POSTED BY Jared BIshop
Online trading has been a popular area of business for over a decade. It has in turn created a whole new brand of commerce, known as e-commerce. With websites such as Amazon, eBay, craigslist, and more, consumers are now able to trade amongst each other through the internet. But this has caused an influx of criminal activity, mainly fraudulent trading. In a recent investigation, a group of Eastern European men have been charged for a multimillion-dollar online trading scam.
Nicolae Popescu is alleged to be the leader of the group, and has allegedly placed false advertisements on eBay, cars.com, autotrader.com, and cycletrader.com. The alleged scheme went on for about a year between 2011 and 2012 and the group allegedly made over $3 million. By offering fake cars, motorcycles, and boats, the alleged defendants were able to capitalize on the arguably unsecured online trading websites. The men are not believed to be in the United States and if found, the United States would need them to be extradited to the United States in order for prosecution.
Online trading is available worldwide; therefore various charlatans can be anywhere. This has become a more profound issue as six people were arrested last December for the same violation. These men were from Romania, the U.K., Canada, and the Czech Republic. The men were extradited to the U.S for charges.
Clearly online trading fraud is an issue that needs to be addressed internationally. People across the world are taking advantage of unsecured websites at the expense of other online traders. The problem lies in the ability to strengthen security on online trading websites to avoid these million dollar scams, and other smaller scale scams. Ideally, an international policy should be established to somehow strengthen the securities and background checks of online trading, especially such high valued goods, such as cars. Without an international policy, the online trading scams will continue to rise and it will be more difficult to mandate online trading websites to become more secure.
Consumers need to be more cautious of online trading, especially in this day and age. Until an international policy is developed, traders will continue to scam other traders, and because the websites are international, it is becoming more and more difficult to track these conartists.
