I was taken advantage of by an internet confidence trickster… and so were many others in the #retrocomputing community.
#scam #grifter
I was taken advantage of by an internet confidence trickster.
- Thread starter Ron's Computer Videos
- Start date
Seems like an awful lot of trouble to scam someone out of a few hundred bucks.
My usual process is:
1. Use PayPal.
2. As the buyer, use the "Goods and Services" option. The 3% fee for buyer protection comes out of the seller's end, but I often pay it because it's a pittance compared to losing the item.
3. Either get the thing, or get your money back.
My usual process is:
1. Use PayPal.
2. As the buyer, use the "Goods and Services" option. The 3% fee for buyer protection comes out of the seller's end, but I often pay it because it's a pittance compared to losing the item.
3. Either get the thing, or get your money back.
There are lots of small fry in this guy's decade's long history of criminality.
But there are big fish who are out THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS.
I am sorry you experienced this. Not only did he take your money, he took advantage of the community through you and in the process damaged your relationships & standing. That is reprehensible behavior. I got taken about 8 years ago by an online retro mac POS - eerily similar paths. I too chalk my blindness to mid-western kindness being a product of the MW. I was a friendly guy. Yanno, treat others as you would like to be treated. Started with an easy sub $50 transaction and then a few bigger ones and then he ghosted me leaving me short some serious cheese ... and very angry. Like if I find you I will chop your fingers off and enjoy it kind of angry. It took some time to process through that anger and in hind site speaks to the damage criminals like this inflict that goes well beyond just the money. Nowadays I take YMKs route with transactions.
1. It's in-person, cash only, smile & a handshake business and I walk away.
2. Its via PP or ebay with buyer protections in place.
Pretty much everything else is a huge red flag to me at this point. As much as I like to perceive that the majority of people in the world are generally good, I realize that there is a measurable amount of people who absolutely do suck and have no real place in society. They instead carve out an opportunistic criminal existence on the fringe like this. Its psychopathy at its finest. Again, so sorry you got caught up in that level of manipulation.
Folks should have mailing addresses etc. At $1000+ of cash or goods theft, that is 100% a felony. Send the Federales after that criminal.
*edited for spelling & other things.
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PSA: I was scammed by Geek with Social Skills
There's been a lot of talk recently about Sean, who is better known as Geek with Social Skills.
People are being encouraged to share their stories in order to spread awareness. Here's mine.
In late 2018, I was looking for a nice Commodore 1581 disk drive. I found one on eBay and purchased it. It was listed as being from an original owner, including the sales receipt from original purchase. A Commodore 1581 disk drive, in box, mint. Nice.
I bought it from the eBay seller who had (and still has!) good positive feedback. This was my first and only transaction with Geek with Social Skills.
When I got it, the drive eject button was broken. I messaged him, and he told me it must have been broken in shipping or that I had broken it.
It wasn't, and I didn't. There were clear signs of it having been broken and crazy glued back together.
Then the problems of it not working. It did not work, at all.
He assured me I was doing something wrong, or that it was with my Commodore.
So I bought another Commodore 128 and another 1581 disk drive on eBay, and proved it was his drive.
He then said he would take it back, and told me to ship it outside of the eBay system. I had thought as long as I provided the tracking number, it would be fine. Nope, if you don't use the tracking label provided by eBay they don't consider you having returned it.
On the way back to him, I called eBay and let them know, and they asked for proof of mailing. I sent them a picture, and a postal receipt, and they said they would update the file.
The box was delivered at his UPS store address, and 3 hours later it was "refused" and on its way back to me.
I asked the post office how it could be refused 3 hours later, and they told me that you can do that. You can receive a signed-for package, and take it back to the post office "unopened" and "refuse delivery" of it. That's what he did. He got it at his UPS store address, took it home, but he opened it up, took the contents out of the box, and stuck a pack of continuous feed printer paper in the box, and then closed it back up and took it to the post office and "refused" it.
However... he reprinted the labels on the box, to make it look like he never opened it.
Except, he made a mistake. He added "From" on the label, which I had left out, and also the font on the label was in fact different.
When it came back to my post office, I knew this guy was scamming me because he said he never refused it and that it must have gone to the wrong address, he never saw it. I had confirmation from the USPS with a GPS pod that it was indeed his address it was delivered to.
So I never touched it when it arrived at the post office, and I took photos. I then asked the post office to apply the official eBay label to it and send it right back to the guy.
Which they did, and documented that the refused package had been tampered with. The weight was different, and they also noted the label was different. They took pictures, too.
He received it, and then sent me a message like (paraphrasing) "WTF? Why are you scamming me?" and showed pictures of the box being opened and that it didn't have any drive inside, just a pack of continuous paper inside.
Which must have been what he placed inside it when he took possession of it, prior to "refusing" it.
For a week, I fought with him and eBay. He made claims that I was scamming him, and eBay would side with him. Then I would provide evidence and they would side with me. For a whole week, each day I would wake up to a new decision by eBay.
I finally had it escalated to a high up supervisor, and they reviewed both cases, and decided to side with BOTH of us, and return my money, and pay him. In the end, he got his drive back, and the money from the eBay sale.
Sean, if you're reading this: you've got some 'splaning to do.
https://www.youtube.com/live/YhzWu_zm3fU?si=Ob5KnJr2OkP3NTgu
That's wild... and easily fits the definition of mail fraud.
@Mr. Fahrenheit
Thank you for sharing those details. This person appears to be a “mail fraud” criminal feeding off our good natured community. It upsets me his YouTube channel is still up, as that serves to give him some level of legitimacy in the minds of uninformed people who haven’t seen the video by @Ron's Computer Videos or this thread.
Thank you for sharing those details. This person appears to be a “mail fraud” criminal feeding off our good natured community. It upsets me his YouTube channel is still up, as that serves to give him some level of legitimacy in the minds of uninformed people who haven’t seen the video by @Ron's Computer Videos or this thread.
I can think of a few, but none suitable for polite company!
On eBay, I dealt with [REDACTED].
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Unfortunately, the hard lesson I've learned is: if you're too nice, people will walk all over you. I'm terribly sorry for those of you who were scammed. 
I have read that sentiment expressed by many through the years, and I have a few thoughts to share about it.
I personally have never made my being nice contingent upon how others treat me. If I did that, my love would soon wax cold. Instead I strive to do unto others just as I would have them do unto me. I try not to be overly suspicious of others because it makes me feel awkward when others feel suspicious of me.
Trust is earned. That truth may sound odd for me to say because thread is about a charlatan who tricked people into trusting, only to turn on them as a thief. Such trickery and deceit causes many to sour on trusting others. But once again, we have a problem if we change in that way. If we become people who cannot trust, cannot love, and cannot embrace the good in our fellow man, what is left within us to to allow us to experience true happiness, seeing that "getting along with others" is a must in this life? What makes this world go round is our ability to transcend the bad and keep on trusting and loving others, withdrawing trust and love from only the small handful of seriously bad ones like Sean of Geek with Social Skills.
While taking a friendly and trusting stance leaves you open to risk, I feel the end result is better than allowing the bad apples of this world to reshape me into a grumpy old man who fears a pouncing lion around every corner. Life itself is one big risk, and each of us seek a happy medium when it comes to manage that risk.
We need to help the defrauded by identifying those who stole from them, which is the aim of this thread. At the same time, we must continue to embrace and praise those people in our community who are the real gems.
I wish to humbly thank @Ron's Computer Videos for having created his video and this thread, thereby alerting others to a threat in our community. And I wish to thank @Mr. Fahrenheit for having shared his detailed horror story. There are many others who have been defrauded by Geek With Social Skills, so I do hope they will at some point chime in too. The predator is still in our midst. His presence shouldn't make us turn on each other, but instead we must keep a vigilant eye on him.
Well, folks have to do what they feel is best. Speaking for myself, I would PREFER to be nice. But I went through some incredibly dark periods of my life (facing poverty, possible homelessness), where some people defecated on me because of my personality. Did it harden me? Yeah. Not to the point where I’m going to be hard edged to people all the time. I’m a big believer in the phrase, “you get more with honey than with vinegar”. But the hard truth is that being too nice can be a weakness and some unscrupulous people will take advantage of that.
Again, though-in the end, people are going to do what they need to do.
Again, though-in the end, people are going to do what they need to do.
My opinion is that threads like this are dangerous in that it identifies a person/business by name as a criminal in a completely public space.
I get being brave about outing a wrong but mitigating risk to TD is important so let’s be brave and smart together. There’s a bunch of smart people here so there has to be a way to establish a
private space here or way where affected parties can coordinate, collect information and discuss for collective action without using a public forum thread that could be viewed or interpreted as an unsubstantiated smear campaign or attack on an individual or business.
being right or wrong is irrelevant. The mere cost of potential litigation is the concern.
This is why bluffing works. It wouldn't be smart of him to follow through with legal action, given the facts.
Making the information private would hide it from those who need to see it the most.