“I’m always watching records for the Jazz Collector site. When I saw the group of records that Nautiluso had for that week I was pretty stunned: It was probably the best collection I’d ever seen in one week. I posted an item about it and immediately started getting comments and emails from collectors who

were suspicious. Apparently there had been a major fraud about two years ago, and people were still upset and cautious. My tendency is to be trusting, but I’m also a journalist so I am not without a healthy degree of skepticism. I started watching and actually reaching out to buyers.

“Once I spoke to some of the buyers, it became clear that something was wrong: They weren’t getting answers from the seller and they weren’t getting their records. Finally, some of the victims began posting negative feedback on eBay, which made the whole thing quite public and official. I posted a few more items and contacted eBay for their comments. I think this was critical — contacting eBay on behalf of the buying community — because it put the heat on eBay to address the issue and do something about it. The last thing they want is the negative publicity of a major fraud: E-bay’s entire business model is built on trust. If buyers are not certain they are buying in a safe place, they will go elsewhere.

“So by putting the heat on eBay and making them aware that the community was watching, it may have helped to ensure that each of the victims was compensated and their money was returned. So far, we have heard of no instances where a buyer did not get his or her money back, which is pretty incredible when you think of $130,000 in potential fraud. For me it was nice to be part of what I would think of as community journalism or citizen journalism, where the Internet enables small sites like mine to have an impact way beyond what you would expect based on our readership.

“And, to eBay’s credit, they did the right thing in both refunding the money and filing a police complaint to prosecute the perpetrator. Hopefully some day, if we keep pursuing this, we’ll get a clear explanation as to exactly what happened and why. In the meantime, we’ll keep watching records on eBay, not just for fun but to be somewhat vigilant on behalf of the entire community.”

To see the full post from Gregorious, click here.

Nothing new from eBay on the Nautiluso Jazz Vinyl Fraud. I had sent a follow-up note asking specifically what eBay was doing about paying off victims of the scam and I haven’t gotten a response. I’ll follow up sometime today or tomorrow. I’m sure they’re sick of hearing from me. Also, there’s no new feedback on the profile page for Nautiluso. Frankly, I’m surprised eBay still has the page up and available.

Some of the Jazz Collector readers have commented offline about the fraud, presumably because they wanted to be anonymous on the site. I will share excerpts here:

“With all the viewers on these auctions, why is it that no one has commented one way or the other, that the pictures must have been snatched from other websites (popsike) or older eBay listings?  I say this as presumably he never had these records and was planning this caper for some time.  Did anyone not recognize their own pictures? I have seen this issue addressed in other auctions and the seller rightly acknowledges that these were stock or someone else’s pictures. Just a thought.”

“I hope ebay does the right thing. it would look pretty awful if they didn’t, though they make you jump thru hoops to get any satisfaction. i bought a bogus chanel #5 a few years back. It smelled like piss, and to get back the 50 bucks I had to go to a perfumery and have them state in writing that it wasn’t the real stuff. Then a hundred more phonecalls – At least I learned a lesson-”

“Hi Al…Same thing, only worse, happened a couple of years ago from a seller in Italy with a collection too good to be true, with  NO PICTURES and only feedback from selling trivial items.  Thanks,   Chuck in Michigan”

“Hey Al, I wasn’t buying what they were selling (so to speak). They also listed some heavy Classical pieces as well. It smelled like yesterdays socks!”

“I have an short update for you and your readers. I appreciate your patience and I’m sure you understand that an international investigation takes time. You can tell your readers that eBay is continuing to investigate this matter and has filed a criminal complaint with the Berlin Police. This is all the detail I can provide at this time.”

That’s all we have for now, but it’s really fascinating and gives us hope that we’ll eventually get to the bottom of what actually happened. Also, I went through all of our

previous Nautiluso coverage earlier today and put everything under a new category called “Jazz Vinyl Fraud.” If you click it under “Categories” on the right side of the page you can see all of the articles at once — 17 of them so far, with dozens of reader comments. Enjoy.

the original listings of the records that were part of the fraud. I clicked on to several of them and what comes up is a message that tells you that the listing has been removed. Normally eBay keeps listings up for 90 days after the auction closes. In the case of these records, at least the ones I was watching, they have all been taken down. You can try clicking this one as an example: Jackie McLean, The New Tradition, Ad Lib 6601. Fortunately at Jazz Collector we were watching a large number of the auctions and kept them on the record. One of our readers who suspected a fraud early on actually added up all of the Nautiluso records and the prices for which they sold. It came to a total of $132,000 — but he didn’t save the document, so there’s no full record of everything. Based on what we saw, I’m comfortable that the $132,000 figure is an accurate assessment. Perhaps if eBay ever calls back and acknowledges what happened we’ll find out for sure. But we shouldn’t hold our breath, right?

I contacted media relations at eBay on Monday with a bunch of questions. Still no response. I’ll follow up today. Still trying to find out if they are acknowledging a fraud, if they are pressing charges against the perpetrator and if they are consistently reimbursing victims.

There are two new instances of negative feedback on Nautiluso if you check out his profile here. These are from a classical buyer from the same auction. He was ripped off to the tune of about $3,400 and says on his feedback that eBay refunded his money. So far, everyone we’ve heard from directly has

received a refund either from eBay or PayPal. We’re anxious to hear if someone out there hasn’t been reimbursed.

I contacted a friend at The New York Times to see if they’d be interested in following up on this story. They expressed some interest but, in the end, decided to pass on it. I had hoped the threat of a national media spotlight might make eBay and PayPal more forthcoming with information. So it looks like we’re on our own here to try to decipher things and figure out what happened. Eventually, I would expect some other media outlets to get wise to this story, but we’ll keep plugging away regardless.

“Buyers be aware! 10/10 jazz auction was a mere fake; you’ll never get your recs!”

“Never received the record. No communication from seller. Claim filed with Paypal”

“Never received the item, filed claim with Ebay and Paypal…”

“Records never delivered. There is not a response at all either.”

If those comments are not bad enough here is the piece de resistance, from a classical buyer:

“The contents are 100% different Useless trash Search with Q123Q word.”

So the assumption on that last buyer is that he received a package from Nautiluso, probably timed to arrive after the 45-day time limit for filing a claim with eBay, and the contents of the package were not relective of those that he had won on the auction. We’ll do more reporting on this later today and tomorrow, but so far the tally is as follows:

• Six buyers total have left negative feedback stemming from the early October auctions of Nautiluso.
• Four of those buyers purchased 22 jazz records.
• One of the jazz buyers purchased nine records for approximately $12,743.
• Another jazz buyer purchased nine records for approximately $11,168.
• One jazz buyer purchased two records for $3,023. The other jazz buyer purchased two records for $1,324.
• The four classical records for which complaints have been filed totaled $2,357

purchased your records using Pay Pal. This is Pay Pal’s policy regarding dispute resolution:

“Open a Dispute within 45 days of the date you made the payment for the item you would like to dispute.”

Most of the auctions, such as the Jackie McLean on Ad Lib, closed on October 10. So we are now at Day 47 after the sales. So if you paid prior to October 12 and haven’t filed a dispute with eBay or Pay Pal, you could be out of luck. If you paid on October 12 or later and are concerned — and you should be — our advice would be to file a claim as soon as possible. We’ve been reading some past reports on the Internet about the fraud from Italy a couple of years ago, and most of the people who filed claims on time were able to get their money back.