@Sureo

I think you missed a few zeros from that number......

Agreed - go after scammers

So what about the rest of em?

I hope someones screen dumped his profile, I suspect there may be a few negative ratings!

Bad maths day?

171,750 + 17,500 = 198,250, so presumably he had sixty thousand dollars'-worth of scams, going on elserwhere, to arive at a total of $259,000.

Sorry to be pedantic.

Does ebay still get their cut?

If someone conducts a fraudulent transaction via ebay, does ebay return their profits?

You buy the car but you don't own it

He sold only a license to that car. The license does not allow you to touch the car. If you touch the car you are infringing his copyrights so you are a thief.

"A man convicted of swindling more than $259,000 using fraudulent eBay listings and other venues was ordered to serve 52 months in federal prison and pay $252,000 in restitution."

So he remains with $7,000.

Caveat Emptor

OK so the people he scammed should have known better than parting with cash for vapourware and eBay does give advice against this sort of thing, but what gets me is the 1% scammers, building up a nice book of happy customers when they sell make little or no money then sell a few high value items (like cameras) which "get lost in the post, you should have bought insurance" and bang several hundred dollars profit, very low bad feedback and stays looking trustworthy. Oh and there's the ones that buy 10 lots of 1 cent ebooks then happen to have a $1000 laptop for sale at $400 or 100 memory cards at 80% of everybody else's price.

Lesson of the day, check the selller and not just "is their feedback over 98%", what have they bought, what have they sold, if there's a bargain that's too good to be true then maybe it isn't.

If the name fits...

"Derrick Lee Swantz, 57, of Lakewood, Colorado, was convicted in January...."

Derrick Lee Swantz? SWANTZ!!!? How appropriate.

Moral fo the story...

at the end of the day the only winner is eBay.