bogus auction for Altair system on eBay

I exchanged several emails today with an eBay seller offering an Altair system with disk drive for a starting bid of $2 in a one-day auction. This is a bogus offer - I became uneasy when the seller solicited an offline offer in response to a query about shipping but insisted on payment through Western Union rather than PayPal, even though the orginal auction listed PayPal as a preferred option. It is interesting to note that the auction I saw this morning (offered by seller DOCHANDS) was cancelled by eBay almost immediately but the _identical_ auction (same pictures and extensive text) is currently (2/21/06 @ 11:31 pm) being offered by two different sellers - as auction 6038449898 by GUNDAN760 and as auction 6038549050 by SHARISINA. It looks like the "seller" is hijacking legitimate eBay accounts to use as bogus fronts for his dealings. Caveat emptor. Jack -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.12/265 - Release Date: 2/20/2006