x-sierra.com Targets eBay Sellers for Money Mule Employment Scam

Today, an eBay member wrote to the blog inquiring about the company x-sierra.com. It seems that this bogus company from the Russian Federation is using the IDs usa177, catrin100 and vitelgold on the website Get A Freelancer.com and has placed numerous ads looking for eBay members to list items for them.

One of the recent job descriptions says:

Description: We need a Ebay lister person from the following countries:

1) United Stated
2) Canada
3) Australia
4) Singapore
5) United Kingdom
6) France
7) Germany
8) Malaysia
9) Belgium
10) Italy

Please made bids ONLY, if you are from these countries and have Ebay Seller account with no less than 20 feedbacks.

Powersellers with more than 200 feedbacks will be appreciated.

Month salary is 1900$ (USD) will be paid each 2 weeks.

Please made your bids you will be contacted soon!

The registered member only contacts those that bid on the project, and only contacts them by private message through the website. The question is, why would you have to place a bid if the monthly salary is $1900 per month?

And, some comments from members at Get A Freelancer.com:

Be aware of this person. from Russia and will just go out after getting the money from the sold item on ebay. I personally worked with him once and lost $700.

Best of luck bidders

Really? $1900 per month for just acting as a front, taking people's money and forwarding it to an invisible third party who promises to deliver? Hmmm.

do you need somebody from INDIA also? I am from India and have good hand on ebay working.

I have an ebay account with a 100% rating of 20 people. I am not completely clear on what you are wanting to sell or quanity. Would you clarify? Thanks :)

I have an eBay account with over 300 happy customers in feedback. I live in the USA. I was considering bidding but I am not fully clear what I am bidding for.. can you clarify?

We are in the same position as Jim. What is this about?

Here is how this scam works after an eBay member agrees to work for this low-life fraud, x-sierra.com:

1. x-sierra.com contacts the eBay member with items that they want listed on eBay.
   
2. eBay member creates the listings, sells the items, and collects the money from the winning bidder.
3. eBay member then contacts x-sierra.com with the winning bidder's ship to address and forwards all the money via Western Union, Money Gram, eGold or PayPal to x-sierra.
4. Winning bidder then follows up after not receiving the item and contacts the eBay member to inquire where the item is.
5. eBay member contacts x-sierra.com, and finds out that x-sierra.com absconded with all of the money, including the commission he is owed and the fees due to eBay.
6. If the winning bidder paid the eBay member via PayPal, he files a complaint with PayPal to obtain his money back, or else files mail fraud charges if he paid by check or money order.
7. In either case the winning bidder should be successful in obtaining his money back.
8. The eBay member is out-of-pocket all the money because he's helpless. And, to top it off, he also receives negative feedback and a non-selling seller performance strike.

Here's the registration information for x-sierra.com after doing a Who Is look up for these low-lifes:



Check out the website for www.x-sierra.com, and you get a message that the website is disabled.

From the message board Fraudwatchers.org, you can find a post from November 2006 claiming that x-sierra.com is a scammer.

To top it off, x-sierra.com contacted this blog on December 11, 2006 and requested that its email address and domain be removed:

We are from X-Sierra.com

You included our E-mail in the list on http://nekkidtruth.blogspot.com/ Please remove our E-mail support@x-sierra.com as we never trade on Ebay, as we are located in Russian Federation.

Please also remove our site www.x-sierra.com from your sites list.

P.S. No nobody used our domain name before.

Thank you.

As you can see by searching the list of email addresses and fake domains on this blog, we did not comply with x-sierra.com's request. So instead, x-sierra.com decided to post another job on Get A Freelancer.com.

Here's the job description:

Online Fraud database URGENT!

Description: We need to create a special database website which will avoid people from fraud.

One website should be:

1) Professional design

2) Small information about fraud and scams

3) Such option as Search fraud by: Ebay I.D., Yahoo I.D., E-mail, ICQ, MSN e.t.c.

4) Available for people to add a scammer with a proof, after our approvment we will review the this issue and add this to the database.

5) Function of checking the deal how it works: (Customer will pay checking fees for example 1.50$ for Ebay user e.t.c., 3$ - for any online store e.t.c., after it our managers will check the request for fraud and tell to the customer)

6) Function to access the database for 9.99$ per month

7) Live Help

8) Also we need a Windows programm application to manage the site, to add scammers, to review customers requests when they will add a person, also managing all options in the admin panel using Windows programm application. Also such options as who is online now should be in the program.

Terms and Conditions:

Also please be sure that payment will be done once project will be completed. No advanced payment e.t.c. All works will be done on our servers, so we will not check them on your server and have problems with transfering to our's.

If you do not accept our Terms and Conditions DO NOT BID please.

Duh! Thieves that want to compete with The Nekkid Truth blog and make money scamming other innocent people. What do you want to bet that the re-emerging x-sierra.com tells everyone that makes an inquiry that each and every eBay seller, whether a hijacker, scammer or not, is upstanding and honest?

Do your homework. Stay away from x-sierra.com, otherwise you will get scammed and lose your money to low-life thieves.