[meteorite-list] Ebay victims of fake moon and mars meteorite scam

From: Deborah Anne K. Martin <dak_mar_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2012 19:54:31 +0000
Message-ID: <7538DE0CBB155F4A88EE5B18283FD8D51C86C317_at_SN2PRD0102MB142.prod.exchangelabs.com>

Far from an expert here and a very small fry as a collector but two things:

1. The few times I bought meteorites were from established, honest dealers (bought one from Mike Farmer for instance). It never ceases to amaze me how gullible people can be, not that it excuses the scammers.
2. Since eBay won't budge, how about going media ? CNN, various national newspapers, etc. Perhaps eBay can be embarassed to do the right thing however reluctantly...

Andre
________________________________________
From: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com [meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] on behalf of info at moonmarsrocks.com [info at moonmarsrocks.com]
Sent: June 7, 2012 11:46 AM
To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Ebay victims of fake moon and mars meteorite scam

I like Shawn's idea of some kind of coordinated effort to contact all
the victims of steelhorse1994's scam. This can be done by going to the
flake's ebay feedback list where the buyer username and what they bought
is clearly indicated. I believe Ebay has an anti-spam trigger that
limits multiple messages to 10 or so per day per user. As I indicated
before, ebay has no interest whatsoever in reaching out to the victims
of this injustice. In fact they did not boot him completely off ebay, he
is still selling other items like silver bars (are they real, who
knows?). People should contact ebay and demand he be removed altogether.
Do you think they will listen? His last rock sales were the first week
of May so the bulk of his over 1000 sales are past the 45 day ebay
protection window. Some of the victims may be able to get paypal or
their credit card company to do something. By the way, most of the time
he was starting the sales at a 1 penny auction and ending at very low
prices relative to the large size of the rock (the one I got was at
minimum 20-25 mg), which also was a tip off to me.

More specifics: steelhorse1994 sold his fake moon and mars displays from
about October 2011 to early May 2012. However, as best I can tell for
about a year before that (starting in October 2010 to Oct. 2011) under a
DIFFERENT username: "spaceterrain4sale" he was selling them. He still
has an ebay store but no items under that name and the feedback can be
viewed. And yes, at that time he was also selling deed titles to land on
the moon and mars and that dates back to Feb 2010. My theory is he got
in hot water with ebay about the deed title thing in Oct 2011 and that's
why he switched names and then only sold the rocks. It's so despicable!

I had already tried to get ebay to kick the guy off back in March based
on the bogus American Meteorite Collectors Society thing on his
displays, but they did not act. So, a lot of thanks go out to Dr.
Korotev who was willing to take the time to analyze the rock I sent him
and provide the hard science evidence.

Best regards,
Daniel

Daniel Noyes
info at moonmarsrocks.com

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Received on Thu 07 Jun 2012 03:54:31 PM PDT