Three people who conned
eBay buyers out of £300,000
over a period of two years were jailed for a combined total of eight and a half
years at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court on Friday.
Nicolae Cretanu, 30, and his wife Adriana, 23, a Romanian couple based in
East London, were convicted of conning victims into handing over cash through
wire services for non-existent goods. George Titar, 23, a Romanian illegal
immigrant, was also convicted.
In an interview on BBC Radio Five eBay was robust in its defence that it is
doing enough to tackle such criminal activity, despite scores of cases having
surfaced over the past three years, albeit involving smaller sums.
A security spokesman for the auction giant said: "We urge people to be
vigilant about how they pay for things. If you decide that you trust someone
then you should pay with
PayPal because if something
goes wrong you are covered up to £500."
He went on to explain eBay's view of how such crimes are perpetrated. "The
[criminals] set up accounts and in all cases the transactions end [successfully]
but the negative behaviour involved separate transactions 'off' eBay," he said.
"What happens is that the people who are victims do not come back and tell us
because it happened 'off' eBay.
"So they do not use the feedback mechanism to say 'this guy is not who he
says he is' because the transaction did not happen on eBay. So I stress to
people to keep it on eBay because that helps us to track what is going on on our
website."
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