eBay targets Romanian fraudsters
Published June 28th, 2007
eBay is helping Romanian law enforcement to detect and stop fraud targeting losing auction bidders. The auction giant said a large portion of online fraud was coming from the Eastern European nation.
Since 2005, criminals in Romania are taking advantage of a gap in the knowledge of local police to prey on eBay users that are outbid in auctions.
“The fraudster can see that a user that didn’t win was prepared to spend $145 on a particular item,” Matt Henley, part of eBay’s Fraud Investigations Team, told News.com. The fraudsters knew most people used their email account name for their eBay username. The criminals would contact the losing bidder by email away from eBay, offering a second chance to obtain the item.
Since uncovering the fraud, eBay began hiding user names when bids exceed $80.
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