Ellis Mandolins asked me to post information about one of their creations that has been making the rounds on eBay at auction. The mandolin keeps appearing on eBay accounts that have been hacked so whoever buys or wins the auction is entering into a situation where they are out the money and will receive no mandolin. It's a known instrument, the true owner is known, but these are not that individual's eBay auction or account. These are outright scams.
It's Ellis Deluxe Mandolin #110, currently at auction on eBay, high bid sitting at $5. And although it's there now, it'll be appearing again as soon as this account is reported.
To date we are aware of one individual that actually made the purchase and forwarded payment. Luckily, they were able to recover their payment. At some point, someone can be out of a lot of money.
Pictures follow, and we're going to post information about this all over social media and encourage anyone so inclined to follow suit. The sad part: eBay could fix this if they wanted to. I'll let others speculate why they will not. In an age where computers can easily identify photographs without the need for human intervention, they could identify these images that appear over and over again in bogus auctions. And one could suppose they could work on their security and keep people from taking over accounts.
The photos:
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