Q. How do you protect yourself if you are selling your property on e-bay to someone across the country and want to make sure you get paid?
A. Recently, a client put up for auction on e-bay a Rolex watch worth $11,000.00. The winning bidder was instructed to wire the funds into the seller’s account. The seller instructed buyer to wire into his Bank of America account funds. Upon receipt, he would UPS the watch and all would be wonderful.
The seller emailed his contact at Bank of America and asked them to “check on a wire coming in to the San Francisco office of Bank of America”. He explained that he was selling a watch and did not want to ship it until he was sure he had the money. Unfortunately, the bank contact in Maryland failed to verify whether or not there was even a wire. In fact, the buyer in California deposited eleven (11) fictitious money orders. The bank here in Maryland, simply assumed that it was a wire and informed their customer, the happy Rolex seller, that sure enough the funds were there!
The watch was shipped and low and behold, five (5) days later, the seller finds that Bank of America takes his $11,000.00 back when it is discovered that the money orders were fraudulent.
When the Bank of America customer demanded the bank to replace the funds or give an explanation as to what happened, the bank’s “defense” was “you told us it was a wire!”. Thus, Bank of America/seller was forced to sue the bank for negligence.
Happily for our client, the Court agreed. It found it was obvious that the bank should have known that the seller wanted to make sure that the money was there before he shipped the watch and the bank had a duty to properly investigate when they knew that their customer was relying on them.
So a word to the wise; the next time you sell something on e-bay, make sure you get clarifications from your bank as to whether or not your money is really there.
Contact HBD Law for more information.
