Journey into the unknown - Part 4: Everyone Has a Twin

If there is one thing this series has taught me, it is that buying watches online is never just about watches. It is about people, expectations, and the endless variety of situations that arise whenever money, desire, and opportunity intersect. Just when I think I have seen it all, the hobby finds another way to surprise me.

This latest chapter began less than an hour ago, innocently enough. I was participating in a Facebook auction for a watch that had caught my attention. The bidding was active, and eventually someone else overtook my bid. That is simply the nature of auctions. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't, and I had already resigned myself to watching the rest of the auction unfold from the sidelines.

A few minutes later, however, I received a private message from what appeared to be the seller. He thanked me for participating and explained that the highest bidder wished to withdraw because he had purchased another watch elsewhere. Since he intended to rerun the auction, he asked whether I would mind if he tagged me again. Nothing about the message seemed unusual. In fact, it sounded perfectly plausible.

The conversation continued naturally. He asked whether I would consider meeting him at a buy-it-now price of $1,785. I replied that there was still plenty of time left in the auction and that I preferred to let the bidding play out. If I happened to win, I told him, we could always work something out afterward.

Instead, he encouraged me to place another bid.

So I started smelling something, thus, i humored him.

That is when the conversation began to feel... more strange.

The very person who had urged me to bid suddenly criticized me for doing so, telling me that bidding after another participant had withdrawn was inappropriate and against the group's rules. I was genuinely confused. Moments earlier he had invited me to continue participating, and now he was chastising me for following his suggestion.

When I explained that I had simply been trying to help and was unaware of any written rule prohibiting it, the discussion took another unexpected turn. Suddenly, the auction was going to end immediately. The watch was mine. The asking price dropped to $1,750 shipped, and everything acquired a sense of urgency that had been completely absent only moments before.

Years of buying watches online have taught me that urgency is rarely a collector's friend. It is almost always someone else's.

At that point, having thoroughly vetted the real seller before placing my original bid, I decided to take another look at the profile that had been messaging me. Something immediately stood out. I distinctly remembered the seller's account having well over 800 friends when I had checked it before entering the auction. This one had just two.

That was the moment the light came on.

The profile picture was the same. The name was identical and some posts were too. But the account wasn't. Someone had cloned the seller's identity, hoping that bidders would glance at the familiar name and photo without noticing the details. The hurried offers, the contradictory messages, the sudden urgency to close the deal—they all made perfect sense now.

I immediately contacted the real seller, who was just as shocked as I was. To his credit, he acted quickly, posting a warning in the auction thread to let everyone know that a scammer had created a fake profile and was contacting bidders through private messages. Fortunately, it appears that nobody fell victim to the scheme.

What struck me afterward was not how sophisticated the scam had been, but how remarkably simple it was. There was no hacking involved, no malware, no elaborate technical trickery. The entire operation relied on something far more powerful: our tendency to trust what looks familiar. A copied photograph, the right name, and a believable story were enough to create an illusion of authenticity.

That realization reminded me of something I have touched on before in this series. In today's watch market, the greatest risk is often not the watch itself. It is the human element. Authenticity is no longer something we verify only in the objects we buy; increasingly, it is something we must verify in the people we deal with.

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. No money changed hands, the real seller protected the community by exposing the scam, and everyone walked away a little wiser. I may not add another watch to my collection this evening, but I certainly did add another lesson.

And, as has happened more than once in this journey, that lesson may ultimately prove more valuable than the watch ever would have been.

EPILOGUE

If you're wondering whether I reported the fake account as soon as I realized what was happening, the answer is yes.

Facebook's response was as follows:

"We didn't find that

's account went against our Community Standards. To keep our review process as fair as possible, we use the same set of Community Standards to review all reports. We've reviewed your report and found that the message doesn't go against our Community Standards. We understand this may be frustrating, but we appreciate you taking the time to submit a report. Reports like yours help keep Facebook and Messenger safe and welcoming for everyone."

Apparently, an account impersonating another person in the middle of a live watch auction does not cross the threshold.

Fortunately, the real seller acted much faster than Facebook did. He immediately warned the group, exposing the scam before anyone appears to have lost money. In the end, the community protected itself.

As for Facebook's review process...

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.