Invalid Report: 76561198005574075 - (Ѕhadow [⇌] / [TF2] Team Fortress 2 Items)

Scam Report

Report Type: [Item Fraud] Fake items or item duplication
Virtual item type involved: [TF2] Team Fortress 2 Items

Accused profile: 76561198005574075 (Ѕhadow [⇌])

Victim profile: 76561197965688240

What happened? Description:

Traded Professional Australium Grenade L. + 41 keys + Diamond Botkiller flamethrower for
Scammer's Unusual Rather Festive Tree with effects Haunted ghosts.

This item is valued at 4 buds pure and I ended up paying him 4.8 buds worth of items which means overpay only if it was clean.

I asked him if it was duped and replied it was clean. It turned out to be duped.​

Provide Evidence:

A Rather Festive Tree traded for : http://backpack.tf/item/332060404

The original tradeagreement: http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/18259632
After the trade was done another user reported it was duped.

This guy has gone on to sell YET ANOTHER a rather festive tree with ghosts, where he brags about the deal with me before: http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/18641455

And what is remarkable is this (new) hat, appears to be duped.

Hat on his new trade:
Ѕhadow [⇌] bp.tf: http://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198005574075
His A rather festive tree's history: http://backpack.tf/item/213759820

The duplicate of his new trade
❥ sHimi ♛ bp.tf: http://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198050849650
Same A rather festive tree: http://backpack.tf/item/213759820

Not only did he lie to me that the hat he sold me is duped. He is doing the same trick and lying to people again - with the same type of hat.

Notice how he is saying it is CLEAN, when in fact it is not as proved above.​

Do you have the chat?

Hello, allow me to address this.

Whenever I get an unusual I plan to put up for sale, I do threefold of checking into the item's history.
First, I check the Outpost item history. I make sure I'm at the top of the item history, and check some of the recent previous owner's backpack's to see if I see it in there.
Secondly, I check the backpack.tf item history. This, in most cases, (but definitely not all cases) is the best way I've found to determine if a hat is clean or not.
Thirdly, I check the tf2items.com item history. This is the BEST way I've found to check a hat's cleanliness, but as of lately (in the past few months) much of the time when I attempt to load this page for unusuals, I get 'item not found' database errors, so this third check for me is not very reliable.

Usually, if the hat is duped, the backpack.tf item history page will display a red "Warning! This item appears to have been duped.". However, this is not always the case. Sometimes a duped unusual will not display this red message, often misleading others into thinking a hat is clean. Here's a good example of a duped unusual appearing clean when infact it's not:

This scorching flames Modest pile of hat: http://backpack.tf/item/428010123 | http://puu.sh/8IZ8g/1c3487d5f5.jpg (screenshot mirror of what I'm seeing)
This hat exists in two people's backpacks; the most recent owner listed at the top, Sockie Sexbang: http://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198035848347
A dupe is owned by someone far down on the item history, near the bottom, pgs pepito http://backpack.tf/profiles/76561198061423405
Someone using the backpack.tf item history to check the history of this scorching modest may be mislead because it doesn't show expected red warning.

Onto what you've said, point by point.
You said "I asked him if it was duped and replied it was clean. It turned out to be duped." - I don't a screenshot of our chat, but (if my memory serves me correctly) you didn't even ask me if it was duped or not. Either way, it is the buyer's responsibility to know exactly what they're trading for - and to be ok with their purchase - before completing the trade. I've been in a similar instance as you, where I was under the impression a hat was clean, even after doing my proper checks, when I received it in trade, but in the end it turned out not to be clean. However, I do recognize that as a community admin I am held to a higher degree of responsibility than average users which is why, as I have shown above, I make every effort to do my due diligence on the items that I trade.
You said "After the trade was done another user reported it was duped." - This must mean the fact that it is duped was checkable by another user, why didn't you do that yourself?
You said "This guy has gone on to sell YET ANOTHER a rather festive tree with ghosts, where he brags about the deal with me before: http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/18641455/" - This is not bragging, or at least my intention with this is not to brag. After I traded my first Ghost Tree to you, I got another one in a different trade soon after. As a means to cite my recent sale, I included what I recently traded my previous Ghost Tree for.
You said "And what is remarkable is this (new) hat, appears to be duped." How is this so remarkable? Duped items are everywhere in this economy, avoiding them is nearly impossible, especially for those who actively trade unusuals as I do. There's nothing remarkable (or unremarkable) that someone has traded for a duped hat.
You said "He is doing the same trick and lying to people again." As I said above, whenever I get a new unusual (in this case, the second Ghosts Tree), I did my three means of checking an unusual to see if it's duped or not. It appeared clean, so I listed it as so. However, user named £1.80 pointed out to me that it was in fact not clean despite the three means of checking giving me the impression it was.
This is not the first time this has happened, to me or to anyone else for that matter, that someone - even after good faith in checking on the hats history - has been wrong about the cleanliness of a hat's history. Whenever this happens to me, that is, whenever I'm pointed out that a hat I think is clean is infact duped, I clarify in my trade notes by removing the words clean.

In conclusion, as I said above, I never knowingly list my duped unusuals as clean. I check any new unusuals I get that I put up for sale using the three methods I outlined above. These three methods aren't foolproof - sometimes unusuals slip through the cracks. This is bound to happen in a world of imperfect methods of checking item histories. This is why it's ultimately the buyer's responsibility to be okay with what they're trading for.

Lastly, as you would probably guess, I'm not one to throw away my reputation and intentionally lie about a hats cleanliness to make an extra 5-15 keys (which is approximately the price difference between a Clean Ghost Tree and a Duped Ghost tree. All of my listings/posts I create I do in good faith and to the best of my knowledge. Instances such as these are impossible to avoid and at no point did I intentionally attempt to deceive anyone.

Hidden Content:

**Hidden Content: Content of this hidden block can only be seen by members of (usergroups: Administrative, Moderating).**

@Shadow #1, you have a standing invite. Please accept.

/edit: Had an interview with him. Will be evaluating this.

Hidden Content:

**Hidden Content: Content of this hidden block can only be seen by members of (usergroups: Administrative, Moderating).**

On the second tree:
http://files.steamrep.com/1/2014-05/2014-05-23_04-13-50.png

Basic issue according to reporter:
- Misrepresenting a item.
- Another near same item pointed to as a reference for pattern of behavior.

Item of issue #1 (the one the reporter bought):
Haunted Ghosts A Rather Festive Tree Level 85
http://backpack.tf/item/332060404
http://www.tf2outpost.com/item/440,2397959565,341,5

Shadow bought it from:
| steamname: Mar†igan
| steamID32: STEAM_0:1:17301929
| steamID64: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197994869587
| customURL: http://steamcommunity.com/id/martigan13
| steamrep: http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561197994869587

Sold to reporter.

Item of issue #2:
Haunted Ghosts A Rather Festive Tree Level 21
http://backpack.tf/item/213759820
http://www.tf2outpost.com/item/440,2447460887,341,5

http://forums.steamrep.com/attachments/yep-png.78485/
http://files.steamrep.com/1/2014-05/2014-05-23_04-13-50.png

Conclusion:

Issues:

Item Misrepresentation:
I'd have to disagree on this term to be applied for these circumstances. Item misrepresentation is in my opinion displaying a item as for something it is not as in actual properties directly visible. Deducing if something is duplicated or not, is depending on the abilities and skill-set of the trader. I never saw it as the seller's job to define the item to be duplicated or not. If the buyer sees value in that answer, that buyer should do its due diligence to research that himself. All tools for this are available to everybody ( backpack.tf, outpost.com, tf2items.com ).

Item Misrepresentation's definition was originally added as a SteamRep offense back in 2011 for people where applying different names and descriptions on items and people got fooled with those. Gradually the term broadened to cover some other stuff as well, like unusuals descriptions.

Close to this is also the "Clean" definition on items, which we on SR see as: Tradable, craftable, not gifted.
Some see that broader to include no scammer in its history etc. But SR will not follow up with that. We only look at direct trading with scammers or their alts.

Established pattern:
With the screenshots, it is shown that he edited the information on the OP trade to the extend of his knowledge at that point. I can not see mischief there.

Notes:
We have to use quite rigid guidelines to not fall into the tarpit of hard to set rules. Knowledge, skill-set and such vary greatly between the trader population. We cannot expect all users to know all about all subjects, even admins will not always know everything about everything.

In my conversation with Shadow I told him to no longer claim something is clean. And if he wants to exert some along that, he should say that in the lines that "As far as he knows it is clean". And that if a buyer wants to be more sure of that, they should research it themselves. Knowing to find a duplicate is some admins do not need to be fully trained at imo. I also would not expect all admins to have the knowledge.

Verdict:
I see no other outcome then to end the report, and archive it with no further actions to be taken.