Complaint Review: William Berlin - Encino California

I wanted to join the crowd of people that are reporting William Berlin of Los Angeles California for fradulent E-bay practices. In August of 2004, an ad was posted on craigslist for a personal assistant. Being the poor dancer that I was, I was checking out every option of making extra cash. He replied quickly and could work around my schedule and basically let me work whenever I wanted.

I would come to his house and do cleaning, or make calls for him. just random things. I felt kind of weird about it. but the jobs were harmless and I was so busy in a scholarship program that it was the only possible job that could work. I felt rather uncomfortable with him and he always made suggestive comments but I made myself get over it because I needed the job.

After I had been working for him a few weeks he offered me a job with his "Ebay company." He said he would send me listings of products from his warehouse. I would list them on Ebay and sell them. The money would be sent to me. I would then forward him the money and he would ship the item. Clearly I hadn't thought of every negative possibility here, but I thought he was trusting me to have the money first so it couldn't be that bad. Plus I was working for that man on a regular basis and I couldn't imagine that he would try to steal from me while I was coming in to help him all the time.

Well a week or so later I quit working as his assistant because I realized that the guy was a loony bin and was dangerous. I said I would finish the 2 E-bay sells I had made and that would be it. So I sent him the checks for the products that he would supposedly deliver. Soon enough, I had complaints from the buyers saying they had not received the item. William never shipped the items. He had TOLD me to write a check.

So I wrote him a check and left it in his mailbox. Then a day or so later he complained for me writing the check and said it would be on a 10 day hold and that he refused to ship it until it cleared. The checks cleared my account a few days later and he still had not shipped the items. The buyers had already filed complaints against me and I was going to have to supply a refund to keep Ebay from coming after me. William refused to refund them. So I had to refund them from my own pocket. About 420 dollars.

This may seem like a small amount compared to other scans in general. but I got lucky because I quit before I even realized I was being scammed. Others have been out thousands. When I came back saying I was going to take him to court he said he went to the police station and filed a fraud report against me. He also made up lies about my family and me and threatened that if we did anything he would bring it back on us. My uncle, a lawyer, said we could take him to court but had to determine if we thought it was worth it to provoke him.

In the end, I didn't think it was. I still lived in LA. He was my employer, therefore he knew my address. And I wasn't about to give him a reason to show up on my doorstep and do who knows what. A month or so after I quit- he called me trying to get me to come back and work for him. Telling me he missed me and wanted me back. This is a very odd guy. He kept asking me what I was doing over and over.

I wanted to sever all ties with him. Then come January, he e-mails me, offering me my job back - as if I had been fired- when I was the one that quit. He told me he would pay me back 15 or 20 dollars a day that I worked towards what he owed me. I would be crazy to go back to work for him. I have always hoped justice would be served to this man. I found the website ripoffreports.com the other day and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that I am not alone. I had always felt embarrased about the story and now I'm ready to get this guy.

Laura

Detroit, Michigan

U.S.A.