Ebay Scam

You might be surprised at how easy it is to find this information on the dark web. Account numbers aren't that hard for them to find, either. Heck, some folks are stupid enough to post their account numbers in public forums like this.

Well, here we are a year later and I just got off the phone with same people. I have two hours to get my ebay cards and give them the numbers. Yeah, right.

Yes it is hard to stop using a scam that works so well.

A few weeks ago, my husband was contacted by phone from someone saying they represented Direct TV and told that they had a partnership deal with EBay to lower Direct TV costs.  This is a very sophisticated scam. The callers were able to access our Direct TV account, change channels, and had a lot of account information making it appear very legitimate.  They said the promotion was with eBAY and payable in EBAY cards. Anyway, he fell for this scam and bought about $500 in EBAY cards, and gave them the numbers.

Subsequently, he realized he'd been scammed and I immediately contacted EBAY to cancel the cards. They were able to cancel one of three. I also went to the ATT customer message board to explore whether this was a common scam. Apparently it is. Both AT&T and EBAY have known about it for over a year, but have done NOTHING to warn customers.  

I complained to EBAY that, since they have known about this scam for quite awhile, they ought to have (Edited per community guidelines)ted warnings on the gift card packaging, at the (Edited per community guidelines), or both ie "Do not to give out the EBAY card number to anyone - because that indicates a likely fraud. " I complained to ATT that they also have a duty to warn customers.  

In any event, Ebay made $360 off  us. I wonder how much more they have made while conveniently ignoring their duty to warn customers?  

 I have reported the fraud to the FTC and my congressional rep. Please do the same if you have been scammed via ATT/EBAY.  

Directv sent at least a couple of emails to everyones receiver warning them about this. There are hundreds of posts in all the forums and on social media. I don't know about ebay.

The first one was sent before Thanksgiving the second before Christmas 2020.

Never saw. The only warning we got was after I posted on this forum

Sorry but you never saw because you never looked. 

It's also on att's cyberaware page https://about.att.com/pages/cyberaware/ar/prepaid-card-scam

From ebays website.  

https://pages.ebay.com/giftcardscams/

OMG why would you even  look?? EBAY and ATT must be much much more proactive in preventing this. They cannot assume someone is going to do a bunch of research to verify a call that seemed legit because the scammers  are able to access our account — which I am assuming was the result of a failure of their security. Absolutely they are responsible. 100%. 

For the level of sophistication of this scam and the number of people who have lost money in this - no, sorry - a post on receiver is not adequate. They are 100% responsible for providing explicit and timely notice to customers via a variety of means. They know they will get away with it and don’t care. 

So you want them to email you every day so that you will not read it and will probably be sent to your spam folder anyway?

Directv  has over 13 million subscribers. Are you serious that they should send an email to all of them (apart from the fact many probably don't have  email at all)?   

Yes. They can do it -- it's AT&T! 

It is absolutely their responsibility to take adequate and appropriate measures to protect their consumers. 

I did not fall for the scam because I used my common sense. I did not need AT&T or DirecTv to warn me. Live and learn.