EBAY shoppers,
This quick guide is to make you aware of many fradulent prepaid refill card offers that are increasingly available on EBAY.
You may see a classified ad, or an auction, offering a T-mobile, Boost Mobile, etc. refill cards for almost 50% of the face value.
Do NOT buy these refills. These sellers (usually not in USA) buy airtime with stolen credit cards and re-sell it on EBAY.
This can happen to you:
After you complete your purchase, you WILL receive a refill confirmation from your cell phone provider, so it will appear as all is well. You've got your refill for an awesome price, you left positive feedback, life is good.. NOT!
Several months later, you will receive a call from your cell company, telling you that you owe them whatever the face value of your refill was, plus tax. This is because the charge on the stolen credit card gets reversed by its legitimate owner, and now YOU owe the full amount to your service provider. When they learn that the credit card used for the refill was stolen, your prepaid account will be suspended, and the purchase will be reported to the authorities.
You will then need to go to the local police office, filie a police report, turn in your receipts from E-bay and Paypal for the transactions to the police, and contact E-bay's and Paypal's fraud departments, to clear your name with the service provider, Ebay, and Paypal.
Red flags to look for:
1) The seller requires for you to provide your cell phone number with your payment (NEVER, ever, give out your cell phone number, when buyng a refill on EBAY.)
2) It is a classified ad, or an auction that contains a link to another web site (the "onlinekey.org" is one of them.)
3) The price is TOO LOW to be true.
4) Broken English in the auction/ad description. (this is usually because the seller does not even speak English because he/she is in China or elsewhere, and used online "language translator" to convert description of the ad into English.)
Below is one such seller:
Ebay Seller: huangke050828 from China
with email -
emorycode@gmail.com
Website:
www.onlinekey.org