Doohickamabob

Some fun stuff --

What's the deal with whoever wrote dates and numbers all over those Fiction House comics that were being auctioned? I thought maybe the original owner was autistic or had a head injury or something.

I should follow up and say that the Klaus Buetow guy in Ohio is possibly not involved in any way other than as somebody who has agreed to ship to Wilhem Uthe. Just want to make that clear.

"That's about 20 minutes drive from me. I got a new batch of Sher-Wood PMP 50/30's. You want me to go over there and cross check him in the face a couple of times? I can mail you the teeth."

I don't condone violence either, but if I were to learn after-the-fact that somebody had gone to this guy's house to scare him, I wouldn't feel bad about it.

As for mailing me the teeth, can you mail them to my friend in another state? He will then mail me all of the teeth in bulk, overseas.

One quick follow-up. The eBay Law Enforcement Division isn't set up to take calls from eBay members. They only want to take calls from law-enforcement officials. However, I was referred to this number by an eBay representative, so go figure.

Even though he scammed me, Regino1966 is still active on eBay. I called eBay and they said because he has a positive feedback score (due to buying -- since there's no way for him to get negatives!) they have no reason to cancel his account. Uh.....right.

I wrote a long letter to their My eBay / Help / Report a Buyer department with details of the transaction, his email message headers, etc. I doubt much will come of it.

I am also going to contact eBay's Law Enforcement Division, which is at 408-967-9919.

I figure, it can't hurt. Plus it will make me feel satisfied that I did something. I hate feeling like a sucker.

I hope everybody who has been scammed by this guy will stay on this case and make it very hard for him to get away with anything.

It is partly my own fault, but he scammed me for about $50.

I was selling some comics and magazines on eBay, and he won two of them. I sent an invoice, and he sent me an email asking me to mail to a location in Ohio instead of his address in Germany. Other eBay members had asked me to mail to different locations before, and no problem had occurred, so I didn't think this would be different. (My mistake -- PayPal has no seller protection for items mailed to unofficial addresses, and even if you send to the correct address, they require you to show documentation of where you mailed an item.)

The day after I mailed the magazines (along with about two dozen other items I mailed to other buyers), I received an email from PayPal saying the payment from the German bidder was being withdrawn while PayPal conducted an investigation. I called PayPal and they wouldn't tell me anything about the "investigation." After about three weeks, the investigation was mysteriously completed and the payment was reversed, meaning I had no payment and no magazines.

I called PayPal again, and they told me the original payment had been made from an illegal or unauthorized bank account, and they were obligated to return the payment. I asked if any action was taken against the buyer, and they gave me a general "PayPal takes such matters very seriously" type of statement.

During this time, I emailed the winning bidder repeatedly. His responses (when he gave responses) were brief, evasive and always unhelpful. He repeatedly asked me for the item number and pretended not to know what I was talking about. Then he kept saying, "You must contact PayPal" after I had already given him the story. He wouldn't answer basic questions about whether he received the items. Clearly he didn't care and was just biding his time.

His email address is regino1966@aol.com. The person he asked me to mail the items to is Klaus Beutow.

I've been reading this forum with fascination. After reading it, I suppose I feel lucky to only be scammed for $50. Anyway, part of this is my own fault for mailing to a different address and not documenting my shipping. If I had played by PayPal's rules they would probably refund my money (or so they say).

I see a lot of people here have researched the identity and legal situation of Wilhelm Uthe in Germany. What I am curious about is -- who is this guy in Ohio? Clearly he is an accomplice and in many ways just as guilty as Wilhelm. Does anybody know anything about him?

Here is the address where I was asked to mail the magazines:

Klaus Buetow

5921 Lengwood Drive

Cincinatti, Ohio, 45244

It's actually in Hamilton County, not Cincinnati. It's the District 5 Anderson Township and the police contact there is 513-474-5770. I've already contacted the police and left them details. I figure they won't do anything but at least they should have a record of what's going on.

The email for this person was at one time kbuetow@cinci.rr.com.

I can't believe these two guys have been scamming people together for 10 years or more and are still getting away with it. I also can't believe that eBay and PayPal haven't figured out a way to block them from continued scams. From what I can tell, the eBay account regino1966 is currently active on eBay. Why is this?