eBay's Vladuz Man Myth or Monster

Vladuz and the eBay Highjinx

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I'll begin.

Once upon a time (actually it was around January/February of 2007) I 'met' a young man who went by the online handle 'Vladuz'.

Folks who followed events at Pheebay.com will know him from his posts on our forums there but some of us enjoyed more private chats with the man.

Listen up and see what you think.

eBay's Vladuz Man Myth or Monster by Katherine Carington Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 UK: Scotland License.
Based on a work at www.squidoo.com.

The Darkside

In the forums on some of the other online auctions sites, eBay is referred to as "The Darkside", there are various reasons for this which I won't go into here as it would take far too long, but when I think of the dark side of eBay it isn't the site rules and practices I am referring to but the criminal underbelly of eBay.

I have no doubt that the powers that be at eBay are well aware of the criminal activity which goes on through the site. It takes various forms, from the ring of IDs one person or small group sets up to apparently trade "legitimately" in high end goods between them before setting up the public sting, to the seasoned scammer who is inserting totally fraudulent auctions attempting to attract buyers to trade off-eBay.

I wrote a long piece here in the Pheebay forum on how to spot scam listings and although I am sure the specific examples I gave will be out of date, the basic advice given remains the same.

Of course, as other online auction sites continue to grow, the same advice will apply wherever you are shopping.

While I was researching this criminal underbelly I came across a character named Vladuz.

V-Bay

He posted on the eBay forums in pink and he even signed some of the fake auctions he put onto eBay, he certainly had a brass neck, especially at 4 am in Germany where he posted this ...

Twice I tried to contact him using different email addresses, the second time he responded telling me he got the first email as well, the one which started "Hi Hacker", and so our conversations began.

I asked him many questions and got many answers, some of which others will find disturbing.

Vladuz joined us over at Pheebay and posted in our forums attracting a whole lot of interest. He even gave some very good advice on creating passwords etc, not altogether a bad guy really. In fact, I grew to like the man.

I never was able to work out whether he was making his money by selling the programmes to insert scam auctions into eBay or if he was scamming individuals himself but there are some things I can tell you.

I asked him how long he had been on ebay - about seven years, was the answer. I asked him if there was anywhere in eBay he could not access - the toilets, was the answer.

He told me how eBay employees were playing online games on their computers, only putting up the work screens they were supposed to be paying attention to when a superviser came around ... it's so cute, Valduz was actually shocked that these guys were slacking off.

Hmmm, online gaming during work hours while keeping the project you're working on open on the computer ... does that sound like a recipe for disaster to anyone else?

And there's more ...

You know that Skype telephony system? Did you think it was secure?

I was sent a list of booked conference calls for that morning and asked which ones I would like to listen to. Apparently I had just missed a call between Meg Whitman and a number of others.

I didn't know who was who but I was linked in to a conference call involving Nexus and a discussion about the allocation of funds to revamp the my eBay page - Nexus didn't think it was enough.

Vladuz contacted me saying ...

... oddly enough, I had been off eBay so long that I couldn't think of one individual deserving of such an inconvenience but Vladuz soon found a few he wanted to NARU himself.

Not A Registered User

I'm sure the individuals who were affected will remember it well. They certainly weren't pleased with Vladuz that day.

Many folks on eBay weren't altogether displeased to see Vladuz posting as a pink and making some of his auctions obvious by actually signing, albeit backwards. A good number of auctions appeared with the signature "Zudalv", auction listings also appeared with the Romanian phrase "trece si asta" in the wording.

I asked Vladuz what it meant - "this will pass" (the filters?).

But all the while eBay was telling us that Vladuz hadn't compromised the systems or security of eBay in any way.

The misinformation game

Images such as the ones above and to the right began to sprout on eBay forums and across the internet.

All the while eBay was telling folks everything was fine and there was no risk from Vladuz, I was watching what Vladuz was doing and I was listening to what he was telling me.

He was, of course, not the only hacker on eBay, Vladuz told me that almost everyone in Romania is scamming on the internet, most on eBay. Whilst I don't believe for one minute that almost everyone in the country is at it, I am prepared to accept that there will be areas where large numbers of struggling families are benefitting from these scams.

I'm not in any way trying to justify the behaviour but in a country which was suppressed for so long and where the people are poor, it is understandable that they look at the fat and well-paid (on the whole) West and think it's ok to steal from us.

They have no awareness of the extreme poverty in which some folks live in the Western World.

But while eBay denied everything, here is what happened to the listing counts as the scam listings were removed by eBay and put back on by ?Vladuz?

... it's just a glitch, of course, just a glitch.

And Vladuz hadn't managed to hack into eBay's systems ...

S Noyce was / is one of eBay's lawyers as far as I am aware. You'll notice, near the bottom of that picture, on the left "SGI Inc. - V but eBay still denied. Even when Vladuz posted highly personal information on the eBay forums under the pink heading which denotes employees of the company, they denied.

People wondered how he had managed to ensure that information stayed on the forums for a very long time before being pulled by staff - Vladuz told me he had set off a building wide fire alarm.

But eBay said he didn't compromise security.

And then he was gone

And so, throughout that year I was in touch with Vladuz. Mostly we just chatted about nothing in particular but in October he told me he was planning something special as eBay had been causing him problems.

Interestingly, it never came off. By the time we were well into November, he told me that it would no longer be necessary as things were running smoothly again, then near the end of the year he said it was time for Vladuz to disappear.

It seems that whatever his business was, it had been concluded.

The last communication I had with him was when we wished each other a Very Happy New Year for 2008.

And then he was gone.

Vladuz exposed

Imagine my surprise then when in April 2008 I heard that 'Vladuz' had been arrested.

I watched the video clips of the young lad Vlad Duiculescu who had been arrested by the Romanian police and read eBay's triumphant PR pieces but I, and others, knew this wasn't the Vladuz we had talked with. I was not the only one at Pheebay who got to know Vladuz.

Curiously, after we had discussed the arrest in the Pheebay forum the whole discussion dropped out of eBay's vocabulary.

We heard a couple of weeks later that the lad they arrested was released, having been slapped on the wrist and fined $2000. We may never know the truth of this and eBay has said nothing since.

There are even folks now who don't believe it ever happened.

One small fact.

Every Romanian hacker is referred to as a Vladuz, it's simply a collective name by which they are identified.

So if you catch any one of the many Romanian hackers you can quite happily say you have caught "Vladuz".

Have you been scammed?

The first thing to do is contact the site where you purchased the items, if you paid through Paypal claim the money back (you may not get it) or with a credit card you should be able to do a chargeback.

Contact your local police and find out if they have a division dealing with online fraud, it may be at HQ level, but you must report the crime. Unless these frauds are reported by everyone affected, the real extent remains unknown and co-ordinated international forces will have to be established to deal with online crime. The more the authorities are made aware of the cost, the sooner an international force will be set up.

And you'll find some great links on JaguarJulie's lens SOS - Stop Online Scammers.

What do you think, man, myth or monster?

Lensmaster

vbright105 wrote...

That is a very interesting lens. I left ebay a long time ago, they are in a constant state of denial, about everything! Now they cater to the "Big" Stores and Merchants.

Posted October 04, 2008

Lensmaster

ChristiannaGarrett-Martin wrote...

This is a really interesting lens! Fascinating.

5 Stars.

Christianna.

Posted October 04, 2008

Lensmaster

packetlog wrote...

good lens. and interesting story!!

Posted October 04, 2008

Lensmaster

ArtByLinda wrote...

This is a very interesting lens, it is really scary how "insecure" our "secure" systems can be when hackers find a way in.

Posted October 03, 2008

Lensmaster

rainbowseeker wrote...

Nice lens 00! I thought he was interesting. I'd love to know why he really left us...and what he ment when he said things were running smoothly now so he could disappear. There still seems to be a goodly amount of fraud and it certainly has gotten awful for sellers.

Posted October 03, 2008

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eBay and Vladuz on You Tube

Please be aware that a couple of the vidoes below refer to listings placed on eBay inviting folks to "Take a tour with a ..." shall we just say lady of less than spotless character.

Squidoo

eBay's Vladuz Man Myth or Monster

Vladuz and the eBay Highjinx

Contents at a Glance

Contents at a Glance

The Darkside

V-Bay

And there's more ...

Not A Registered User

The misinformation game

And then he was gone

Vladuz exposed

Have you been scammed?

What do you think, man, myth or monster?

eBay and Vladuz on You Tube

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