Thread: ebay fraud help newbie here!

well, he just confirmed that a 'friend' buys for him. so I guess all is well.

It doesn't matter if a 'friend' buys for him or he does it himself. The transaction is between you and the person who paid via paypal (if the buyer is different than the paypal holder they will have ebay/paypal problems and you should contact ebay/paypal about that).
If you don't want to take more risk than you have to, you have to ship to the address paypal/ebay tells you to ship and make sure it says 'eligible for seller protection'. If it doesn't contact ebay/paypal for advise, and how to not end up in such situation (after all they get fees from you, so you want to get service for this money).
I think in the past the fund holding policy was until the buyer leaves positive feedback or 21 days, whichever is first; and once you get a bit of a positive feedback/sales volume/account age they will lift those restrictions.

You can also request that his 'friend' who is purchasing from you (and who you legally transact with) leave feedback as soon as the he receives the item, so that your funds are not held hostage. If he trusts his friend to buy for him, he surely can trust him with the inspection of the items and leaving timely feedback. If he refuses you can block him from bidding on your auctions and only deal with more cooperative buyers.

I've had to deal with few unpleasant situations where buyers attempted to defraud me. I still get requests that I do such and such thing for them, but if I don't know the person and what they ask amounts to me forfeiting part or all of my seller protection, I politely tell them that I would be more than happy to, as long as they also forfeit the protection on their end and send me the funds as a cashier's check/money order or 'paypal gift'.