Nina Kollars - Confessions of an Nespresso Money Mule - DEF CON 27 Conference

In 2018 I somewhat innocently bought very expensive coffee (Nespresso capsules) online from Ebay. What followed was a series of unexpected additional packages from the manufacturer Nespresso and a lurking suspicion that something had gone terribly--if not criminally--wrong as a result of my purchase. This talk chronicles the obnoxious amounts of obsessive research and tracking that became my new hobby--stalking Nespresso fraudsters and my decidedly non-technical attempts at developing a generic search profile and reporting the fraudsters to anyone who would listen, to include : the persons whose identities had been stolen, Nespresso, Ebay, and the FBI. Ultimately I just ended up with a LOT of coffee; a lingering sense that I had committed several crimes; and no faith left in humanity.
Nina Kollars
Nina Kollars is writing a book about the ways in which hackers contribute to national security. She is a political scientist whose main research is in technological adaptation by users. Kollars is Associate Professor for the Naval War College in the Strategic and Operational Research Department. She conducts research on military weapons and the humans who use them. Largely unsatisfied with sitting still, Kollars has also worked for the Library of Congress' Federal Research Division, the Department of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University, the World Bank, an anti-glare coating factory on the third shift, and volunteers for BSides. She is the former viceroy of the DC strategy group Cigars, Scotch, and Strategy. She is also a certified bourbon steward.
Twitter: @nianasavage

[@xx1norm1xx]

I just clicked to find out what an nespresso money mule is...

[@Lewis82100]

and it blew your mind.

[@themodfather9382]

Turns out it's just someone with an eBay account

[@zapfanzapfan]

I thought it would be about someone smuggling something more potent than coffee.

[@cutterhead13]

This is click bate sponsored content fed doxing right there .

[@Toshinben]

I put this video off for weeks because the phrase 'an Nespresso money mule' irritated me that much.

[@JRJ360]

This is why I love DEFCON: intellectual curiosity, figuring out why something happens instead of accepting it and moving on.

[@JohnDoe-sp3dc]

More like fuck this fed for ruining a good deal on coffee. I could not give less of a fuck that a giant multi million dollar company is losing money from rebounding fraudulent purchases.

[@liucyrus22]

john doe well to me the card holder might losing as they might not even be aware of the scam/ don’t know how to deal with it. Besides, banks can also be dickheads in holding the cardholder somehow responsible.

[@JRJ360]

There are multiple losers here, it's not victimless. As liucyrus22 mentions, cardholders often don't notice the chargers (hence targeting the elderly because the cards last longer) so they are paying for the cheap coffee. Even when noticed, the company winds up getting chargebacks and losing money. Theft is theft.

[@KjetilSeimHaugen]

@Eric McManus Pssst, all the stuff got auctioned off at Defcon, she did not keep it. Proceeds went to charity.

[@maxk4324]

@Eric McManus ypu watched the whole video right? Did you not see the part where she auctioned it all. off? Also she submitted sll her findings, including a complete expense sheet with the accounts she used for the purchases, to the FBI. There's *literally* nothing more she could have done as a civilian.

[@sashimifr]

It's like TED style storytelling, but with actual content 👌

[@DavidRackalicious]

um

[@jolllyroger1]

Except that Ted is propaganda of the worst kind

[@pegadirty]

Surprise, she also has a TED talk

[@kaeleklund6728]

@@jolllyroger1 what kind is that

[@jolllyroger1]

@@kaeleklund6728 Ted Turner is a nwo nazi that is literally working with the United Nations Bill Gates Gates the WHO to plan the killing of 7 and a half billion people..... don't say that's a conspiracy theory because ita a fact ..... you can watch bill gates eugenics speech or Ted Turner's multiple videos or even read agenda 21 the United Nation's plan of population reduction..... or read the Georgia guide stones.... the fact is that evil exists and the satanists are trying to get rid of everyone else

[@gregotron2525]

The auction ended up at $120 in case you were wondering

[@CapApollo]

fly away captain..

[@Locane256]

Thank you, random internet person!

[@Jasonschannelplus]

I actually came to the comments just to figure out how much it sold for. Thank you much!

[@kisame_5331]

Lol I needed to know this

[@haydn-db8z]

Was an interesting talk for me until that point. Yet another "Let's give women a helping hand" moment, while men just put their heads down and pound their way through a given problem or goal.

[@dirtyspah]

Not what I expected from a DEFCON talk, but really interesting anyway! Speaker was great.

[@inthefade]

Yeah she's really charismatic. It is also a very interesting scheme.

[@thtrnerd221]

I thought that this was a great talk. She wanted to stop scammers.

[@charstringetje]

@@thtrnerd221 I think she lost a lot of sleep over this...

[@The_Cakeminator]

@@charstringetje With that much coffee in her system she should have.

[@stacksmasher]

Fraud is fraud.... it works with cars just as good as coffee makers ; )

[@jurriaandejongh8677]

I have no idea how I ended up here, but this was very interesting and I'm glad I hung around till the end.

[@rawveganfruitarian7290]

Me too.

[@chrisspicer4319]

This happened to me, I ordered a Russian bride and receive 2 Brides,a 73 Lada and a RPG Launcher

[@fetB]

so you're the one that ruined it for the rest of us.

[@seegreen6484]

Hey, I think they sent you my wife! Please send back to me

[@Mateo-et3wl]

The backwards language detection game is real. I was an ESL instructor for ten years and could guess native language based on handwriting and grammar mistakes

[@isettech]

Don't forget to paste the text of the email into google search. Anyone else with cancellations from them may already reported and you can collaborate findings. Possibly get IP addresses, etc.

[@zknarc]

@@isettech Exactly what I was thinking

[@fauxshizl]

I recall a story of a Russian girl who often asked for "for of X" and kept being baffled when she was offered 4 of the thing.

[@embrs]

Speaker has a lot of energy, its like shes been slaming a lot of coffee

[@josec3170]

ba dam tsss

[@santosl.harper4471]

embrs probably slamming the espresso martinis

[@kelzuya]

@Lucas Maupin She went like Fry halfway through this speech and put out a fire and saved the building when time froze.

[@willtoulan]

I believe the term is "butt chugg"

[@alexcarter8807]

Not just coffee - *Nespresso! which you can find on America's Marketplace(tm) Ebay!

[@ErinHopkinsFilm]

Really interesting about what we consider "victimless" fraud, this was a really great talk

[@thenear1send]

Very interesting story because I had a very similar experience to her. I built a new PC back in 2012 and was on a super tight budget, so I went overboard on bargain hunting, researching benchmarks, etc. I ordered about half of the parts used or new off of ebay. When filtering by price, you always find suspicious PC parts on eBay with cheap prices too good to be true. When I received my GPU, I noticed two identical units had been shipped. I thought the vendor would have been petrified that they shipped a unit to the wrong destination, but they didn't care. The vendors page ultimately disappeared and I realized I was probably the recipient of goods purchased by a credit card scam identical to the scam described in this video here. I felt really bad but had no idea what to do about it. All I can say today is that I rocked those graphics cards in crossfire configuration and thought my budget PC build was the most badass system for the dollar.

[@robsmith5526]

This was the best ad I have ever seen for a Nespresso listing on eBay!

[@MatthijsvanDuin]

Entertaining talk, and I learned about a fraud scheme I hadn't heard of before

[@moonmaan]

This talk could have Ebay replaced with G2A, and pods replaced with games and describe an entire website of fraud that continues to run. I started watching this also thinking "victimless crime, insured money, etc" but you make a very good point at the end about the demographic of people taken advantage of. Great video

[@cactustactics]

The "guess the writer's first language by their errors" idea is definitely a thing, if you're interested there's a book by Michael Swan called "Learner English: A Teacher's Guide to Interference and Other Problems" that covers some common patterns you see in English learners coming from various groups of first languages Basically the ways you express ideas in one language don't always map to others, so you can end up imposing certain conventions that stand out as wrong or unusual in the target language. Like as an example, in English we use pronouns all the time because "correct English" needs a subject for every verb, but in Spanish they're often omitted because the subject is wrapped into the verb conjugation, and Japanese is so contextual it's common to just have a plain verb because the subject is understood, so it's normal to leave most stuff unsaid If you're not aware of those natural differences in expressing the same idea, you end up doing what feels normal but sounds very specifically weird in those other languages. A tool could catalogue those patterns (like the book does) and then identify which ones are present in a piece of text, to try and narrow down which first language is probably producing them all. Of course a huge chunk of the world's population has more than one first language... 😏

[@venmita]

That's pretty neat. And definitely an intuitive thing, which makes me wonder if polyglots would be able to determine a writers origin based on grammar mistakes. I'm sure the panel speaker would be interested in the book you mentioned. Perhaps you could tweet at her? @NianaSavage

[@Trazynn]

This was easily the most interesting point of her talk (the rest was interesting as well, not trying to bash her). An algorithm that can figure out the native speaker's origin based on their grammar mistakes seems like something that's very feasible to create now that AI language has improved so much. At least it should be able to narrow it down to language families. And this helps not just with detective work but English lessons themselves would improve if they pre-empted the common mistakes speakers of a certain language make when trying to learn English.

[@mrmidnight32]

cactustactics it’s clearly a google translation flop. They spoke their language and let google do the rest

[@ryuuji159]

Interesting, the part where you mention that english uses pronouns all the time and other languages don't, it explains why as spanish speaker is weird refering to the pronoun so often when I write english

[@kcdiazWTV]

@@Trazynn I agree. I am not a native English speaker and writer, and I find myself making the same grammatical error repeatedly when composing emails and posting comments online. And I've noticed that I make these mistakes because I am visualizing the English words in my head as how I would visualize my native language when I speak in it. I hope that made sense. 😂

[@Axmirza2]

Just realized I was a mule once. Ordered an air fryer, came straight from the company I paid half price

[@anon2234]

@@alexwhiteman2628 or a rogue agent in the company intentionally selling product they have access to illegally.

[@maxk4324]

@@alexwhiteman2628 if it was a subsidiary then the shipping label would have listed the sender as the subsidiary, not the parent company.

[@Fridelain]

It's a convection oven.

[@dj1NM3]

It could also have been last year's model (or one just about to be replaced in their product line-up) and they were being sold at a discount to clear warehouse space, using eBay so that it doesn't seem like they're basically dumping them onto the market.

[@KenDanieli]

Drop shipping doesn't necessarily mean it was fraud. The person you ordered it from may have had a coupon or promo offer that allowed them to pay less for the item than you did. They could have had access to wholesale pricing.

[@cumhugs]

KZbin recommendations on point again

[@beau9956]

Them algorithms are smashing it lately

[@dismafuggerhere2753]

yeah 1 video in every 100 is something I haven't seen already or been offered at least 5 times already. I think I'd rather have purely random stuff like this than them thinking they know what I like based on a video I watched.

[@cumhugs]

@@dismafuggerhere2753 yeah I get repeats of stuff I've already seen, but I usually click 'not interested' and when it asks why I say 'I've already seen this video'

[@dismafuggerhere2753]

@@cumhugs I do that too, there's no sign of the algorithm learning that I don't want to see things I've already watched.

[@eoinkelly2674]

Software shut up chief

[@__hetz]

"...but my ethics were restored." Well, aside from supporting Nestle. 😕

[@_BangDroid_]

RIght. Those pods are so dodgy, not only financially uneconomical, but extraordinarily bad for the environment

[@Nixo66]

@@_BangDroid_ right?

[@_BangDroid_]

Only some pods are recyclable and Nespresso wants club membership to their recycling program. Compostable would be better, though a technical challenge. Less energy due to smaller quantity. Heating the water remains the biggest power consumption. Specific heat capacity of water remains 4.187 J/g

[@JeremyLevi]

@@happyfase Its not the pods that are the problem. It's all the other shady stuff that Nestle does, like refusing to reduce pumping for their bottled water operation in California in the middle of a drought, despite the fact that they only pay a few hundred dollars per million gallons for the water rights. Or refusing to commit to ethical sourcing for the palm oil that they use to make all their chocolate.

[@kaeleklund6728]

@@JeremyLevi Chocolate produced through slave labor is also probably worth mentioning.

[@IMWATCHING501]

Hey, why you trying to ruin Ebay's bread and butter... They thrive on scams.

[@Seth9809]

Huh, Amazon has a problem where people order computers, say you forgot parts, and ship back the computer with parts missing, then rate you 1 star.

[@ahmadramzy2716]

@@Seth9809 wow, first time i've heard about this, i'm not trolling i swear, but i thought a company the size of amazon would have something in place to stop something like this, they're not a bedding website after all.

[@NicholasLittlejohn]

AWS also hosts most modern web scams.

[@jerrickmarques8777]

they probably got away with it as there's no way to prove that they are stolen unless reported(but i guess she did report them, but is it even worth the trouble to them to criminally charge random internationals?) they probably backed off because either they temporarily ran out of stolen cards or they noticed that they kept selling it to the same address which would have made nespresso look into her, thus her leading them to ebay and then possibly getting caught. They've probably moved on to other products or different kinds of scams

[@alexcarter8807]

@@Seth9809 Amazon is actually hinkier than Ebay. Scary.

[@jimviau327]

18:15 - Did you try contacting Visa or MC ? I would bet they'd get VERY interested in your investigation. Good job lady. I admire your level of ethic. If we were all like you this world wouldn't be in this mess.

[@RFC3514]

We'd all be sweating caffeine from our eyeballs, though.

[@CaptainComatose]

My credit card once got charged for something I did not buy and what was sent to someone else.I was contacted by my bank, got my money back and asked if they investigate it. As far as I can remember they told me that they won't.Pretty sure this got handled by the insurance and wasn't worth the effort to hunt down the frauds.

[@h3xag0nal]

If you care about ethics, you don't buy disposable aluminum coffee pods.

[@Brees1986]

I’ve contacted them before about fraudulent activity on eBay. Specifically, I was selling Apple TV a few years ago. I would get people with new accounts buying the product and shipping to shady strip mall addresses or drop shippers. A few weeks later I would get PayPal notices that the card used was stolen and I had to prove that I shipped the item. I would include the tracking ID number and the case would be closed and I could keep my money. I started experiencing almost a 50% fraud rate in selling these devices. I contacted EBay and PayPal and they didn’t care. I actually contacted the CC company a few times and they didn’t care either. One person told me if the stolen amount wasn’t more than $10,000 it wasn’t worth their time.

[@ShadowZero27]

good idea

[@holyravioli5795]

Omg Drop shipping is the perfect money laundering technique.

[@TheBouregard]

As someone working in fraud detection, it's basically not something customer service is supposed to handle in most companies and the money mule has any influence on. In most cases the company will a at some point notice a large amount of credit card chargebacks and then either increase security measures to prevent this (pretty good options there, but they will likely block some perfectly legal purchases too) or adjust their pricing to account for loses. Given that Nespresso capsules and some machines are sold at a massive markup they'll likely choose or already have chosen that option.

[@wildonemeister]

Machines in such cases are often sold at zero profit or even loss. It's like printers - buy a cheap printer and then buy cartridges that they have huge margins on.

[@APsupportsTerrorism]

I suspect Nespresso is involved with reporting the Ebay accounts. Buyers certainly aren't going to report them. Ebay seller has no reason to abandon an account each time a stolen card stops working... the cards are in no way connected to Ebay, they would just switch cards and keep rolling. Nespresso probably has a handful of people engaged in brand protection, reporting suspect sellers on Ebay. And thus why the accounts get banned in about 2 weeks. In this endeavor, Nespresso also doesn't particularly care if they accidentally target a legitimate account. It has no effect on their bottom line.

[@gplusgplus2286]

Nespresso is evil. And tastes like shit.

[@percyblakeney3743]

Hunh, so eBay is the original Silk Road hiding in plain sight.

[@wilsoncalhoun]

Absolutely. Check out their prohibited items list sometime, and then realize that those prohibitions exist because multiple people sold those things on eBay.

[@MrLeovdmeer]

Yes and the shocking thing is that Nespresso is breaking the law when shipping this stuf nowing that she called them about the fraud.

[@Astinsan]

MrLeovdmeer not really.. there isn’t a clear chain of custody.. and departments in a corporate entity isn’t all that efficient.. could be months before anyone does their job. As long as some action was taken there isn’t much that can be done.

[@Synochra]

Yeah so this is what I don't get: Isn't ebay terrible for the scammer in terms of opsec? You have to have a real bank account registered with your paypal, right? Isn't it all easily traceable?

[@JeaneAdix]

how is this analogous to the silk road?

[@Kylefassbinderful]

This is one of those great videos that barely caught my eye and had no relation to any videos I regularly watch. It was amazing.

[@richardj163]

Always thought of nespesso as a scam, worse than printer ink.

[@SaHaRaSquad]

So this was a scam taking part in a scam.

[@noahhastings6145]

@@SaHaRaSquad It like a scam onion. A Scamion

[@DavidVercettiMovies]

There are 4 grams of coffee in a nespresso pod. 18 grams in the coffee machine at the cafè.... Of course it's a scam!

[@Fridelain]

You pay for the convenience, and it's more onenient than a moka coffeee pot. You can use as many pods as required to fill your cup.

[@ahpadt]

Why a scam? People are happy to pay so much for takeaway coffee but not way, way less for a capsule based coffee at home?

[@jayanthramachandra7859]

Plot twist: The fraudsters were in the audience, watching her give the talk.

[@kevinbergman8532]

@@gregoryhouse5240 I literally was thinking this about an awkward guy laughing in the background

[@petersouba1041]

You joke, but this is DEFCON... this exact thing ("perp" in the audience) happens all the time

[@VisualJoey]

Plot twist by @Wolf's Den: she is the fraudster and this is just an ad for people to go buy it.

[@KenDanieli]

Plot twist: We just got a lesson from a Fed and professor on how to set up a lucrative eBay scam.

[@chicawhappa]

@@petersouba1041What is defcon about, exactly? It seems really popular / famous.

[@GuillevinYYC]

First video of 2020 that i did not have to skip through! Amazing Speaker!

[@zapfanzapfan]

Thank you, youtube algorithm, that was very interesting and entertaining and not at all what I thought it would be when I read the title.

[@theholk]

About "victimless": Even if it is NOT the elderly, and people just "charge back" the fraudulent charge, that is roled into the REGULAR price as "cost of doing business". This type of fraud is completely rampant in digital transferable goods like game keys, there often the actual vendor (in this case nespresso) can really get into trouble due to chargeback fees.

[@manuelsoares4343]

It was so rampant wot csgo in game keys that valve the game publisher made them be account locked

[@theholk]

What do you mean "moralizing"? The fact of the matter is that in the Video game context the only thing the companies can do is to not process credit cards at all, or with a delay (that customers don't appreciate), or slam the "breakage" on the price for valid customers. At the core it is a security issue with credit cards, which the banks don't want to fix (as they just relegate the cost onto the vendors) nor the card holder (because they can initiate chargebacks relatively easy)

[@nakedzebra67]

Indeed that was an awesome way to get To a Serious talking point. Thanks Nina

[@ruisless795]

very wholesome explanation of micro scams online and potentially being apart of a scam.

[@Enonymouse_]

I've reported stuff to the FBI before, I was either ignored or laughed at.

[@KryzMasta]

Great story to listen to. She’s a great talker.

[@ciaranjd132]

No she's not. Annoying to listen to.... "Um..um..um..um" !

[@KryzMasta]

ciaranjd132 I didn’t notice at all really. But I can see how once you’ve noticed it, you can’t unhear it.

[@Fridelain]

My sister gifted me her old Pixie when she bought a Dolce Gusto machine. It leaks a bit of water and such, needed some cleaning of the coffee residue on the spout, which due to some easy to correct design flaws means taking it wholly apart. Store brand pods and refillables for us, thank you very much. I would hesitate to buy food products from eBay, on account of chinese counterfeits of such.

[@FTH1723]

This has got to be one of my favorite talks. This is why I love the industry.

[@LostandFoundTravel]

Great blend of storytelling and legit information. Danke!

[@garaldtao1801]

The genius is not that Nina had figured it out but rather the loop holes that are being exploited to attack a very fragile economic model.

[@michaelwhite880]

dang, sorry i missed out on the bid for that espresso machine! wish i had seen the vid sooner! no worries though, u for sure did ur part in it trying to get to the bottom of it, way way more than i can say for most, mad props to you! respect you tons!

[@ArmoredNeko]

Wow, super interesting talk which I didn't expect!

[@41stmiller]

WOW! Nice talk Dr Kollars--- to think I knew you when you were Ms Kollars in Symposium!

[@Trazynn]

An algorithm that is able to spot the original language by grammar and spelling mistakes would be huge. Not just for detective work but also for educational purposes. You could start fine-tuning English lessons to each native language as they all struggle with their own obstacles.

[@IamBHM]

It seems like it would be an easy thing to train an AI to do (you'd just have to feed it a lot of examples). I'm not sure how wide the margin of error on the final original language guesser would be though.

[@jakenadalachgile1836]

A simple dialect/language guessing algorithm already exists at archive.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/

[@familyplan979]

It’s a bummer that she self censored with her fear of racism

[@RFC3514]

It would be mostly useless, because: a) Fraudsters will generally just copy & paste strings from other sellers, and not write anything original that could be traced uniquely to them, and b) Most errors that people associate with foreign eBay sellers are actually errors in common translation apps (like Google Translate); it's not the user struggling with English, it's the app translating idiomatic expressions literally.

[@Trazynn]

@@RFC3514 Google translate would still be making different errors based on different languages.

[@noahhastings6145]

Of course ebay won't do anything about it. They get a comission off of every fraudulent transaction

[@mattstorm360]

Technically, eBay isn't getting any of the dirty money. The fraudster is buying products from a company with the stolen cards and sending it to the mule. The mule sends their clean money through eBay. Though I wonder how they will react when this goes past their feeds. A federal agent is noticing this? Maybe they can bribe her with coffee. It looks to be working so far.

[@noahhastings6145]

@@mattstorm360 ebay takes a cut from every single sale on their platform.

[@APsupportsTerrorism]

@@mattstorm360 Define "dirty money". I mean, yes... Ebay is on the laundered side of the equation, and thus keeps all of it. As OP said. The transaction is still fraudulent.

[@jerrickmarques8777]

@@APsupportsTerrorism Dirty money as in the stolen money that's about to get charged back from the legitimate retailer back to the cc company / cc owner.

[@tobyvision]

@@mattstorm360 I think the idea is that the savings offered to the mules makes for more total sales, and more total commission for ebay.

[@perdu6603]

Thanks for uploading the video! I've been waiting for this one

[@professionalelectronics3158]

This was a wonderful talk! Good investigation!!!

[@goofycker]

she destroys my business model

[@Cimlite]

Mine too! Why she not take oder and just walk way?!

[@NicholasLittlejohn]

@@Cimlite the foul oder!

[@ioannis69k]

She should have called the agent on “manhunt: unabomber “ !

[@armchairrockstar186]

unabomber was much smarter than this

[@steelcarver]

Nice talk, thanks for the intel. 😊

[@NinjaTankRush]

I work for a company that sells Nespresso products, which is why this first caught my eye, but I never expected someone to be using their pods to run that kind of scam.

[@adatshhc]

She has a caffeine addiction and it is in direct conflict with her morals.

[@Synochra]

The addiction makes her do things she wouldn't normally do 😂

[@AndrewFurmanczyk86]

Sounds like a great movie.

[@eyealienit]

Next thing you know, she sets up a mule to receive even more coffee. She knows too much about fraud triangles. She's obviously a smuggler.

[@adatshhc]

@@eyealienit 😂😂

[@yomajo]

I don't get the "everyone is incentivized" bit. Credit card owner sure did not think so.

[@michaeldeitrick7383]

Credit card owner was unaware or unwitting until it was too late. :(

[@brendanfarthing]

Who pays here? Card owner would have reported the fraud and been fully refunded by their card provider. Does the card provider (bank) suffer the loss? No, they are covered by Visa, Mastercard etc. But does Visa or Mastercard suffer the loss, or are they insured against it and an insurance company covers the loss? I'm curious who actually pays? I know in the end the consumer will pay because any loss will flow back into the price a consumer is charged for a credit card in interest or fees. But at what key points and from which company is money flowing back to the consumer to cover the fraud?

[@theholk]

The credit card companies recover the money from the vendor plus a charge-back fee (if the card holder notices and initiates one).So the vendor is incentivized to not inform the card holder on their own, because that means they have to give the money back+ the charge. They are also not interested in recouperation even IF there was a charge back, because the whole thing is calcualted as breakage, and included in the pricetag for regular customers. (Tells you something about profit margin, though). Other vendors where the profit margin seems lower, or the chargeback fee rivals the individual sales volume (indy computer games), there the vendors are making a bit more of a noise in terms of CC security and how that really hurts them.

[@voltcorp]

@@brendanfarthing which is why she made a point to say most victims were elderly. they very likely do not notice suspicious charges and might just eat them up

[@themodfather9382]

Haha, credit card owner is incentivized not to check their bill.

[@r1marine670]

Nice that you shared this!

[@alexcarter8807]

Seller doesn't need to ask to cancel an order. They can just cancel the order and click "by buyer request" or "item was lost or damaged" or "there's a problem with the buyer's address".

[@RFC3514]

12:24 - This is not true. You cannot report a _transaction_ as fraudulent if you received the item, but you can go to the listing page and click the "report item" link, which will then give you the option "Listing practices -> Fraudulent listing activities" and "Listing practices -> Stolen property". I have no idea if eBay actually does anything about it, but the option _does_ exist. 9:51 - Also, seller rating (for both new and old accounts), a.k.a. feedback, is shown right next to the seller's name, in the "Seller information" box (which she cropped out of her screenshots...). It's obviously not the same as the _product_ ratings, which are clearly labelled with the words "product ratings". Makes me wonder if she's using some special version of eBay, or just lacks basic observation skills.

[@michaelhull1813]

No one gives any f*cks. You seriously wasted more time than I just did.

[@RFC3514]

Seek therapy before it's too late.

[@stephenmeinhold5452]

this woman has far to much spare time and coffee, but I like her.

[@LordGriebenschmalz]

Too much coffee? PAH! That doesnt exist D:

[@tankbottoms-yes]

This was awesome. not what I was expecting.

[@dominickpastore]

I saw some suspicious listings on eBay before, and it makes so much sense after this video. I set a search notification a few months ago for this particular monitor I wanted. A few days later, I started getting dozens of too-good-to-be-true deals from brand new sellers for exactly the same monitor. I stayed far away out of caution, but I'm thinking it was exactly what happened in this video.

[@devjock]

Knew this was gonna be a great talk when the heavy airquotes around "the cybering" came out.

[@nxxxxzn]

cyber_ring

[@verliebt3465]

You can report on eBay for fraud, or pirated items.

[@reallylionbastard]

Really enjoyed this.

[@unobooks]

enjoyed this tremendously

[@sean3533]

George Clooney is a coffee mafioso.

[@alexcarter8807]

George Clooney is still a thing?

[@CWGminer]

alex carter only in nespresso ads.

[@jamesey]

Those pods are awful for the environment

[@anonymousmc7727]

so are you.....

[@LuxxSlovenia]

anonymous mc are you intentionally evil or just stupid?

[@NicholasLittlejohn]

Agreed, better to French press and compost.. or drink matcha

[@backslash68]

not only for the environment, also for the coffee drinker

[@R3PTILENZ]

Their capsules are recyclable 🤔

[@cjl76]

What a great talk!

[@NicholasLittlejohn]

Yea for sailplanes

[@chooselife3000]

I would MUCH prefer to hear about her real professional work !!!

[@MrLego3160]

12:55 wouldn't that be covered by "item not as described"

[@genewitch]

ebay allows certain sellers to block this sort of thing. I ordered a sim card that was advertised many times over as doing X, and even said that "while some people claim it doesn't do X, they've never provided proof" - and then have the ability to send proof, blocked. It's cute. But hey, my sim card still works, i just had to buy $500 worth of hardware over the course of 2 years to use it :-D

[@mrsister5955]

Funny. If I did that over here, the police would come and confiscate the items I bought. No such thing as bona fide or in good faith here. I might in fact even be charged for knowingly purchasing stolen goods if it's considered to be obvious. Too low a price is enough.

[@NicholasLittlejohn]

@@ahorseinshorts here is where the there is

[@heinzknalltute3558]

Azul Fumegante Might be Germany. Not 100% sure tho

[@neuromantoo]

I could listen to Nina Kollars stories every day. Nina if you want to leave the dark side of the military industrial complex, you could have a new career as a raconteur.

[@CausticCreations]

thnks for this upload DC. i wonder if this was done by Nespresso themselves ......great story.

[@CyberWallX]

- "hey honey, whats in the box?" - "nespresso..." - "what else?" YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[@xybersurfer]

is this a meme?

[@NewfieOn2Wheels]

@@xybersurfer yes

[@a_doggo]

"Item significantly not as described" would've sent her on the right path.

[@RFC3514]

Actually, that just sends a message to the seller asking for a refund (if the seller doesn't reply within 3 days, then it goes to eBay customer service). The options she wanted are under "report item" (in the item listing itself, not in her purchase history) and are labelled "Listing practices -> Fraudulent listing activities" and "Listing practices -> Stolen property". Those get sent directly to eBay (not to the seller).

[@crywhit4619]

@@RFC3514 seems super convoluted and not (avg) user friendly. They should have a link on every listing or in every email sent, after confirmed purchases, to report fraud. They are making their cut on these listings so Ebay dgaf.

[@RFC3514]

It's not convoluted at all, you're reporting *the item* not the transaction, so you report it from the *item page,* not your transaction history (the latter has a link to the former, anyway, so if you want to start from there it's just one extra click). The link itself could be a bit more visible, but it's in the right page. It also allows people to report fraudulent listings _without_ buying the item.

[@xybersurfer]

@@RFC3514 i don't think it's the right place. you don't know that it's a fraudulent listing in this case until you receive it. and they may remove the listing leaving only the transaction

[@RFC3514]

@xybersurfer - The listing page is always available for transactions that have been concluded, so that you can check it after you receive the item (otherwise they could just send you something different, remove the listing, and tell you it had been your mistake). Just open the *item* page and click "report item". This would also have allowed her to report the other "suspicious sellers" _without_ playing along with (and benefiting from) the scam herself. She could then check whether or not eBay removed those listings and closed those accounts. There are several other... let's call them "untruths" in this video, so either she has extremely poor observation skills or she decided to misrepresent things deliberately to blame eBay. The way she cropped the whole "Seller Information" panel out of her screenshots makes me suspect the latter.

[@nirfz]

Years ago my working collegues bought a Nespresso machine directly from Nespresso. They also bought so much coffe (from Nespresso, not via ebay) that they got a new machine for every 1000 pads or so they ordered (i could be wrong about the exact number, but it was surprisingly low to me). So keep in mind that the few 100 $ or € they want for the machine aren't what the thing actually costs them. Also if you get a new machine, you will keep using it and buying new coffe (with which they make the real money)

[@PeterKoperdan]

Yeah, pod coffee is like printer ink. That's where they make their money.

[@guillaumefigarella1704]

Very cool video, loved the talk!

[@khronos7020]

couldn't you just parse the html code for the right buyer instead of looking through 100 of them daily? im asking

[@robertkacala]

FBI offers you a free coffee in the office ;)

[@rolfw2336]

That's a pretty interesting adventure.. you're a detective at heart :-)

[@michaelwhite880]

17:15, ive heard all the rest before, but ive never heard someone come up and say it like u did! My mom, poor lady, shes gone through the nigeriaan thing on the net, but i am with you 100% the majority of the fraud is targeted at the elderly! we need a system to help stop those attacks!

[@Aladayle]

Take a look at 419eater. They're a forum specifically dedicated to messing with these guys and reporting their stolen bank accounts/credit cards/etc. They'll even match you up with an experienced scambuster to show you how it's done. There's "trophies" to put in your signature depending on whether you bust someone for a fake bank account, credit card, or website...and if you get them to travel!

[@michaelwhite880]

@@Aladayle Nice :)

[@horrortackleharry]

In the United States, Receipt of stolen property is a federal crime- as it is in most other countries. Therefore, by not even having a 'Report' option, Ebay is actively participating in criminal activity and should be shut down.

[@PapaKiloProductions]

They do have one. She couldn't find it

[@kevinbergman8532]

I think I was hit with this, buying pods from Amazon actually.

[@TheSundaeDrive]

Good talk. Doesn't need to be technical to be interesting. I was actually in LV at the same time as DEFCON and wanted to check it out so bad. Was there for EVO2019 (the fighting video game superbowl lol)

[@michaelwhite880]

goodness, i blew that up didnt i.... end tangent, love you speaking up on it some, we need more of your spirit floating around the net! js :)

[@billjohnson69]

We just got a Nespresso system and yes, the frother will change your life, lol.. Loved the talk :)

[@dekeonus]

note that Nina didn't put the frother up for auction.

[@Thedownliner2015]

I was part of the test group so received it about 2 years ago but the pods are just too expensive and you get that feeling Nescafe are trying to do the same thing to Coffee that the Printer Companies did to Printer Ink by compartmentalising it and selling the Machines off at a loss but making it up with the sale of the ink. Spend more get less is the hallmark of Capitalism but thankfully the only ones embracing what is clearly an attempt to debase a product are those who like a fad so it never really lasts. Why would you spend 60-80p per pod where all the machine does is push water (not even boiling water which is dangerous) through it as opposed to using a spoon and a kettle and get 50 coffees for less than £5? BTW 50 is an estimate on a Nescafe Jar of Granulated Coffee. Also how are billions of plastic pods supposed to help the environment when we already have Coffee in Glass Jars?

[@Warlock_UK]

In the UK you often get a free machine if you buy 200 pods at once, so I wouldn't have been surprised by it :D

[@djosearth3618]

makesense those things are such a scam by nespresso to begin ith.

[@mmac4047]

You are my hero, this was amazing, your mind is amazing.

[@snooogly]

These capsule produce so much unnecessary waste

[@LoneWolf-wp9dn]

dont forget to also use those plastic handled single use bits of floss... im not particularly concerned about the environment but those are just disgusting to me

[@andrewbell6855]

u can recycle the aluminium from the capsule and the coffee gets turned into fertiliser. The information ur using is old, when capsules first came out they were very unsustainable but they've come a long way. Compared to barrista coffee cups its actually a very sustainable way to consume coffee.

[@aspuzling]

@@andrewbell6855 what about the capsule itself? Aren't they still plastic and hard to recycle? There are coffee machines that take whole beans. If you need your coffee fix, why not buy one of them instead?

[@andrewbell6855]

@@aspuzling all nespresso capsules are made from aluminium. They might have started as plastic but ive never had plastic capsules.

[@spiloFTW]

fuck you dirty hippie

[@blackevanuz]

People still buying coffee capsules :/ cant understand how they dont think about the environmental repercussions.

[@NicholasLittlejohn]

Agreed! 🌱

[@myview5840]

Jar of coffee £5.00 lasts me 2 weeks. Glass recycled.

[@natecompton1858]

I believe nespresso uses 100% aluminum capsules and recycles those pods to be sustainable.

[@myview5840]

@@natecompton1858 energy into making and recycling the aluminium is ridiculous

[@FuzzNiner]

Because convenience. Doesn’t impact them directly. Saves time. The more developed a country, the more service and convenience focused it becomes. Less about survivability and sustainability. Environmental conservation has to be made easy/convenient for people really adopt it. Tech and scientific advances are there to make things faster better cheaper. Aka preserving the one currency that can never be renewed or replaced. Time.

[@bubbyis1337]

the tool she's describing, one that looks at english text and tries to guess the native language (by observing the grammatical errors, sentence structure etc.) does in fact exist, its an open question in the field of natural language processing, called Native Language Identification, or NLI.

[@seansverige]

interesting lecture; one thing that occurred me is that as the cost of low level fraud is 'built in', it _could_ be argued that each Nespresso customer should buy *X* amount of cheap pods as they've effectively paid for it through regular purchases - though in fact I suspect *X* might actually be quite a small number (depending on how good their fraud detection is)

[@worddunlap]

Any food you buy from EBAY should be labeled "Consume at your own peril".

[@tobyvision]

Man no kidding. If I saw any packaged food item for half or less market value, there's no way I'd be eating it.

[@thezaher]

Came here for the mistake in the title "an Nespresso" stayed for the story. This is much like the g2a website that sells you video games for cheap.

[@paeonia321]

It's not a mistake, see my response to the other person who asked about it.

[@KenDanieli]

Nice job but she fails to explain why the eBay sellers send the extra items. The buyers would have been satisfied with what they ordered at the right price. She thinks maybe a clerical error, but it happened a few times.

[@meranger92]

Because they wan´t to increase sales, therefore to bind every customer by satisfiying him, which works perfectly with extra items. They just have the advantage that they needn´t to pay for the extra items, since the creditcard owner does.

[@KenDanieli]

@@meranger92 Silly.

[@graveyardrumblers]

I can't wait for the movie version 😆

[@captainkatz1775]

🤣

[@DavidFregoli]

bizarre fraud triangle

[@jean-huguesbouchard1045]

New Order

[@jean-huguesbouchard1045]

... Of coffee

[@thedevilsadvocate3710]

What a great fraud scheme. I wonder how much those websites make with those frauds.

[@namoric]

So this makes me wonder the lifespan of the fake accounts. If they're about 30 days, then if you ordered the product about two weeks into the process, received your stuff, then 2 weeks later the account goes dormant, open a damage claim and get a refund from EBay/PayPal I'm just brainstorming and not suggesting anyone take advantage of a broken system where someone could have had their identity stolen. I've witnessed larger issues with Pre-Order items where the estimated release date isn't even for 3 or 4 weeks yet, the "seller" takes all the money and just poofs away, maybe sending product to the first X pre-orders but then just ghosting the rest, money in hand.

[@RodCornholio]

She is a wonderful person.

[@danielmartini3229]

so after having thought about it for a while she figured it wasn't a victimless crime? no shit sherlock

[@davidjohansson1416]

Just keep doing this and resell the stuff on ebay and when they undercut your price just buy them up.

[@izafas]

awesome talk

[@bootsandboxers5079]

Cool talk. Well enjoyed

[@jabhutt1013]

That's one of a hell sales pitch...Nespresso outdid themselves:D