Yes, I’m naive.

The story can now be told as I’ve gotten over some of the embarrassment.
Last week, I blundered right into the web of a fraudster on eBay. [There was an article on the Post website today about eBay fraud, which made me a bit less shy about telling the story, I wasn’t the only one who fell for it.] Anyway. I am in the market for a professional level video camera for a project I’m beginning. I found a Canon XL1S on eBay, with an offer to “buy it now” for $1300.
It seemed too good to be true – they’re usually selling for closer to $3000. Well, of course it was too good to be true! Duh!
I e-mailed the seller, who had 300 or so good feedback messages. He offered to sell it to me for $1250. I accepted. He wanted payment via Western Union. I suggested PayPal. He insisted. Once the funds were acknowledged on the Western Union site, he’d ship the package and send me the tracking number. OK, I thought, not realizing that Western Union was the equivalent of cash. I sent the money. He acknowledged that the money had been sent and was waiting. Then, I never heard anything.
I e-mailed later that evening asking about the tracking number. The next morning, he claimed that he hadn’t had a chance to get to UPS yet, but that he was on his way, and, by the way, the money wasn’t available anymore. What happened? He was worried that I was not trustworthy.
What happened was this: that night, I got a call from Western Union telling me that they had cancelled the transaction because this guy was on their watch list – he has done this in the past, taking money and not delivering the item. I was amazed that Western Union took this action, but eBay did nothing.
As it turns out, this person, Jon Matet, had co-opted someone else’s eBay account. It looked as if he was trustworthy from all the feedback, but that feedback belonged to someone else.
For your edification, the eBay name was csnoopyc, and Jon Matet gives out the address “200 Saw Mill Road, West Haven, Connecticut 06516, USA”. His e-mail address, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is for someone named Camelia Popov and the ISP is in Brazil. It’s obvious that English is not his native language.

I’m from Connecticut,USA. For this deal to be made quickly we can use the western union services for payment and the product I can ship through UPS services,so in this way the product will arrive to you in 2 days. This services are most quickly in my country.

When I notified him that I knew what he was up to, and that he had been reported to all the appropriate authories, he replied:

It got to be a mistake. I am a serious person. I went in person to an western union representative and spoke with the people from there. They told me that is about another Jon Matet who lives also in Conecticut but to a different address. If you don’t trust me you can pay to my wife’s brother who lives in New York. Just let me know. Do you seriosly think that I will spend my life in prison for a few bucks?? I will wait your e-mail asap.

Whatever.
Thank goodness for the alertness of Western Union. And a pox on eBay, who make it impossible to report fraud. Once he had removed the listing from eBay, they no longer would accept any communication about it. They evidently have no phone number, and to contact them you must go through a convoluted series of forms. In each stage, you must have the item number, which no longer existed, so I couldn’t proceed! Once I found a way to contact them, they responded with a form letter. I’ve figured out the eBay strategy: if you can’t complain about it, then they can claim they didn’t know about it – thus, no liability!
Just a fair warning, folks, from a naive guy.