Not Quite the beginning
Ok, this is just the beginning of what I have to say, but not the beginning of the story. First, I want to address the question of HOW I was able to find out that several people (besides myself) had transactions on WS-TRADE.COM.
First, suffice it to say, I am somewhat computer savvy. I did not HACK into their site. I did not (nor do I want to) obtain personal information or credit information (as most of you are sellers and the credit info would be from the buyer anyway). But I do not (as of yet) want to reveal the hole, because, I intend to exploit it so that I can try and save others.
I am just another user of the internet that got frustrated with the fact that I got swindled. So as my frustration grew, I did some investigating. Filed a report, and stumbled on the hole. Since they (and hold no doubts, I STRONGLY believe that those operating WS-TRADE.COM are the guilty parties here in conjunction with the alleged buyers) exploited me (and likely you if you are reading this), I feel it's just as well to use that against them.
I will reveal (later on) how I have gotten in, but until I know who is who... I intend to be vague about it.
More of the story:
Well let's see. this all started out with me selling a laptop on eBay. Given that I am a dealer for the company, I decided to try it out. I didn't really want the hassle of an international shippment so I restricted it the US only. Beside, since these are drop shipped from the factory, I was not sure if they could ship internationally and if so I was not sure where.I was not suprised when I was contacted by an individual to see if I could ship to Spain. I advised him that I would have to check with the factory to see if they could and verify the shipping. My account rep. advised me that they could and that shipping would be about $250.00 but was unsure exactly because the shipping department had gone for the day.
I advised my buyer of this and he said no problem and recommended the ws-trade.com as a means of conducting the transaction. I checked it out, and had some questions about the protection of the seller. Everything revolved around the buyer. So I sent an email to support@ws-trade.com and info@ws-trade.com . I got no response, just a transaction initiated by the buyer. The email initiating the transaction was telling me to register and go through the process.
Given that I was kind of anxious (here is my fault) to sell the laptop, and a web search turned up NOTHING negative, I proceeded with the transaction. Once it was sent and received, I got NOTHING from the buyer. Oddly enough he changed his user id on eBay as well. No response to emails from the buyer or ws-trade.com. I tried calling ws-trade.com and all I got was a voice mail to either "Press 1 to leave a fax or wait and leave a message."
After about 2 days of no response, I concluded that I had been frauded. I filed with econsumer.gov and I filed with the IC3 (formerly the IFCC)
Additionally, I have filed a police report with my local police department.
Well I hadn't given up hope of trying to recover my loses, so with a certain amount of diligence, I kept going back to the site and tried to find out what I could, that's when I found the hole and exploited it. I was able to view multiple transactions. That is when I decided to email all those users of ws-trade.com that I was able to to inform them of the potential for fraud. For some it was just in time for others, it was too late. Some however, had sent their product but were able to have it intercepted prior to delivery.
I would be very interested in hereing your stories of success or loss as well to help inform others about the potentials for loss. If you are willing, please feel free to email me with your story and I will add it to the site. I will only post information that you give me permission to. I will post stories annonymously (or change names to a fictious name), however, To protect me, I will still require that you provide ME with your real name and infomration.
COUNTLESS
times since May 29th 2003
