Hello again,  Last week I wrote about an eBay auction of a small music
box in Florida.  Based on the response from the seller I suspected that
the person was running a scam, or, in this case, a fraudulent description
by leaving out information.  The winner of the auction was WINGUY2.
I would be interested to know if things worked out okay.  Hopefully
the auction was on the level and my fears were unfounded.  Also, the
second bidder was RZEBITSCHEK.  This is the name of the maker of the
box.  Since I am interested in this make of music box, I'd love to
contact this person to compare notes.

And a comment on these scam artists.  I too am careful about possible
scams but I wonder if there is ever any effort to actually stop them.
Sure, eBay does pull the listing if they think it's a scam, and you
and I can avoid them by checking their auction details, but the problem
is that these scammers never seem to see any consequences.  If you lift
a candy bar from a convenience store you will probably end up with
major legal bills, if not jail.  But if you practice identity theft or
Internet fraud they cancel the auction and you can just go on to try
again until you succeed.  Does anyone have any idea of how to punish
people for these attempted frauds?  I have found that nobody will even
react unless you have already lost a substantial amount of money.

Regards
Craig Smith