# Be careful who you bid against on EBAY. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 11, 2003, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/be-careful-who-you-bid-against-on-ebay/194489 "2003-08-11T21:56:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SkyBum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@SkyBum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkyBum)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2003, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/be-careful-who-you-bid-against-on-ebay/194489/1 "2003-08-11T21:56:17Z")
“Angry eBayer travels 1300 miles to threaten couple who outbid him on $500 band costumes” [Full story](http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/today/frontpage/stories/fr081103s1_p.shtml) > [@](#): > > When a Town of Poughkeepsie man entered – and won – an auction on eBay this year, he had no idea he was setting his family up for a life-threatening encounter. > > But the Spring Road resident got a chilling lesson last month of the importance of being safe on the Internet. > > A New Orleans man will be in town court today on burglary charges for allegedly breaking into the unidentified couple’s home July 3 with a gun. > > Gerald A. Newburger Jr., 44, was apparently upset after the couple outbid him for used band costumes on the Internet auction site eBay, police said. The band costumes were worth less than $500, police said. Might have seemed a bit more likely if they had been bidding on Samurai swords, but \* band uniforms\*? ---
**Author:** ![Ms\_Boods](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Ms\_Boods](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms_Boods)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2003, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/be-careful-who-you-bid-against-on-ebay/194489/2 "2003-08-11T22:05:04Z")
My experience isn’t quite as dramatic, but I have received threatening emails from a guy after I won an auction last year – and he wasn’t even involved in the auction! (He wrote to me and asked me what it felt like to be an idiot for spending so much on the item I won…er, gosh, thanks, I think!) I reported him after the first one, and he sent a second email with outright threats, telling me I had ‘messed with the wrong person’ – I reported him AGAIN, but eBay did nothing – a little research, and I found that this guy had a history of hounding people over eBay deals, and that in ‘real life’ he’s the CEO of his own company. More recently, I received an email from a person angry that I had not contacted her before I outbid her on an item – same person also told me I oughtn’t bid on any items showing yet a third person’s ID…when I reported her, she contacted me again, and told me to get a life…ooook. 99% of my experiences on eBay are positive, but there’s always a couple of nutjobs out there… ---
**Author:** ![jackelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2003, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/be-careful-who-you-bid-against-on-ebay/194489/3 "2003-08-11T22:20:10Z")
> [@](#): > > Police said Newburger threatened the Poughkeepsie man’s wife with the gun before fleeing in a taxi. The taxi was stopped and Newburger was arrested minutes after he left the house, police said. A _taxi_??? He used a _taxi_ as his getaway car? I think we have an important clue into the perp’s psyche here… ---
**Author:** ![SkyBum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@SkyBum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkyBum)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2003, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/be-careful-who-you-bid-against-on-ebay/194489/4 "2003-08-11T22:40:53Z")
The really _good_ ones always use a taxi. Besides, it’s the only way they stand a chance of finding their way back home. ---
**Author:** ![danceswithcats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9e8a1a/32.png) [@danceswithcats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/danceswithcats)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2003, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/be-careful-who-you-bid-against-on-ebay/194489/5 "2003-08-11T22:51:20Z")
_Attention. Attention. The village has called. All idiots are requested to return to their respective village._ ---
**Author:** ![AngelicGemma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/439d5e/32.png) [@AngelicGemma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngelicGemma)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2003, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/be-careful-who-you-bid-against-on-ebay/194489/6 "2003-08-11T23:06:23Z")
There are some real nutters on the internet! I, of course, am not one of them. Or am I? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Amberlei](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e56c9b/32.png) [@Amberlei](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amberlei)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2003, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/be-careful-who-you-bid-against-on-ebay/194489/7 "2003-08-12T00:41:57Z")
Wow, talk about freaky situations. What a nutcase. ---
**Author:** ![AndrewL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@AndrewL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AndrewL)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2003, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/be-careful-who-you-bid-against-on-ebay/194489/8 "2003-08-12T01:17:57Z")
A few weeks ago I bought a new digitizer on ebay to repair a friend’s palm. $18 with shipping. Today I got an email from someone in the Ukraine, writing (in broken english) to know if I had bought the digitizer to replace a broken one, and if so, what shape was the old one in and would I be interested in selling it? Which is particuarily odd, since a digitizer isn’t much more than a sheet of glass with some wires attached, completely unusable and unrepairable once broken, and certainly not worth what it would cost to ship overseas. I’m still trying to figure out if this is the lead-in to some sort of bizarre scam. ---
**Author:** ![Bongmaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Bongmaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bongmaster)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2003, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/be-careful-who-you-bid-against-on-ebay/194489/9 "2003-08-12T20:42:32Z")
Probably just hoping you’d bite and sell it back to him at a small profit **AndrewL**. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2003, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/be-careful-who-you-bid-against-on-ebay/194489/10 "2003-08-12T21:24:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Bongmaster \* > \*\*Probably just hoping you’d bite and sell it back to him at a small profit _AndrewL_. \*\* Could be a variant of [this scam](http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/carsale.asp). ---
**Author:** ![SkyBum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@SkyBum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkyBum)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2003, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/be-careful-who-you-bid-against-on-ebay/194489/11 "2003-08-12T22:11:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Jeff Olsen \* > \*\*Could be a variant of [this scam](http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/carsale.asp). \*\* Wow! That is one hell of a scam, I can see why it is successful. Never heard about it before. Thanks for passing it on **Jeff**. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2003, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/be-careful-who-you-bid-against-on-ebay/194489/12 "2003-08-12T22:38:46Z")
Maybe the costumes contained a safe deposit key to a box with $4M? Key sewed into the costume 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Shaolinrabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Shaolinrabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shaolinrabbit)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2003, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/be-careful-who-you-bid-against-on-ebay/194489/13 "2003-08-12T23:11:42Z")
Why didn’t he just _bid higher_? Surely whatever he bid plus the cost of his trip would have been more than $500. Not that I’d expect any logical answer from him…