A New York City man put up a broken Sony Mini-Disc player for sale on eBay in the hopes of raising cash to get him out of “serious financial trouble.”
Showing a picture of himself humbly clad in an obviously poor part of Queens, Dror Sapir started the bidding at $1.00. If a broken mini-disc player is not something shoppers were looking for, he was accepting online payments through his PayPal account.
The text of his post (some of it) read as follows:
“I’m offering A none working Sony Mini disc MZN 510 ( might be good for parts). I got into serious financial trouble and in order to get money for food, I’m selling old used items of mine.
If you don’t have a paypal account I will gladly accept wire transactions, if you are willing to help me on this channel please just Email me to my personal email address –
I’m in a very bad situation, I’m being evecuated from my apartment at the end of the month. Any help will be gladly accepted.”
Requests for comment from Sapir were unanswered at the time of publication.
The folks at eBay, most likely due to a fear of fraud, said soliciting personal donations was not a service the company supported.
“While the sale of a broken mini-disc player is fine (as long as the seller clearly states it is broken), the use of a listing to request donations is a violation of eBay policy. As such, this listing has been removed from the site,” said eBay spokesperson, Hani Durzy.
While the listing has been removed, a screen shot of Sapir can be found here.
