

Tim

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Posted By: botn

They have been very diligent with respect to trying to put this guy out of business. They have millions of registered users. Even if a very small perectage of users reply to the e-mail asking for account verification, it creates an enormous amount of work for them.

It appears that this guy has 9 accounts at a minimum. I would think by morning that ebay will have temporarily suspended them. All of the accounts seem to be linked to one e-mail address but the IP associated with the account is anonymous or unable to be located.

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Posted By: runscott

First, Brian listed to ebay handles that had been "hijacked" - how did Brian gleen this bit of information, and what has the "hijacker" done with the accounts?

2nd, how does Greg know that the guy had hijacked at least 9 ids, and again, what's he doing with the accounts?

Finally, is the hijacker the same guy who owns the website where Greg's images are being used?

There are a lot of posts on this thread, and maybe I'm the only one who doesn't understand the logic, but please humor me with a short clear response, as none of my posts have yet received a reply that cleared any of this up. Thanks!

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Posted By: darby-s

I have had several emails with Toni, I have agreed to buy an expensive card from him. He said he would ship it and once the tracking number is sent to me, I should wire the $10K. I agreed but misunderstood, I understood that I would wire the $$ once the card is in my hand, my bad.

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Posted By: Rob M (ramram)

An American sportscard store in Italy. Come on! If he can successfully run a business like that in Italy then he can sell snowballs to Eskimos (not that there's anything wrong with that). It's got to be a major scam. Put up a fake website, have a few fools send there money to your uncle in Italy, what a deal! Also, for what it's worth, if you'll notice that the pictures of his business show the company as being "Toni's Sportscards" and his website and copyright are for "Toni's Sportcards" (no "s" after Sport). Is this just an oops?

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Posted By: botn

Scott,

Since Anthony Nex brought this to my attention I made a public post with the information that he had provided to me. Others have been receiving similar e-mails through the ebay e-mail system from "Toni" but they are from other user ids. Not the one that I initially reported here. As time passed it became clear that whomever was perpetrating this attempted fraud had hijacked several ebay ids. I have been feeding ebay with the information as it comes to me and they have been able to assist the people whose accounts were taken over by restoring their accounts to the rightful owners.

The hijacker is the same person or persons who have a copy of my site, inventory and images. They are not located in Italy but they have provided enough bogus information and are computer savvy enough to be able to hide. This person or persons, as far as I can tell, are within the borders of the US.

Other than using the hijacked ids as a means to communicate with people and provide a shell under which they can operate and look legitimate, there is no other reason for an account to be hijacked, yet that does not stop these guys from attempting to take over the ebay accounts. There may also be a way for them to gather personal and financial information in doing this.

The suspicious thing is that under my buying id, mello-mint, I am bidding on virtually every caramel card listed on ebay, yet I never received an e-mail from this creep offering out those cards to me. It makes me think that this is someone who knows me and knew to avoid me for as long as possible.

Greg

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Posted By: runscott

now I get it.

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Posted By: dan mckee

1 day from Italy to US, still isn't here yet, I just wired him $10K. http://www.pegasuscargo.com/_/track.php

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Posted By: warshawlaw

first the PSA debacle, now this.

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Posted By: dan mckee

Hi Adam, This was just a game for me, I honestly am not this stupid, I played it and figured if the card did arrive, then I would wire the funds. It was a no lose situation for me. PSA still got me! I am far from finished though. I most likely will suffer the loss but it has cost them some already and I won't stop til I have cost them 3 times what they cost me.

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Posted By: runscott

Dan - I have no idea what you are doing. Can you explain? The link you provided makes absolutely no sense to me.

Is this meant to be a thread for people who can complete a Rubix cube in 12 seconds? I'm a cartoon guy.

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Posted By: runscott

and what the heck is a "Rolex Daytona Cosmograph Yellow Gold 18K"? I'm guessing it's much more like a watch than a card.

Also, if you wired this guy money after receiving proof that he had mailed...something....how do you know that the "something" is really a card...or a Rolex Daytona Cosmograph Yellow Gold 18K?

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Posted By: dan mckee

weird, link worked before, try this one: http://www.pegasuscargo.com/_/track.php?form_tracking=PIPF22315255265838507664

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Posted By: dan mckee

Scott, email me and I will send you the goodies.