Warning -- 5D Mk. II ebay fraud uses my photo
 

Watch out for this bogus 5D Mk. II fraud on Ebay. It's clearly a fake. The photo of the retail box shown on that listing page is obviously a poorly done PhotoShop of the one I posted here last week (the lighting flare on the box front gives it away -- the image is altered, but it's obviously my picture that he's using there).

I've already reported it to Ebay -- it would help if you reported it, too. It'll probably save somebody from getting ripped off, although I don't know who would actually fall for this bogus listing. He claims to have *two* cameras that were "given to him by his brother." Riiiiiight...

The fraudulent listing:

Canon EOS 5D Mark II 21.1 Megapixel- BODY ONLY - eBay (item 160299802680 end time Nov-24-08 19:41:42 PST)

The bogus photo, poor alteration of my image attached here.

Compare with my original at http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/attachmen...box-5dbox1.jpg

This listing (160299802680) has been removed or is no longer available. Please make sure you entered the right item number.
If the listing was removed by eBay, consider it canceled. Note: Listings that have ended more than 90 days ago will no longer appear on eBay.

apparently your report worked Chris, good job.

Great, thanks for that report, Allen. This is the second time I'm aware of that someone has used my photos to fake an Ebay listing in an attempt to create fraud. The first was a number of years ago when a person listed a Canon EF 1200mm prime lens on Ebay using the photos I took of it at the 2002 Winter Olympics. There are less than a dozen of those lenses in existence in the entire world, yet somebody thought they could pass my photos off as their own in order to run an Ebay scam. That listing was removed by Ebay within hours, as was this one. Thanks again,

Maybe consider putting a watermark on your photos next time? Probably too late for this since it's already leaked to so many websites.

I did that -- I always watermark images that I upload to the Web. In this case it was cropped out.

FWIW, this is a common eBay scam - scrape the web (or other eBay auctions) for photos, alter them a bit (watermarking won't help unless you use one across the entire face of the image...), stick a fake auction up on a hacked/jacked account (typically with an email "contact" and an excuse as to why you can't use eBay messaging).

The "mark" (internet NOOB or overly optimistic bargain hunter who forgot the phase "too good to be true") emails, and typically the con artist will then ask for a Western Union money order or other unsafe payment method...

I can't imagine anyone being so stupid as to fall for these scams, but I guess they rely on the old PT Barnum saying about fooling people... and all it takes is ONE schmuck on a high ticket item to make a "big score".