Here’s a little bit about myself.

My name is Liam Shalon. I’m jewish, and I’m 14 years old (a freshman in high school). I live in Palo Alto, the heart of silicon valley.

Even when I was a kid, I wanted to get good deals. I decided that the best place for me to find what I wanted at a reasonable price for an 11 year old, was eBay.

I began to buy little things off of eBay. I’d get my mom to put in her Paypal password, and I’d pay her back. Soon, I started to realize that there was an opportunity for me to make money off of eBay. I’d sell and my old junk, and I’d buy more junk. The ecosystem was perfect.

It turned into a hobby, an obsession of mine. To buy used crap, and to sell used crap. I ended up with an eBay rating of 226 and over $4,000 worth of stuff sold — from me, a middle schooler at the time.

I began selling other people’s junk and to earn a commission. This got my eBay/Craigslist selling “career” off the ground.

When I wanting something, I would always buy it from eBay or Craigslist. This made me good at buying stuff on these sites. When people asked me about deals, “Is it fake, Liam?” or, “Can you find it for cheaper?”, I’d always respond with a confident answer. They asked because they were afraid of getting scammed, not me — I’ve gone through these things multiple times, I know the game and I can sniff out scrappy Nigerian Prince scams. People trusted me, it was easy to say that I was a pro.

In a way, I was heroic (at least to myself and friends). I’d always find the best deals, and I’d always sell people’s stuff that they would’ve otherwise thrown away. Selling high, buying low — that was my game. I had pride in what I did, a lot of it.

Just to make sure you understand

eBay is protected. If you buy something that doesn’t work correctly, either the seller will refund you, or if they pull a Forrest Gump and run away, eBay will repay you. Everything is online, and things come right to your door.

Craigslist is different. People post things, and offer a method of contact. After that, it’s your responsibility to find the person, pay, and get the item of purchase. The people and results you get with Craigslist vary, extremely.

So, what went wrong?

People make mistakes, right?

I was in the market for a laptop. Specifically, a Macbook Pro Retina. These things run for $2,000+ on Apple.com. That’s too high for me. I had to find a deal.

After understanding the market for these laptops on eBay and Craigslist, I figured that I could buy a laptop for much less off of Craigslist than eBay. So I began to look and make phone calls.

If you wonder why people say “No low balling” on their ad, that’s because of me. Most people turned me down. I’d tell them that I was a student (because I actually was/still am) and ask them for a lower price than listed.

I’d say I was in my 3rd day of “the hunt” when all of the sudden, walla. A beautiful ad, with an equally beautiful low price.

All you have to do is call 909-987-9001, and ask if it’s still available.

Now, this computer with these types of specs range between $2,100 — $2,500. So, this was a terrific deal. I was sure that someone was faster than I was and snagged it up already as they usually do with these great deals.

Anyways, I gave the guy a call. A voice that seemed to be coming from an old man answered the phone. To sum it up, this is what the conversation was like.

Hello, I’m interested in your laptop, I’m a student, is there any chance you could knock off a hundred from the already amazing price?

Yes, of course, how about I take off $150. Where do you go to school?

That’s very nice of you, I go to school in Palo Alto. I see that you’re based in South Beach, is there any chance we could meet at a public place so I could pick up the laptop?

South Beach? I’m in Lancaster. My son posted this for me… maybe he posted it in the wrong area.

Well, is there any way that you could ship the laptop to me? We could use Paypal or services that would make it secure for both of us.

Yes, let me talk to my wife to see what works best for us. I’ll send you an email with our response the following morning.

Just like that, I was sucked into a game of illusion. “Kevin Gregory Feltz”, an elderly man in Los Angeles was feeding me a well thought out plan of absolute dog shit, and I was eating.

I was now believing, not thinking.

I received many emails from Kevin. He, his ‘wife’, and his ‘son’ had decided that they wanted to use MoneyPak to transfer the money. He assured me I’d have confirmation of shipment before I sent him the money, and I could send just portions of the money until I received the box the very next day.

I urged him that we should use Paypal or another service that would be safer for us. He had good excuses why not to use those services — because he “couldn’t”.

I said that I wanted evidence that he was who he says he is, and that after he could prove that he was who he was I’d commit to buying it. I asked him to send me a picture of his ID. He said he didn’t feel secure about that, but he would send me a few pictures of his bills to confirm who he was. He did.

I’m a Photoshop expert (that’s a separate story), I know what can be forged, and what is extremely hard to forge. To be honest, I’d have a tough time forging documents the way he did (at least I though). I now see how he did it… stupid me.

So, everything looks good. I got the MoneyPak cards, and the morning that he confirmed the package (weighing just the amount that a laptop would weigh) was sent, I sent him the first payment of $500.

The package was now scheduled to arrive the next day, until I get a text message from Kevin saying this (quote):

I am sorry to tell you but I am going to have to refund you. My brother in law filled my wife head up with all this carp [crap] about. The deal sounds fishy.

All of the sudden, he accused me of scamming him! I had to prove myself. So I asked him to allow me to redeem myself by sending the rest of the money (I’m such an idiot). I thought this was fine because I trusted him (old guys are consistently nice if not mean), and he already sent the package. Deep down though, I felt extreme pressure.

There we go, I sent him the total of $1150, and I should be getting my package tomorrow morning. Life is good.

The next morning, I look at the status of the package, and it’s been redirected. I call the number that Kevin had answered the previous days, and nothing… no one answered the phone number.

I called UPS, and urged them to stop the package from being redirected from a UPS facility only 3 miles away from me. Nothing.

I was scammed.

Next Steps

I walked into my kitchen, in extreme discomfort. My dad was there. “Did you get the laptop?” he said. I shook my head. “Why not?”, he pondered. I took one second, and a lot (a lot) of will power to say “I got scammed.”

My pride ≠ there

My dignity ≠ thriving

My money ≠ in my pockets

I was now a discouraged, unconfident, broke 14 year old (1st world problems). But not everything was gone, I told my dad, “Money doesn’t grow on trees, but I’ll make it back one day.”

Now, for those of you that don’t know my dad(probably all of you), if you try to argue with him, you will lose. Period. You can’t win, and that’s that. If he wants to make you or someone do something for him, or believe something, you will do so.

I proceeded to tell him the story. He told me it was ridiculous that UPS wasn’t handing over the package that I paid for… so he told me to put him on the phone with UPS.

Long story short, we got some information. We got where the package was redirected to: 2929 Taladega Dr. Orlando FL 32996 (all addresses and names will be altered for their privacy), and who put in the request to change it which was eventually lost over time, but was someone who died in a homicide in the same LA area… creepy. Oh, and the number that called to redirect it? From Boulder, Colorado. After further research, I discovered that the house in Florida was currently on rent. No one lived there. The agents at UPS finally agreed to keep the package in Menlo Park as well.

Now, how big was that package? Not big enough to fit a laptop, that’s for sure… so we began to think, WTF is in that box?

Could it be a laptop, obviously not… could it be just nothing valuable? Well, why was it redirected. The worst, was that we had to wait to find out. It killed me, and no one understood what was up with that box.

It’s important to note that the only information that we have about “Kevin”, at this point is a few fake names, a fake address, a few phone numbers, and a fake email address.

Becoming part of the FBI (kinda)

I wanted revenge… so badly.

The only information that we could tie to this guy was the phone number that he used.

Over the next few days, I came close to finding the guy, but it was hard. We almost had someone arrested in San Jose (really close, but wrong guy — glad that didn’t happen). And I began to track down that phone number to locations, names, and much more. I tracked down the IP address that the guy used to a location as well.

The phone number kinda got us somewhere. For the next 2 days, I tracked down someone who quite possibly could’ve been a criminal, but not our criminal. Seriously, this guy had what seemed to be multiple identities, nothing of himself on the web, and traveling between Los Angeles and Los Vegas (yes, I tracked his mobile phone). I was sure this guy what THE guy, but when putting together a case report, I noticed that I had mistyped a phone number somewhere that led me down the wrong road *facepalm*.

I felt defeated. Nothing I was doing was getting me anywhere…

This led me to think, if he scammed me, he’s scamming more people… how do I get scammed again? Enter craigslist.com. I did a domain search on the same product. Found the same thing, in four separate cities, with four separate names and phone numbers… oh god.

So, I created a fake phone number using the app Burner (this dip shit [Kevin] used that service as well) to contact this guy from a different phone number and name.

I tried to get this dude to slip and give away just a hint of trackable information… but he saw all of my attempts and turned his back quickly.

I ended up almost finding a way to get this guy arrested… Have him drop it off at a certain UPS location where he gets stopped (by the tracking number he gives to me) and arrested. BAM. But… the police have better things to do I guess.

Conclusion

I lost a lot of pride, and a lot of confidence from this. The money came out of my pockets as well, so I felt diffused for some time after. Did I feel stupid? Hell ya… But I found support in my friends and family.

Oh ya, and guess what was in that box? A roll of tape and a water bottle… *double facepalm*.

So, at the end of the day, I lost a lot… But, I gained a lot of dis-trust in people ;), detective skills (seriously, give me a name, number or address, I’ll pull up their third cousin within seconds), a very expensive water bottle (looking at you Fiji to rebound off of that), and a decent blog post.

Thanks for reading guys! You can find out a bit more about me and what I do at liamshalon.com.

Enjoy.