I had a chat about the scammers with Chet from Valve..

Hey guys,

I had a chat with Chet Faliszek from Valve about the new scammers from today. Hopefully this will be of some help.

P.S. If the victims involved could go to the scammer's page and file a "Report Violation > User Misconduct" and describe what happened, that'll probably be helpful to the Valve/Steam staff looking into this. Please include the URL for the contest/giveaway involved if possible. Also, file a ticket with Steam Support to the same effect.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011
1:07 AM - Princess Peach: Hi Chet
1:08 AM - Princess Peach: I was wondering if I could talk to you about one or more persons scamming people on Steam by impersonating other's profiles
1:08 AM - Chet: sure, what is the profile?
1:09 AM - Princess Peach: they're taking advantage of a site i frequent
1:09 AM - Princess Peach: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamgifts/announcements/detail/1335536413970265261
1:09 AM - Princess Peach: http://www.steamgifts.com/
1:09 AM - Princess Peach: it is a site where people gift away games to other users, via a lottery
1:10 AM - Princess Peach: what the scammers have been doing is changing the profile name + picture to match the winners' and then contacting the gifter of the contests
1:10 AM - Princess Peach: if you view those accounts’ name change history, they match the winners list
1:11 AM - Princess Peach: in one particularly bad example, a scammer changed their name to PtB, the winner of this Skyrim giveaway
1:11 AM - Princess Peach: http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/ae1tf/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim
1:12 AM - Princess Peach: http://steamcommunity.com/id/gibddeshnik/namehistory
1:13 AM - Princess Peach: the gifter felt so bad about the mistake/being scammed that he bought another copy for the rightful winner :\
1:14 AM - Chet: thanks, we will look into this
1:15 AM - Princess Peach: i've advised the Steamgifts site owner/mods to ask the victims of these scams of report the violations on their profiles, as well as flagging down the scammer's original Steam IDs in case they change their custom url
1:15 AM - Princess Peach: so hopefully, there should be something there
1:16 AM - Princess Peach: the only way i know of for getting a list of earlier winners from that site is via http://www.steamgifts.com/closed
1:16 AM - Chet: cool, thanks again - this sucks people do this
1:17 AM - Princess Peach: sorry i can't do any better than that I'm not a mod/admin so that's the best I have
1:17 AM - Princess Peach: thanks a lot Chet, for looking into this
1:17 AM - Princess Peach: If you have any advice/contact email/etc for the site staff or victims, please let me know
1:18 AM - Princess Peach: again, thanks for looking into this