kevliken "Seller" Overnighting new parts from retailers, possible Fraud?

Skarth

Gawd
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Mar 2, 2006
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kevliken contacted me through a PM as I had a WTB thread for various parts. He sold me a new in box i5 2500k for $165 through paypal. He shipped first, which was a little weird, his heatware address (Clem, NC) was different than his shipping from address (Tracking showed Illinois), again, weird, but he did put up his name in the aliases in heatware. I paid up before the package arrived as he had higher heat than me, and a few recent transactions for i5 2500k processors. I later check paypal and find his address is listed as non-US Verified.

The CPU arrives next day overnight shipping (Friday) from Buy.com. The packing slip just shows it was overnighted to my address and not much else. Ok, fairly weird again, but maybe he had buy.com reward points and wanted a way to cash out? All seemed to be said and done.

Then Monday hits, I had several items ordered from Newegg, one of them I open up and it has a New in Box i5 2500k. I definately did not order this, and the billing address on the packing slip is from someone in Florida. Either Newegg sent me someone else's order, which I doubt, or something fishy as hell is going on. kevliken later contacts me that night asking if I got another processor. So now I know it's linked to him. at that point it was late and I went to bed.

This morning I find a Fedex package shipped to my address on my doorstep, inside is a Geforce 560ti overnight shipped from Buy.com.

I have not contacted kevliken back about the extra 2500k or the 560ti.

Given what I know so far, I can't imagine this being legitimate business. The little voice in the back of my head says this may be some kind of Credit Card Fraud or Money Laundering Scheme?

I need help and suggestions on what to do.
 
That is extremely sketchy. I'm not exactly sure how to proceed in this case, I'd probably contact Buy.com/NewEgg directly at this point and tell them that you're suspicious about your order and let them advise. I'm sure they already have procedures in place with which to deal with such occurrences.
 
The same happened to me the guy on ebay was selling 6850s for way below retail. Everyone was getting packages directly from newegg with different invoices coming from everywhere. No one knew what was up and no one bothered to contact newegg.
 
Hacked their accounts and ordered using other peoples cc and pocketing the paypal.
 
Called buy.com, They were not particularly helpful, was simply told, "We will investigate this" After they took some information.

Will check with Newegg next.
 
Confirmation from newegg that the i5 2500k was bought with a stolen CC.

Going to file Paypal dispute and work it from there.
 
Paypal dispute is filed.

Appears to be a case of Triangulation Scam.

"Seller" offers to sell an item, pays for it by a stolen credit card at full price from a retailer, and has the buyer pay for it through another means like paypal of money order when they get the item.
 
great I bought from him, so now what? Can I expect some law enforcement agency to knock on my door and demand I give the item back and just be out the money?
 
great I bought from him, so now what? Can I expect some law enforcement agency to knock on my door and demand I give the item back and just be out the money?

Rarely, they may just investigate the seller, file chargebacks on all the cards and your name may come up but rarely, at most you may be summoned to appear in court and file a statement saying you had no knowledge of the fraud and you were just an innocent buyer.
 
great I bought from him, so now what? Can I expect some law enforcement agency to knock on my door and demand I give the item back and just be out the money?

You don't have legal title to the goods because they were stolen, but nothing will probably happen on your end. The companies involved will probably eat the loss rather then pay someone to track down the shipments and recover them. If you do receive a request from the company to ship the item back you will want to comply. Then you will need to sue the guy to recover your funds. If you are still able to file a Paypal dispute you should.
 
This sucks. I herd of this happening to somebody once.

An idea I guess you could do is look at the billing addresses on the order and find their number and call these people to tell them? Not to sure if this would violate any laws tho.
 
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best thing to do is to sit and wait to get reply back from party that items were mailed from. they may or may not want to recover the items back.
 
I doubt they will ask you for anything back, a $200 processor and/or video card is not worth the effort of tracking down in the eyes of major companies.

I am curious about one thing though. By offering a given credit card as a form of payment, does the credit card company or the store inherit the risk of fraud? Obviously the person who's credit card was stolen is fully refunded. So would newegg.com / buy.com eat the loss, or does the credit card company?
 
So would newegg.com / buy.com eat the loss, or does the credit card company?

I actually asked my bank this question once when I had to file a dispute for a $1,400 UPS charge to my debit card. The merchant's bank eats the loss, not your bank. Whether that's passed onto the merchant or not is up to their bank.
 
Well the same thing happened to me with a sonar card on ebay that came directly from J&R. It was fraud of course and they paid for the return and barely say thanks..kind of lame on them, but anyways.
 
I had bought a 2500K and HX850 from someone on here, and when they came there was a buy.com order form with no purchase price or other info on it. I assumed it was just a person selling through buy.com like you can on Amazon. Would that be right, or related to this?
 
I would assume its fine if you got what you ordered. The problem comes from when you get stuff you didn't order.
 
I actually asked my bank this question once when I had to file a dispute for a $1,400 UPS charge to my debit card. The merchant's bank eats the loss, not your bank. Whether that's passed onto the merchant or not is up to their bank.

The merchant might still be charged with a fee from the processor. too many of these, processor revokes the contract

I had bought a 2500K and HX850 from someone on here, and when they came there was a buy.com order form with no purchase price or other info on it. I assumed it was just a person selling through buy.com like you can on Amazon. Would that be right, or related to this?

<prolly off topic for this subforum>, but you should still check to make sure. It might be drop ship (using buy.com points, or amazon free 2day shipping with prime, violation of the terms of the contract of prime or points stuff)...

I would assume its fine if you got what you ordered. The problem comes from when you get stuff you didn't order.

Nope... If its highly likely that it's stolen goods, (and this case yes, since OP checked with the merchant and confirmed it was a stolen CC)...

a) if you knew it was stolen when you bought it... you could get charged for being a fence
b) if you didn't know.... the original owner can retake posession and you're out of the money you paid
 
Shit, a while I go I got a PSU from a "kev" and I remember it having a store's shipping label. I don't remember it being a big one like newegg, but I found it odd. I didn't think anything of it then...

Look at this heat, all overnight shipping, all NIB:
http://heatware.com/eval.php?id=77825

Edit: Duh, it is the same guy, kevliken is the name on [H]
 
I would say just be careful - if this is a scam, of which it almost surely is - it will raise extreme suspicion if several stolen credit cards purchases were shipped to your address.

That, in my opinion, is the real problem here. I would not want my info/address to be so directly connected to several cases of fraud.
 
It sounds like a scam to me, but you may have benefited by receiving unsolicited mailings.
 
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