[Exhibitman]

In a nutshell, the card was sold on Ebay and the buyer (from Glendale CA) paid by CC then claimed that he had not received it--despite the fact that signature confirmation was used--he claimed the item wasn't in the box. He instituted a Paypal/CC claim and got his money back and still had the card. The card then turned up in the MH auction. Whether he reholdered it and then sold it or whether it went through more than one set of hands I cannot say. If it wasn't for the kangaroo court system at the Ebay-mandated Paypal, however, this sort of crap could never take place because you could use a check and wait for it to clear. With Paypal, you take the same risks as any merchant w/r/t fraudulent charge-backs.

My experience in LA County has been that law enforcement is as useless as tits on a bull when it comes to false pretense stuff like this; they simply declare it a civil dispute and punt. The scammer in this case used a mailbox store to have his items delivered so that there would be a signature but it would not be his.

So far as title goes, it depends in some degree on how the item was obtained and what jurisdiction you are in. Under some states' laws a good faith purchaser for value acquires clean title even if the seller to that person got the item by larcenous means.