Recently a ScamTracker contributor had their name and credit card information stolen and the thief used it to set up accounts on iOffer.com and Overstock.com. They then started putting up high priced coins for auction and told winning bidders to send payment via Paypal, Western Union and Moneygram to an account in China. The cardholder found out about the scam and tried to notify both companies. The results were shocking.
Overstock.com was contacted by email, phone and live chat. Several days later, Overstock.com finally responded but said they could not do anything without a police report. Since local police departments don’t generally take reports where no actual theft has occurred, and even more rarely when it is over the internet, a report could not be supplied. Overstock.com let their customers remain at risk for a few more days before the account was eventually marked “inactive”. The seller’s account shows “Total # of Transactions: 31″. We have to assume that’s the number of people who potentially lost money to this fraudster.
iOffer.com had an even worse response: none. Despite repeated emails and phone call attempts, iOffer never responded to the notifications that their seller was fraudulent and the account remains open today selling high priced antique coins for thousands of dollars. We have to ask ourselves, how legitimate of a business is iOffer.com if they allow this practice to go on?
Contacting iOffer.com is nearly impossible. Their phone system is an automated loop of extensions who are never available and the number listed on the information section of the charge card used was out of service when we called today.
The scammer used the name “potatowong” on both sites. His pages can be seen here:
potatowong at Overstock.com
potatowong at iOffer.com
Been ripped off on either site? Had a similar experience with either of these sites? Have more info on this potatowong character? Let us know!
