In all seriousness, I was contracted to do a workshop for a law enforcement group on how to detect consumer fraud on the Internet. I needed an example for my syllabus so I went to one of those penny-pick web sites. At that time I believe PABN was rated No. 3, with a high volume. I'd never heard of PABN, so I did a little research, you know, for the workshop. It's always more interesting and easier for students to follow if there is a real-life example.
here's another article about the same line of work...
Citizens Policing Cyberspace Internet users help combat online fraud
By Michael Luo. STAFF WRITER
Stacey Westley, a mother of two in Nebraska, doesn't like the "cyber-vigilante" label that Suffolk computer-crimes detectives jokingly use to describe her. "Cyber-detective, maybe," Westley, 37, said. "Vigilante? I don't think so.
I just wanted to make sure he got his due." Westley was referring to Steven Kamensky, 17, of Huntington Station, who, along with his father, was sentenced in Riverhead yesterday for bilking almost 500 users of eBay, the popular online auction site, of an estimated $70,000 over three months last summer and fall.
The sentencing brings to a close one of the largest cases of fraud associated with the behemoth online-auction forum. Kamensky e-mailed bidders, offering to sell them software they had unsuccessfully tried to buy online at cut-rate prices. When they mailed him checks, the Walt Whitman High School senior never sent the goods. Police said Kamensky's father, Ira, a teacher at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, helped his son make financial arrangements to hide the scheme.
After learning of the scam, Suffolk police arrested the younger Kamensky on Oct. 8 and his father, a few weeks later. Police give much of the credit for catching the father/son team to Westley and her determined efforts to recover $28 she lost in August.
Online-auction fraud has escalated at an alarming rate in recent years, with cases reported to the Federal Trade Commission jumping from 107 in 1997 to 10,700 last year. Law-enforcement agencies and federal regulators are struggling to respond and recently launched a multi-agency effort, dubbed Project Safebid, aimed at intensifying online-auction-fraud enforcement across the country.
The number of people participating in the virtual flea market that is online auctions is staggering and continues to grow. Last year, eBay alone reported 129 million items sold, worth $2.8 billion. The site has more than 10 million registered users, according to company figures.
As a result, investigators, consumer advocates and auction-site officials say, for the foreseeable future, the Wild, Wild Web will still largely depend on those who use it to police it themselves.
"All of us, from consumer advocates to governmental agencies to local law-enforcement are sort of playing catch-up to Internet fraud," said Holly Anderson, a spokeswoman for the National Consumers League, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., that tracks Internet fraud.
The group said the percentage of its complaints from online-auction fraud increased from 68 percent of its total number of Internet-fraud complaints in 1998 to 87 percent in 1999.
The FTC recently conducted training for law-enforcement agencies in California, Florida and Washington on how to handle Internet-fraud complaints, especially in light of how they often crisscross jurisdictional boundaries. The federal agency has a long way to go, though, admitted FTC attorney Dolores Gardner, who specializes in online-auction fraud.
"It's tough," Gardner said. "The biggest problem we're seeing is consumers don't know who to complain to." The FTC has sought to change that by making their Internet-fraud database, launched in 1997, the central location for such complaints. The group, however, can bring only civil redress for consumers. For criminal prosecution, it forwards cases to local authorities.
Officials recommend that victims contact their local police department about Internet scams. However, because the average consumer loss in an online-auction hoax is only about $300, law-enforcement agencies often don't have the resources or the will to pursue most complaints, especially if the suspect is thousands of miles away, consumer advocates say. As a result, experts agree that it usually takes a user with enormous persistence to catch an auction crook.
That describes Westley's quest to find Kamensky after she failed to receive a Windows 98 software package he sold her. First, she sent him several e-mails inquiring about the status of her order. Soon, however, her e-mails were bouncing back because Kamensky had discontinued his account. She then looked for "SKE," based on SKE Software, the business name used by Kamensky, searching for the user name on eBay's directory. She contacted an Arizona woman listed on the account, who, in tears, explained her user ID had been stolen by someone and misused. Armed with this, Westley posted a computer message looking for other victims. She complained to her post office in Columbus, Neb., then contacted New York's Better Business Bureau before finally alerting Suffolk police Dets. Rory Forrestal and James Woods in the computer-crimes section.
Two boxes filled with victims' complaints accumulated by the Suffolk detectives reveal dozens of eBay users, from Australia to Guatemala to Canada, who were victimized. The victims include the administrative-services department in the city of Broken Arrow, Okla., a Baptist church in Council Bluffs, Iowa, a naval officer on an aircraft carrier and a Police Explorers troop in Ellicott City, Md.
Most were scammed for less than $30 at a time. Many victims contacted by police said they felt foolish and unsure of exactly where to turn, and they simply shrugged off their losses.
"I pretty much chalked it up to experience, a lesson learned," said Bob Buckley, a retired computer teacher from Portland, Ore., who mailed $23 for Microsoft Office software to Kamensky's mailbox. Buckley wrote a letter complaining to Kamensky after failing to receive his product, but he did nothing more.
Westley, however, took her loss more personally.
Part of the eBay revolution has been the emergence of the eBay community, a self-sustaining collection of computer users connected across the nether world of cyberspace, with its own culture, economy and structure. Kamensky had broken the unwritten rules of her electronic neighborhood, said Westley, who uses eBay at least two hours a day, mainly to buy computer equipment for a store she runs with her husband and clothing for her children.
"It's a centralized place where everybody can get together," she said.
"It's pretty bad when you don't feel safe going on there." The auction site has a fraud rate of less than one-half of 1 percent, and users rely on eBay self-policing mechanisms, such as the much-lauded Feedback Forum, where buyers can register comments about sellers.
"Our users are extremely active and very, very conscientious," said Kevin Pursglove, a spokesman for eBay. "When it [a scam] happens, they start educating their colleagues about their situation." Dozens of "neighborhood watch" groups have also sprung up, typically monitoring sales of specific types of goods, like software or car parts.
"It works much the same way your neighbors would act in your neighborhood," Pursglove said. "If someone is acting abnormally in the community, you notify your neighbors." Complaints received by the company are automatically forwarded to the FTC, a departure from early days when aggrieved customers were told to contact their local police.
Before sending Kamensky her money, Westley checked his eBay rating, looking under the user identification "SKE." She found only effusive, positive comments because Kamensky had used a stolen identification.
After she was duped, Wesley wanted to warn others about SKE but found she couldn't. To prevent misuse of feedback, negative comments can be registered only by citing a specific eBay transaction number, which Westley and other victims didn't have because they had bought their items "off-line" privately and not through the auction line.
Westley got around the problem by posting a scathing comment under the forum's "neutral" category. She asked others who were taken by the mysterious "SKE" to contact her.
Westley soon began receiving a dozen e-mails daily. Other victims began to catch on, posting additional comments, including: "What a loser you are SKE!" Soon, Westley had accumulated almost 50 names, enough to make any law-enforcement agency involved take notice, she believed.
"She gave us 50 people right out of the gate, which makes it real easy," said Forrestal, who investigated the case for just two weeks before arresting Kamensky.
As word circulated, the flood of e-mails and phone calls to Westley was redirected to Suffolk police headquarters in Yaphank. After the Kamenskys were arrested, police seized about $33,665 in three bank accounts and a 2000 Honda Accord believed to be purchased with profits from the scheme.
The younger Kamensky pleaded guilty last month to first-degree scheme to defraud, a felony. He was sentenced to 5 years' probation by John Mullin and ordered not to engage in online commerce. His father pleaded guilty to second-degree scheme to defraud, a misdemeanor. He was given a conditional release for 1 year, which is probation without supervision.
Now, the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office and the police department are faced with the massive task of reimbursing the Kamensky victims and have told them to send in copies of their canceled checks for reimbursement.
Westley still has not received her money but says she is already gratified that she has helped rid her favorite auction site of a problem user.
"Most of the people on eBay are good people," she said. "This was out-and-out thievery."
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