Ebay flooded with fake GPUs

SIS

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 13, 2014
Messages
94
GeForce GTX 650 2GB 384-bit DDR3 GK106 graphics card
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GTX 770 2GB 384-bit DDR3
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Example auction:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NVIDIA-GTX7...154?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item27e6175c32

The blue fanned fakes (650, 650 Ti, 660) are extremely common. The white fanned fakes (770 mainly) are less common but are much higher-priced (Buy It Now of $199 and starting bid at $150).

Some auctions originate in the US (e.g. New Jersey) while others are in China, Korea, and Hong Kong. So, it looks like it may be some sort of global racket.
 
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Ebay is giving people private listing privileges which also seems sketchy. These fake cards were talked about months ago and Ebay apparently hasn't made much of an effort, if any, to stop the onslaught.

Here is a topic from April: http://slickdeals.net/f/6883106-buyer-beware-nvidia-geforce-gtx-650-ti-2gb-384bit-ddr3-pci-e-69-59

Here is someone who was scammed back in 2012: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?284237-I-got-an-unusual-GTX-560-Ti

The same fake card with the two fans is shown in that topic from 2012. This has been going on for a long time. I guess Ebay doesn't mind as long as the fees keep coming in. Look at how many positive ratings hi-pc has in my screenshot.
 
Whoa. That's some doodoo bandwidth. lol Surely no one actually falls for this. Thanks for the alert.
 
Surely no one actually falls for this.
Given how many of the fake cards there are listed, how long they've been selling, and the high ratings for the sellers... I'm sure a lot of people have been scammed.

Ebay is clearly not doing enough to protect its customers from fraud. The fake badminton racquet thing has been going on forever, but the quantity of fake GPUs is amazing to me since it's such a mainstream item and the people buying it tend to be savvy. It's also harder to fake than a badminton racquet.

The level of incompetence of this fakery also makes Ebay look even more culpable. The specs don't make any sense and yet these auctions continue in quantity.
 
Personally, I'd never buy a graphics card from China in the first place but as mentioned already, there are probably a lot of people with those phony cards who might end up selling them second hand. I'll definitely think twice before buying cards on auction sites. Thanks for bringing this to attention.

Never even once did I think about the possibility of graphics cards being faked.
 
Never even once did I think about the possibility of graphics cards being faked.
Ebay is full of fake stuff. Fake ProStaff KPS-88 and Ultra 2 tennis racquets. Fake badminton racquets in vast quantities (basically, just assume they're all fake if they're "Yonex").

If there is a sought-after item it'll be faked. But, rather than this just being a case of caveat emptor, this, to me at least, shows how poor of a job Ebay is doing as a company. There are a lot of unemployed people out there who could take care of a lot of counterfeit items if hired. Instead of that, though, we have overpaid CEOs with political ambitions and increasingly bloated fees.
 
What exactly are you showing the pictures to show it is fake? As far the CPU-Z looking program showing hardware specs?

And what is fake about it? Does it not function, or is it just a lower spec'ed card spoofed as a higher spec?
 
What exactly are you showing the pictures to show it is fake? As far the CPU-Z looking program showing hardware specs?

And what is fake about it? Does it not function, or is it just a lower spec'ed card spoofed as a higher spec?

A little bit of Googling would have given you answers...

Clock speeds are way too low for the supposed model and not to mention, the card uses GDDR5, not GDDR3.

Also the shader count is wrong.

But that's exactly why people fall for these cards, they're not doing proper research.

Even if the cards run, it's like buying a fake Rolex, it tells time, looks similar, but its not authentic and can't be trusted to be the same quality as the original.
 
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Kinda curious.
Why don't the scammers just use a real 770/660/etc etc to get a screenshot for the clockspeed/shader/etc etc?

On a side note, considering they're from China... whomever got scammed should feel lucky that the cards at least didn't explode while in use.
 
Kinda curious.
Why don't the scammers just use a real 770/660/etc etc to get a screenshot for the clockspeed/shader/etc etc?

On a side note, considering they're from China... whomever got scammed should feel lucky that the cards at least didn't explode while in use.

Plausible deniability. If there is an issue, the seller can simply state they posted the actual specs in the screenshot even though the model number was incorrect. In the worst case, they get a return with negative feedback.

But as others point out, those unknowledgeable enough to buy a $150 GTX 770 without noticing the discrepancy in the GPU-Z shot likely will never know any better to complain.
 
Kinda curious what they actually are. They've got to be some type of existing video card, I doubt the Chinese have the ability to create their own knockoff video cards.
 
Kinda curious what they actually are. They've got to be some type of existing video card, I doubt the Chinese have the ability to create their own knockoff video cards.

they run 'shadow shifts' at the factories to make these knockoffs.

the same factory that makes the authentic ones shuts down at the end of the day and then a second bunch of people come in and make the fakes with thier cheaper components. the end result is a less robust product that looks and basically functions the same but the shadow shift products don't get to the testing phase or any of the safety checks the authentic components do.

they do this all over China...they even have fake cars in China using this same practice.
 
I'm really impressed with the Chinese faking Coins headphones now graphic cards =)
 
Don't forget the fake milk protein (melamine).

What's a little melamine between friends with babies?
At least they test high for protein content.

So there's a few dead babies due to the toxicity of melamine. I'm sure those Chinese baby formula companies have weighed the cost to them and determined that a few less customers will not drive their profits down enough to warrant producing a formula that is actually safe and fit for human consumption.
 
You do know that is where they come from there to begin with right? China or some from Taiwan is stamped on all the video cards I have. All my EVGA ones are "Made in China."

Nothing really surprises me from EBAY though. It seems as long as they are getting traffic they don't care to begin with.

P.S. Please use thumbnails next time and stop stretching the board layout.

Personally, I'd never buy a graphics card from China in the first place but as mentioned already, there are probably a lot of people with those phony cards who might end up selling them second hand. I'll definitely think twice before buying cards on auction sites. Thanks for bringing this to attention.

Never even once did I think about the possibility of graphics cards being faked.
 
I can't believe people still buy anything from China on eBay considering the endless horror stories about the scams running from there. You can't trust the feedback or anything. If something even gets shipped it arrives broken. Buy from China and you deserve what happens to you
 
I can't believe people still buy anything from China on eBay considering the endless horror stories about the scams running from there. You can't trust the feedback or anything. If something even gets shipped it arrives broken. Buy from China and you deserve what happens to you
The opening post made it clear that not all the auctions originate in China, unless New Jersey is part of it.

"You deserve what you get" is a red herring.
 
Personally, I've learned my lesson with buying cheap shit from weird ass vendors, whether it be eBay or otherwise. I'd rather pay 2-3 times the price to get something that will work, rather than be out a small fraction AND be pissed for being such a dumbass (not calling anyone here a dumbass, if anyone, myself).
 
excluding "for parts/not working", there are:

4,028 listings for GTX
10,469 listings for Radeon, 5,916 when excluding the really low-end and very old cards

Ebay could hire one part-time employee to take care of all the counterfeit GPUs. In fact, it could assemble a team of unpaid or lowly-paid interns and have a full-timer as their supervisor to deal with a lot of different types of fake products.

But, instead, Meg Whitman needed millions to run for office and her replacement needs a salary like $29.7 million (2012).

Plus, bad business tends to lose money for a business. How many people here are saying they aren't patronizing Ebay precisely because it's doing such a poor job of managing things like fake items...

Ebay does not have to be a counterfeit den. It is one because the management is either incompetent or is waiting for a golden parachute.
 
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The opening post made it clear that not all the auctions originate in China, unless New Jersey is part of it.

"You deserve what you get" is a red herring.


The "You deserve what you get" applies to the NJ sale too. Charging $20 to ship a video card is an obvious ripoff. I would have passed on that seller in a nano
 
Hey Im from Jersey and dont think that we are only in Jersey cause I have been to your states and they are not any better!

I think the Chinese are trying to kill us man!
Here they talk about the cheap Chinese drywall.- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_drywall
I dont blame the consumers here as much because during the house boom
we were out of drywall and if you wanted to build you needed to use the cheaper
more excesible Chinese Dry wall. I truly feel bad for these home owners!

Most recently the chinse have been importing "Copper" pipes.
As you can probably already know, this shit is bad!

Its not even real Copper - Read on - http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/3/prweb9262203.htm

We should start exporting Yellow Gatorade to those bastards!
 
Yep. I don't even like eBay for anything most of the time... Thanks for the alert!
 
You do realize these could just be oem speced models? Nvidia has all kinds of models like this for the oem market and using ddr3 instead of ddr4/5 saves tremendous cost as well as less shaders. This is a common practice in the gpu business. One way to avoid this is to buy full retail but that still does not guarantee it. Even companies like asus,msi,gigabyte etc do this where they may sell a gtx xxx and have three models with varying version of the core,memory type and shader count.
 
You do realize these could just be oem speced models? Nvidia has all kinds of models like this for the oem market and using ddr3 instead of ddr4/5 saves tremendous cost as well as less shaders. This is a common practice in the gpu business. One way to avoid this is to buy full retail but that still does not guarantee it. Even companies like asus,msi,gigabyte etc do this where they may sell a gtx xxx and have three models with varying version of the core,memory type and shader count.
There's no way these are legit.
 
Who would even want to buy a graphics card from across the world? Stick with local sellers or at least items being sold within the same country. Although I have to admit I bought my sig rig mobo and cpu from a guy on XS in Singapore and the cpu from a HK seller who has been around for a very long time. I'd also agree that feedback don't mean shit, the bulk of there feedback is from selling cheap shit such as bottle lids or something then out of nowhere the seller starts offering hundreds of dollars worth graphics cards? Suspicious much? It's all about being cautious and doing your research.

The repetitive scams from China are small, easy to catch and not worth a lot of $$$, the scams that I've seen going in the UK and Euro and even some in the States, huge amounts of $$ executed by smart conman.
 
Who would even want to buy a graphics card from across the world?
$$$$. For lots of people, new, legit items are simply too expensive, so just like buying a lottery ticket, they gamble on buying something that they hope is the real thing, will work, with what little money they have. After all, many don't have anything to compare it too, so even if it doesn't perform up to what they want, they probably now have something better than they had, and every time they look at it, they can pretend it's the real thing. Just like the guy who owns a knock off Rolex that looks exactly like the genuine article, but has a $10 quartz movement (which usually keep perfect time when they do work) that might last 50 years or might last 50 minutes.
 
I'm surprised that the US federal government, in the form of the CIA, FBI, SEC, SS, Homeland Security, ICE, or the TSA hasn't shut down Ebay for selling counterfeit stuff.

The same applies to the pending, massive, IPO of the Chinese owned Alibaba "High Bandwidth Counterfeit Garbage Delivery System" e-enterprise website.

They have done it before to other sites, so I'm 'shocked' they don't apply the same rules to these guys.
 
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Who would even want to buy a graphics card from across the world? Stick with local sellers or at least items being sold within the same country.
I thought it was mentioned that some of these listings are from sellers in places like New Jersey.
I'm surprised that the US federal government, in the form of the CIA, FBI, SEC, SS, Homeland Security, ICE, or the TSA hasn't shut down Ebay for selling counterfeit stuff.
Grease the politicians.

Look at what Monsanto and Nestlé get away with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlVDGmjz7eM
 
Its possible with the guys running shadow shifts, but to clear the air about those who still think this possibly an OEM model, Ive run across a hundred OEM models of video cards in my time and never seen one with 1/10th the specs of the original, considering the shader count on my lesser 760 is 1152. They don't do that, and one can easily find the official oem specs of these cards most of the time from NVs website, or a google search.

Its more likely, that either some parts, what they could, of the BIOS was man\ipulated, and/or they are using bad chips and lasering out most of the shaders due to defections.

Anyhow, performance-wise, it wouldn't compete with a $50 legit card.

I also could care less about those getting ripped off, with the specs right there on the page.
I mean, hey the put it out there and its not wholly false advertised, if any. It may be using a GK104 chip as said above.
 
I don't see any point in hating on China, yes there are some big bad factories over their pumping out junk, so what are US based companies not also being nailed left and right for doing similar things?

I have bought some stuff from China and had mostly good experiences. Many of the items were simply not possible to find in the good old USA because no one here could be bothered to make any thing good while they are too busy following apples lead in ripping off customers and designing less is more crap. On top of that pretty much everything you have is made in China and most of it is strait up better than anything you could possibly get made in the USA.

As to the OP yes ebay should do something but its a slippery slope. You could imagine if ebay was forced to strictly enforce all US laws that somethings like the Korean IPS monitors that were so awesome may have never been allowed in. With the good comes some bad.
 
eBay?

solution is simple: stop using eBay

eBay is a whore-house for scammers. I know this from first hand experience.
 
eBay?

solution is simple: stop using eBay

eBay is a whore-house for scammers. I know this from first hand experience.

No different to any other listing sites such as private sellers on Amazon, CL, Audiogon, F/S listings on forums (including [H]) and the list goes on. At least with ebay, when Paypal decides not to screw the party involved whom are innocent in the scam/fraud process, provide support and at least get there money back.
 
On top of that pretty much everything you have is made in China and most of it is strait up better than anything you could possibly get made in the USA.

I must chime in and say you are 1000% wrong on this statement. Everything from China is straight up cheaper than what you could get made elsewhere, but none of it is better. If you aren't able to see the differences in craftsmanship, engineering, and materials, then the products from China are about the same as everywhere else. Under no circumstances on this Earth has a product from China been better than from any other country. People who set up factories there understand that the only reason to do it there is for cheap labor. People who want quality set up factories elsewhere.

As for the actual topic... eBay is loaded up with knockoffs and has been for years. Sometimes you don't need a quality item. The example I always use is cell phone cases fifteen years ago when the only purpose of the case was to change the color (faceplate we called it). I'd get mine from China for $4 while many people got them in the mall for $30. It's not just mall markup, the expensive ones lasted longer and didn't scratch as easy. The paint would peel off of mine in 6 months. Did I care? No, I bought cheap on purpose and after six months I'd just buy a different color.
If you want something to actually perform well, buy from a trusted brand and never buy anything with no brand name whether it's from China or NJ. Quality products always have a brand, inferior products almost never do.
 
eBay?

solution is simple: stop using eBay

eBay is a whore-house for scammers. I know this from first hand experience.
eBay used to be better. There have been a lot of changes that make it easier to scam. But, the biggest problem is that the management clearly doesn't make it a priority to shut down the counterfeiting.
I'm surprised that the US federal government, in the form of the CIA, FBI, SEC, SS, Homeland Security, ICE, or the TSA hasn't shut down Ebay for selling counterfeit stuff.

The same applies to the pending, massive, IPO of the Chinese owned Alibaba "High Bandwidth Counterfeit Garbage Delivery System" e-enterprise website.

They have done it before to other sites, so I'm 'shocked' they don't apply the same rules to these guys.
There is a lot of shady stuff that isn't dealt with, like the supplement industry (which is barely regulated). There is also mercury in HFCS and arsenic added to animal feed.
 
I must chime in and say you are 1000% wrong on this statement. Everything from China is straight up cheaper than what you could get made elsewhere, but none of it is better. If you aren't able to see the differences in craftsmanship, engineering, and materials, then the products from China are about the same as everywhere else. Under no circumstances on this Earth has a product from China been better than from any other country. People who set up factories there understand that the only reason to do it there is for cheap labor. People who want quality set up factories elsewhere.

As for the actual topic... eBay is loaded up with knockoffs and has been for years. Sometimes you don't need a quality item. The example I always use is cell phone cases fifteen years ago when the only purpose of the case was to change the color (faceplate we called it). I'd get mine from China for $4 while many people got them in the mall for $30. It's not just mall markup, the expensive ones lasted longer and didn't scratch as easy. The paint would peel off of mine in 6 months. Did I care? No, I bought cheap on purpose and after six months I'd just buy a different color.
If you want something to actually perform well, buy from a trusted brand and never buy anything with no brand name whether it's from China or NJ. Quality products always have a brand, inferior products almost never do.

Some of the stuff I have needed is simply not available from US companies. I sometimes end up having to order from China off of Ebay because certain things just aren't available from anywhere else.

Or if they are available, they are the same exact product at 5-20x the price when bought from a US seller.

You just have to be careful what you order form China.
 
I have a few friends that sell legit stuff on eBay like old commercial stereo equipment when they do a client upgrade. They make sure to post in all their auctions "ONLY SHIPPED TO CONTINENTAL US" but they always get these people from Hong Kong that bid and win. So when asked what US address to send the items to, they always always always have an address in NJ. When you look up the addresses on google they are to shipping and import/export depots.
These depot receive the parcels and re-label and redirect them. So some of these people in HK use the shipping depot as an address. I am not sure why it is always NJ but this has been the case with all my friends sales (well over 400 items). Also China is one of the biggest importer of American made goods because they feel they are higher quality than China produced items. Feel free to research that and try to prove me wrong. Something to get you started.
 
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