M ost of the time, eBay can be a great place to find deals on all sorts of things, including Mac hardware and software. On occasion, however, it is possible to have a bad experience with a seller or buyer on eBay. According to a Wired article, if you bought Mac hardware from a certain Teresa Smith, you would have been almost guaranteed a bad experience. You see, she made over US$800,000 selling Macs on eBay, but, according to Wired, she didnit trouble herself with actually shipping out much of those units. Smith later admitted to defrauding over 300 customers. From Wired:
Teresa Smith discovered Internet auctions in a big way about two years ago, selling $800,000 worth of Macintosh computers through sites such as eBay and AuctionWorks.
Like thousands of other small-time entrepreneurs, Smith found that online auction sites could expand her reach and connect her with customers from Hawaii to Switzerland.
Soon she was hiring employees and tooling around Boston in a new Ford Mustang convertible.
While Smith certainly cashed her customersi checks, unfortunately, she rarely bothered to send out the computers they had paid for.
Smith admitted in court in November that she had ripped off 300 customers in what law-enforcement authorities estimate may be the biggest case of auction fraud to date.
While few scam artists operate on Smithis scale, they have for years turned to auction sites like eBay and Yahoo to sell cars they donit own, computers that donit exist and diamond rings -- without any diamonds.
You can read the whole article at Wired.