Berlin police registered 6,740 fraud cases, eBay became a hotspot for online fraud

Foreign media reported that as it becomes more and more convenient to open a new current account in online banking, usually only a video recognition procedure is enough, many criminals are taking advantage of this to commit fraud. In Berlin alone, hundreds of cases of eBay fraud are reported to the police every month .

Criminals place goods under false names in eBay classifieds and sell them at low prices, but to complete the purchase, the seller must transfer funds to an account. The international bank account number of this account is real, but the account holder uses a fictitious identity or a stolen ID. After the withdrawal, the account will be cancelled and the goods will never be shipped.

So far, the Berlin National Criminal Police has registered a total of 6,740 cases of fraudulent product orders. Therefore, we also want to remind everyone that many financial institutions allow individuals to open accounts using video or photo recognition, and do not even require ID. This has also caused a sharp increase in the risk of opening an account. The police recommend that everyone use payment service providers such as PayPal or direct payment to provide protection to buyers.

According to the consumer magazine SUPER.MARKT, in such fraud cases, the money is usually transferred to an account at N26 Bank, which in turn does not exempt them from the responsibility of checking "whether the account is attributed to the designated recipient of the transfer." These banks only check transfers of more than 1,000 euros.

Ull Schulte am Hülse, a lawyer specialising in banking law , said Britain requires financial institutions to check whether the names given correspond to the actual stored data of the account holder in order to reduce the number of fraud cases.

On the other hand, eBay itself is almost powerless to combat fraud - eBay has 43 million ads every year, and some fraudulent ads only appear online for a few minutes or hours. This makes it difficult for eBay to monitor these frauds, but there will always be users who fall for them.

As early as 2010, eBay, together with Microsoft, PayPal, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Consumers Union, the American Bankers Association, Citizens Bank and other companies and organizations, launched an online fraud warning service with the intention of creating an online fraud "blacklist". However, as the fraud methods become more and more flexible and continue to escalate, similar frauds still exist in large numbers.

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