Milovana.com

I'm sorry for your friend, but:

llinois Man Lost $10,000 In eBay-Related Scam...
http://vawest.bbb.org/article/illinois- ... tion-19754
the guy tried to buy expensive equipment from e-bay and was scammed

here is the official what to do list from e-bay
if you receive something less than you thought you where purchasing
http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/item-not-received.html
as with all websites there are bad cases which get the notice..
but to keep a good name they do try to protect their buyers.
my mother has bought several rare, hard to find items on e-bay
just use the common sense rule
if it sounds to good to be true
it probably is a scam.

I haven't used ebay in a couple years now, but at the time I had put a gps unit up for sale. This was my first sale on ebay. After the auction completed, I received an email from paypal saying that the buyer's payment had been received and would be released to me on shipment confirmation. I packaged up the unit and went back to the email to get the address when I noticed that the "To" address was not the email I used to log in to paypal but rather a different one I had used for my ebay account (I have gmail fetch mail from all of my email accounts to one place). Suddenly aware that paypal had not sent the email. I immediately reported fraud to ebay and paypal and relisted (with better results the second time around).

Two tips I picked up from the experience:
1. Use separate emails for you online banking and commercial websites. This will help you quickly identify fraudulent messages from your "bank."
2. If you have multiple email accounts coming to one gmail inbox, take a moment to set up automatic filters and different colors for each email. This will aid in visually separating these accounts and, in the event of fraud, allow you to recognize the anomaly almost instantly.

I have once bought a guarranteed mosquito killer. Got two boards with a hinge. Instructions stated: Catch a mosquito, place on board and slam the other board hard.