Interestingly enough I was one of the bidders for the Sorcerer who lost out to Jim (I was on vacation and didn't have my "regular" access to eBay, etc.), so there but for the grace of God go I.... (and I only lost out by a few bucks, too!) On 8-11 I won a bid for a used HP 360lx (payment was paypal only - in retrospect, the first clue. The second was that this was an eBay newbie with 0 feedback). Since I had been monitoring the bid closely I knew I had won and did not wait for the email from eBay stating "Congrats ... contact each other, etc.") The seller's id was an obvious email address (jl_06_02(a)yahoo.com) and I went directly to paypal, found that the seller did have that email address registered with them, so I sent off the winning bid plus the requested $5 shipping. The paypal account was an "unverified" account (i.e., paypal had not yet received a bank account number for direct deposit, rather they would issue a paypal check to the account holder). As I usually do, I then verified by looking at the history that (1)indeed my credit card had been charged, and that (2) notification of payment had been sent to jl_06_02(a)yahoo.com. Fine, so far. Later the next day I received from paypal a "request for payment" from jl; the amount was just for the winning bid and did not include the $5 shipping. I figured that ol' jl hadn't read his email yet to see the confirmation from paypal that I had already paid. So I therefore replied to jl with a cut n' pasted copy of the duplicate confirmation I had received via email from paypal which stated that the amount of the bid plus $5 had been paid. I also went to paypal.com and saw his request in my account, so I cancelled it; my original payment transactions were still there. Later I received an email from jl (same email address as we had started off with) saying "What? You were supposed to pay my request." I then emailed a reply back explaining more clearly what had happened, and requesting that jl check again with paypal and he would see that the transaction had already gone through, and to get back to me if there were any problems. On 8-14 I emailed jl again, requesting an update on what had happened: did he get the money, was he shipping the package, etc. Later in the day I get a message back from the yahoo email server stating that the message could not be delivered. Now I began to get worried. I logged into yahoo and did a search for jl_06_02 - the search came back empty. I logged onto eBay into their dispute resolution section, and giving my logon and pwd and the item # (404256646 for those nosey enough to look for themselves), I was able to obtain the "real" name, address, and phone # of jl_06_02(a)yahoo.com with instructions to contact the person directly before claiming fraud. I placed a phone call to said # and eventually spoke to a nice lady who denied offering the item for bid, and stated that she indeed had just recently become an ebay member but that her email address was different, but that her street address, name (was Jxxx Lxxxxx) and phone number were correct. She also became concerned that someone was using her name and # this way, and denied being contacted by paypal. I also went back to paypal to review my history again. The first item - the charge to my credit card was still there and complete (and I also verified with my cc company that a charge had been made), but the other two transactions - the receipt of payment to jl and the cancellation of jl's request - no longer had valid links to the information. Instead I got an error message "internal server error" rather than the confirmations I had seen a day or two previously! Oh what a tangle web we weave.... I both emailed and called paypal who told me that their fraud unit would contact me. I emailed both eBay and yahoo - neither of which has responded yet (other than ebay keeping track of the dispute resolution process). I just asked yahoo to confirm that they recently had a member with that email address, though I did also explain the entire situation. I now send out a call for rank amateur speculation from the members of this list. My current theory is that someone at paypal, acting alone or in concert with someone at eBay may be trying some fraudulent scheme - that is based solely on the "internal server error" because immediately after the transaction, the information was there. Who would have a better chance of access to PayPal transactions other than someone at PayPal? Either someone at eBay or one of the real Jxxx Lxxxxx's 3 previous ebay transactions would have access to her real name, address and phone number - the same way I did. Anyone wishing to posit a more benign explanation is free to do so. (One of my favorite sayings, however, is "never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.") (BTW, I am on digest, so I won't see any responses until after the next digest unless you cc me.) Bob Stek Saver of Lost Sols