I got something for you. Don't know if you have seen it or if it is still accurate. I looked back in the archives for the thread that Randy posted last April regarding the theft of his chip scans by a user named vegaschips1.

http://www.thechipboard.com/cgi-bin/tcbarc06/tcbarc06.pl?read=191724

There, Dave "Live Free or Die" Smith posted some information about "Cynthia M. Johnson". The information here and other mentions of this user refer to "Johnston". Therefore I assume it is just a typo on Dave's part and is the same person. Hope this information helps, in some way, to track down this person and at least put a stop to him/her. Assuming, like I said, that this is the same person or account that you are dealing with there is obvious a record on relating to this user. Even if he/she has changed user names, I understand that this information should follow. Unless of course they simply let their previous eBay account wither on the vine and started a new one. In that case it might be valuable to eBay to be notified that there may be a connection. While your transaction took place off of eBay and they may not be able to actually help you recover, they may be able to take action against the seller since the transaction was started with your loosing bid on the auction. Can an expert out there confirm my understanding that there is a rule against the practice of offering duplicate lots of merchandise to the loosers of an auction, by a seller? Or is it just that if you are selling an item, I can't harvest buyers from your loosers to sell identical items. I get confused here. Anyways, like I said, since you had originally bid on the auction and that is how the seller contacted you, eBay may have some ability to go after the seller.

Just some rambling thoughts. Hope they help.