I've been using the net longer than I've been driving. I always took pride in my internet "street smarts" if you will. I had pride until I got hit. I'm not sure if you would call it stupidity or carelessness. Regardless, if you are either one, you will probably get hit too.

Here's the story:

I was looking to purchase a second AKG 414. I opened ten auctions up on ten different Explorer windows. I was in a hurry and I knew I wanted to buy. (I have this tendency to back out sometimes and I didn't want to back out this time). I was determined to get one. I read through all the various descriptions until I found one with a shockmount, a fancy case, a low reserve, etc. I was so focused on features that it completely slipped my mind to check the feedback.

I ended up bidding at the last minute. It was supposed to be brand new (but opened)AKG 414 in the big fancy metal case, the nice shockmount, and a low price tag. I remember the total was around $450 or so, give or take. It was a great deal. I was excited.

The guy selling it quickly sent me an invoice and asked for a money order. I didn't think anything of it. I went to the post office and sent it out to a guy in Ohio. I emailed the guy to let him know that he should be receiving payment in a few days. One week went by. Two weeks went by. Three weeks went by. This has crossed the line. After repeated attempts to contact this guy I looked on Ebay.

That's when I noticed that the feedback was 0 for the seller. "Oh great!", I said to myself. It turns out that the email address was bullshit, and even more peculiar, the name of the person I sent the money order to was not the same person the Ebay account was registered under. Very strange. I tried to get the Ebay account phone number that scammed me but by that time the Ebay account had been canceled.

I took a day off of work and went to every internet fraud FBI whatever thing I could find online and filed claim after claim after claim. It took hours and hours. This was in August of 2004.

After that, I heard nothing.....

Then about a week before Christmas I received a call from a detective in Houston. He explained that it was some sort of international scam by the Latvian Mafia or something. It was exciting to know that my money was ripped off by the bad guy in some 80s Chuck Norris film. He basically explained it like this.

1. The Latvian Mafia puts an ad online or in magazines saying "Work at home".

2. Average Joe says "Sign me up".

3. They tell Joe that they are some sort of business and they need Joe to collect the funds for him and put them into a special account and wire the money to Latvia.

4. Joe says "Okay, whatever" and gets paid for his services without knowing a thing.

5. He gets a money order. He puts it into an account. At the end of the month he sends the wire.

Anyway, to finish up, after 4 months I finally got my money back in it's entirety. I was extremely thankful that someone took the time to fight such crimes. I didn't make fun of cops for at least a week after that.

Okay, so to do my good deed for the day I just want to remind you the steps you should take if you think you've been hammered.

If you feel uncomfortable about a transaction, fill a complaint out on Ebay. Ebay doesn't want you to get scammed either so they have features built in automatically to work out possible conflicts before they become serious problems.

Note: This doesn't mean the guy you are dealing with is going to be arrested. It doesn't even give him negative feedback (assuming you didn't give feedback). It just says "Hey Ebay, I'm scared. help". Ebay sends a wrist slapping email to the seller and that's that.

You must follow this procedure before Ebay can help with any further disputes, so do it early. If it turns out that there is no problem, your seller will forgive you pretty easily, I'm sure.

30 days after the complaint on Ebay you can file a claim with Ebay Safeharbor (or whatever it's called). They do charge you $20 if they get your money back. This seamed reasonable to me. I liked the idea of someone getting paid only if they get my money back as opposed to some lazy ass who gets paid by the hour. I'm not sure how well it worked. I don't even know if they ever charged me. Either way I got my money back and this place had a hand in it.

Fill out as many of the FBI , internet fraud, etc forms as you can. I did everything online and never spoke to a real person until my money was found.

I hope this helps you out.