MAC, Urban Decay, and eBay scams

I wanted to buy that Alice in wonderland limited edition make up from Urban Decay on eBay, ladies you know how I feel, it was sold out seconds after its release (hu-hu) now back to the subject, eBay is the largest online market with more than twelve (12) million items on sale at any given time and with more than five (5) million transactions per week, after our class session wherein we discussed internet frauds, I did some research for our blog assignment and when I found these articles about eBay scams I stopped drooling over the make-up! And to think that I’ll actually be using my supplemental credit card..


In the case of US v Teresa Smith, Smith was selling hundreds of computers to individual buyers through eBay, she’ll require her customers to pay first then she will not deliver the product and refuse any refund request, she was also using multiple eBay identities and whenever eBay would suspend one of her accounts, she’ll just open a new one. She had more than 300 victims and was able to defraud for more than $800,000! And she was only sentenced to 4 years and 9 months in prison! :o Anyways, you just type eBay fraud and you’ll see tons of complainants’ posts on how they were defrauded and some of them are without any recourse because the value of their loss amounts to less than $5000 and the federal agents aren’t interested in pursuing their case. The bulk of complaints pertaining to internet fraud is really that on online auction frauds (3/4 according to a report by the FBI’s internet crime report center)so realistically speaking, the chance that these people would get their money back is slim to none. And there are also tons of complaints about fake MACs (the make-up not something techy) so I'm not sure if there are fake Urban Decay products as well and although other buyers are saying that a fake cosmetic can be seen by the naked eye, fraud can also be perpetuated by using an image of the same make-up being sold but was not actually taken by the seller hence does not really represent the actual product he or she would be shipping to you and you might end up getting a cheap knock-off. It all seems shady and all these frauds are being committed despite all the safeguards being implemented by eBay..