New February Victim Story

I just help another one get out from the scam!!!!

Dear delsonu, Thanks much for letting me know. I have opened a case in Ebay. How did you find out about these?

Want to reply?

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From: delsonu
To:
Subject: Re: delsonu has sent a message
Sent Date: Feb-11-10 22:34:19 PST

Dear , Time to get money back from your seller. You can buy my book to fix your flash drive or donate your junk flash drive to me. Either way is fine with me. L0L :-) - delsonu

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From:
To: delsonu
Subject: Re: delsonu has sent a message
Sent Date: Feb-11-10 22:21:59 PST

Dear delsonu, You are correct. Most of the files were either empty or corrupt. -

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From: delsonu
To:
Subject: Re: delsonu has sent a message
Sent Date: Feb-11-10 17:57:28 PST

Dear , ... verify the content. I have helped few hundred people to confirm their flash drives are fake. http://cgi.ebay.com/16GB-32GB-64GB-128GB-Fake-USB-Flash-Drive-Pen-SCAM-Book_W0QQitemZ160398880556 - delsonu

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From:
To: delsonu
Subject: Re: delsonu has sent a message
Sent Date: Feb-11-10 14:29:23 PST

Dear delsonu, I have been using it with no problems yet. What would I look for?

My Story

I was one of the victims of the scam. I was shopping in EBay after Black Friday long weekend for Xmas gift and found flash drive was so cheap. 32GB flash drive was only around $15 dollar. I was tempted to get one to backup my office data. I was bidding left and right for several days to get a good price. After I got one, I kept bidding to get few of them (bidding is fun but it could become addicted :-))


After 2-3 weeks, I received my first 32GB flash drive. I plugged it into my computer and then checked its property. It showed only 22GB. It alerted me to check the possibility of fake flash drive. After googgle it, there were many web sites discussed it.

After many hours of researched, trial and error, I was able to determine that my flash drive was fake, and it had only 4GB. I contacted my sellers. I told the seller what I observed. I asked him for replacement or refund. The seller asked me to ship it back. I insisted the seller to pay for shipping fee. After back and forth negotiation, the seller finally asked me to provide positive feedback, then he would refund my money. I told him another way, I asked him to refund my money and I would not leave negative feedback.


Above story is one of the reasons that many sellers have very high EBay feedback rating even though they sell fake (counterfeit) product. They sell few thousand fake memory sticks per month, only small percentage people discover it, they still make lot of money. They do not mind to refund your money as long as you do not provide negative feedback to alert others.


It was long Xmas week, my company was shut down during that period. So, I have long week to research on this topic. I found out the scam was occurred since 2007 but no one alerted the buyers. Therefore, I decided to post fake flash drive scam listing in EBay.


After many weeks of hard work, I finally put together a solution that works, and continue to polish it to fix all kind of errors. If you have computer background and want to conduct the research yourself, you shall install anti-virus, anti-spyware, and anti-trojan software first, you will hit into lot of pumps.

The Myths of 4GB Limitation

One EBayer called me idiot
"Your an idiot... I've personally purchased these
items and found them to be more than applicable...
Not only that, I'm assuming that you have Windows
Vista.. Because any type of flash storage device
plugged into a Vista Machine will only show a MAX
of 4GB. It's a bug that Microsoft is working hard
to fix..."


In fact, I am not using Window Vista. I am still an old timer who uses Window XP. However, it has nothing to do with Microsoft Window.  


Another EBayer argued with me:
"I have in my hand a 64 GB leather thumbdrive that I got for $33. Yuu can check my EBay history if you want to. Not only did it come from Hong Kong, it got to me in 10 days, from a great seller. I have been using it for several days now. I actually have 2 of them and I found that they do need to be formatted to use them at there full capacity. Also they don't even show up in Windows XP if you don't format then in the NTSF format. They both work fine with Windows 7."


I give the EBayer instruction to test it. The result is ...
"I am so sorry that I argued with you. These "64GB" thumbdrives do max out at about 4.5GB. I guess that I got a good screwing too."


The test program is verifying its actual physical size instead of checking its property.


I received more emails from EBayers told me that it was a limitation of FAT32, you must format it in NTFS to go beyond 4GB.


In fact, FAT32 supports up to 32GB of volume size and 4GB on max file size. Volume and file size are two different things. Many people misunderstood that FAT32 only able supports up to 4GB.


What is the difference between volume size and file size?
Volume size is like a big container, file size is like big ball. One big container can have many big balls. One big container can only have size less than 32GB and each big ball can only have the size less than 4GB.


If you have flash drive more than 32GB, then you have to format it with NTFS. It supports upto 2TB volume size and nearly unlimited file size. For example, you want to copy a single high-definition movie to your flash drive, then you must format your flash drive with NTFS, otherwise, a movie file size more than 4GB will not able to store in FAT32 formatted flash drive.

Reference: http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

Sell Your Broken or Fake Flash Devices

Sell Your Fake or Broken Flash Drives or MP3 Players

If you want to throw away your flash devices, please donate/sell your fake or broken flash devices to me. I am working on hardware-based solution that needs them for trial and error.



Please contact me at http://myworld.ebay.com/delsonu/

Fake Flash Drive FAQ

Aug 2010: I have to block buyers from certain countries - they either can not read or do not read listing properly or leave negative feedback without communication, that cause lot of troubles and waste of my time. If you are from one of these countries, you can contact me directly to get help.
 


Fraudster Sellers Unreleased - check it out

IP violator found - "jaxanim", SAY NO to him!!!! (he opens another eBay id as "supergloop")

It is not the first time people has re-written my step-by-step system to claim it is their own works. You can tell from their listing that they do not provide technical support like I do (I guess they have no technical knowledge besides copying). Secondly, they throw bunch of not related stuff as bonus to make it attractive. BEWARE.

I have been attacked by fraudster sellers from Singapore. I need your support me to fight against them. Please leave POSITIVE feedback. Thanks, delsonu

See listing description in your prefer language - click here
See list of fake flash drives - click here 

I'm the author of the book on how to test and detect fake flash drive. You shall get your money back from other sellers who has violated my copyright. I thank and appreciate you for your help, so I can focus on helping victim of the scam.


My ebook is a software-based solution. I will work with you on hardware-based solution if you have hardware defective flash device [see Q10].


I put together solution to help people, not to encourage you to buy fake flash devices. It is not worth to buy fake flash drives because they are less capacity and low quality.



Note: you only able to recover your fake flash memory device to its actual capacity, not fake capacity. [see Q5]

Note: you will receive the book in electronic format (pdf)


Note: The instruction guide are based on and software are running on Window OS. If you are MAC user, you need to install VMware Fusion and run Window on MAC. Here is the link to download "VMware Fusion" for 30 days free trial.

Questions/Comments from Ebayers:
1. What is fake? fake in what way?
Ans: Sellers claim to sell your 32GB flash drive but the actual capacity of the flash drive is 4GB or less. The worst part is all your data will be corrupted and lost. Your data is priceless.

2. Can you be sure it wasn't your drive or issue with your computer?
Ans: I have bought few, they are all fake after test it out. Test method is very straight forward. Computer has nothing to do with it.

3. I bought one of the flash drives but it is not something you have listed. Can I use your method to test it?
Ans: Yes, you can use my instruction to verify your flash drive. If you do not see any error, congratulation, you have bought a good flash drive. 


4. I don't know who you think you are to label everybody as scam artists.
Ans: I do not label everybody as scammer. Please read the posting carefully. Of course, not all sellers from China/HK are scammer.

5. When you say that you explain how to recover the drive, what do you mean? When you recover a drive, does it then have the capacity it should? For instance if I recover my 128GB drive, is it now fully functional and will hold 128GB or does it still hold a fraction of that amount?
Ans: After recover, the flash drive will have the "actual" capacity it should. If actual capacity is 4GB, then it is 4GB; if it is 2GB, then it is 2GB. Without recover your fake flash drive, you most likely run into data corruption. That's costly.

6. I bought more than one of these drives, only had one fail. Its say's you need to format. But after trying its say you can't format the drive. Any suggestions?
Ans: Your flash drive is corrupted. Please check out my book to test all of your flash drives.

7. Does your solution provide software?
Ans: My solution will provide software and step-by-step guide to test and recover your devices. 

8. My flash drive sudden becomes write protection. I see space 0 in my flash drive property. I format my flash drive and see track0 error. Can you fix it?
Ans: Yes, the problem can be resolved. There are many different kind of problems seen by Ebayers. I will continue to work with you to solve your unique issues.

9. My computer recognizes the flash drive is 31.2GB, I think it is fine.
Ans: Don't be fooled by the size showed by computer. Mine also showed 31.2GB but it only can hold 4GB of data, the rest is corrupted and junk.

10. Will your solution fix all the problems?
Ans: Software-based solution will able to recover non-hardware defect flash device. hardware-based solution will able to recover hardware defective devices to certain extend. It depends on which component is defective. It takes more steps and time in hardware-based approach.

11. I just received my Flash drive and it was not working as you said. It shows me that it was working but indeed it was not. It pretend to save my files but it did not. My brother told me a virus that show 52GB was installed on it. I want to know how do you know that it was not working.
Ans: It is not virus. I have computer background, know computer very well, so I figure out their trick, so I resolve it in software level.

12. I have 2 of these fake drives. One is 32GB, the other is 64GB. Everytime I copy files on them , they get corrupted. You have software that can fix the drives so they never get corrupted again? and software is free?
Ans: Yes, my book will provide the links to download software and guide you step-by-step to resolve the problem and avoid corruption again. Yes, software is free.

13. Can I send you the flash drive and you can play with it? No need to recover data. Just a format and restart will do. I'll send a pre-stampled envelope too to mail it back. [my ebook buyer]
Ans: Yes, you can.


14. How about I mail it to you, if you can get it to work, I'll pay you? [ my ebook buyer]
Ans: I do not have to pay me, you just pay for return postage. I will mail it back to you if I could make it work.

14. Does your techniques work with SDHC card?
Ans:Yes, it works with SDHC card and any type of USB flash memory card like XD, SD, MMC, CF and etc.

15.  Is this auction for fix or for detect? Some of your auction say "fix" and some say "Test", Fake. How can I tell which is fix and which is for test fake only? I am confused now.
Ans: It is same book.
The book includes:
1. how to test and detect fake flash drive
2. how to fix flash drive common errors, e.g, corrupted file system.
3. how to recover fake flash drive to its actual size (that will avoid data corruption again)
Above techniques can be used on real flash drive.