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Actually you know what we can do. Since the seller is scammer. We can report him and buy his stuff (without paying) but we can leave negative feedback to warn others. I will be the first to do it.
Edit: Actually you can't. Have to checkout through PP straight away.
**EDIT** Long read warning.... sorry... Having already been a victim of this kind of scam, this is generally how it works.
I wouldn't touch this auction or seller in any way / shape / form. These poor victims are in for a long ride. First he will cease all contact, if anything he may employ delay tactics to delay shipping anything. "I have been sick, my wife is in the hospital, we had a death in the family, I was evicted from my appt."...etc...etc. When he eventually does ship something (
after 1 week), it will be a low $$ junk item just to get a tracking #. International shipping through customs can take another
~2.5 weeks. So thats
potentially up to least ~3.5 weeks to get anything, and thats IF the buyers are diligent. So the auction "winner" finally gets a $.99 piece of junk. They file "Item not as advertised" claims and get assigned a resolution center case number. At this point a resolution center clerk will be assigned to the case, and the seller has
3-4 days (approx) to respond to the claim and make it right. Worst case scenario at this point, the "winner" will be required to re-pack the item, ship it back fully tracked with scammer signature. Add another
~2.5 weeks through customs. The scammer is supposed to remedy the situation by sending the correct auction item. They have
2-3 days to ship the corrected item with tracking number. Whether they do or not is anybodies guess at this point... and I dont know what happens if the return item gets "lost in the mail", or the scammer simply refuses to accept / sign for the return package. Who's to say the scammer won't just pack and ship another scam / fake item, even if he does that... add another
~2.5 weeks through customs. And the process repeats.
The caveat for the "winner" though is if the return shipping $$$ is significantly close to the auction price, the Ebay resolution center clerk may side with the "winner" and not require full return shipping. I doubt that will be the case here though, unless for some strange reason it costs ~$60 to ship a USB cable.
If enough members file claims though at some point ebay says enough is enough, and just refunds the winners without return shipping.
After all that, the scammer has had more than enough time to empty the funds. He may still be taking orders for other scams though, so they usually chose to leave the account active for that reason. Basic greed, simply can't refuse to terminate the incoming $$. And after all that, forget about feedback profiles and fear of negatives... thats all meaningless now that the scammer has his $$. Each scammer probably has at least a few fake user IDs, acquired with different www-email addresses. All similarly built up selling $.99 junk. Many scammers shill-win their own auctions and leave their own feedbacks. Unfortunately its impossible to tell from our end who is behind each winning bid when we research each sellers completed auction listing and feedback profile.
This is REAL... its a LIVE scam we are watching, happens all the time on Ebay. Until Ebay more carefully scrutinizes its incoming members, it will always be there. Back when I first started using ebay ~16 years ago to buy/trade guitars , ebay refused to accept www-based email addresses. You had to register using an ISP (type) of address. They also didn't have the "Buy it now" option, where scammers can get rich quick selling lots of stuff from one auction listing. So back then it was one auction, one item. So this kind of scam didn't even exist.. it just wasn't possible to scam an entire group of people on one auction.
There are derivatives to this scam, but this is the most common I have seen with large-ish volume consumer electronics.
