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Sorry, could you go into more detail here? This happened to my mom several years ago, and we always wondered why.


One thing it could have been is the “brushing” scam

Creating fake orders to enable fake reviews for a product to be posted, boosting the product listing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushing_(e-commerce)


Steal CC info from person A.

Buy item from using junk email address and shipping address of person B.

On delivery day, wait near person B's home, and grab the package when UPS delivers it. If person B manages to get to the package first, scammer is only out some time.

Junk email and 3rd party mailing address - harder to track scammer. Of course, this ignores IP address and similar - smart scammer would also use Tor and other tools to obfuscate the online transactions.


Or:

Steal credit card.

Sell new stuff on eBay.

Wait for purchaser.

When someone buys from you on eBay, you go to a merchant, and order stuff with the stolen credit card, and have it shipped to the buyer.

You have your money from eBay. Person has their stuff. Owner of stolen card gets refunded.

Only the merchant has lost some money. Which makes this hard to stop.




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