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I doubt eBay can do much, or PayPal. These are smash and grab scams. The scumbag starts a new sellers account along with a PayPal account (probably with stollen credit card numbers). The new seller only has a few items for 'sale' at no starting price & for a very short run time, and people's greed takes over. The account is settled through PayPal, the seller takes the money & the seller account is abandoned, & PayPal is left footing the bill to return the buyer their money. This way a scammer can set up dozens of bogus accounts & are untouchable as the eBay & PayPal machine is too slow to react - the are just too big to move so quickly. The scammers know this & exploit it.
If you look at all the dozens of Celestron 8SE scopes on sale, all have the exact same slick blurb. All of them are only 3day auctions. All the sellers only have only between 3 & 6 scopes for sale. All the sellers are all brand new accounts. And eBay & PayPal can't react fast enough before the whole thing is over.
This thread focuses on scopes. Terry mentions coffee machines. Any brand consumer goods is fair game for these scumbags. eBay is being swamped with hundreds of these bogus seller accounts all at once 'selling' every thing, scopes, coffee machines, mix masters, electronics, clothing - all big brands, all the same MO. That's a heck of a lot of money being stollen. Not a good situation for anyone.
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