Dear rsxmaster,
The "Secuer Trade" you refer to is an escrow service. Escrow (in
general) is defined as: " a legal arrangement whereby a thing (often
money, but sometimes other property such as art, a deed of title, or
software source code) is delivered to a third party (called an escrow
agent) to be held in trust pending a contingency or the fulfillment of
a condition or conditions in a contract. Upon that event occurring,
the escrow agent will deliver the thing to the proper recipient,
otherwise the escrow agent is bound by her or his fiduciary duty to
maintain the escrow account." (SOURCE: Wikipedia,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escrow>).
So, in general, escrow services could be secuer to use in order to
transfer money to a third party, and could be fraudulent - ones that
take your money but never deliver it.
There are several signs that one should stay away from this particular
escrow service:
It is listed (twice, under different names) on the site "escrow
fraud", that lists escrow sites that are fraudulent:
Escrow Fraud - List
<http://escrowfraud.com/services.asp>
A longer explanation of "secure-trade" problems exists on
SOS-auctions, unfortunately I could only get the cache version of the
page:
Cache version of "http://www.sos4auctions.com/escrow/docs/Secure-Trade.org.txt"
<http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:et3x6kDsIwgJ:www.sos4auctions.com/escrow/docs/Secure-Trade.org.txt+%22secure+trade%22+escrow&hl=en>
SOS Auctions also has lots of advices and information on spotting and
identifying fraudulent escrow (or shipping) sites:
SOS 4 Auctions
<http://www.sos4auctions.com/default.htm>
Car Buying Tips has more warnings and explanations against eScrow
<http://www.carbuyingtips.com/fraud.htm>
The site is also listed as fraudulent here:
Escrow-Fraud - Reported Sites
<http://escrow-fraud.pgardner.net/?page=reported>
Here's a sad story about a couple from Reno, who has lost their money
because of that fraud.
Reno Family Victim in Scam
<http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:W5CJhwwrNsUJ:www.ktvn.com/default.asp%3Farea%3DfullTopStory%26storyid%3D3503+%22secure+trade%22+escrow&hl=en>
eBay has got lots of information on how to buy safely there:
Buying & Paying
<http://pages.ebay.com/securitycenter/buying_paying.html> |
