Amazon actually accepts this as evidence and will find in your favor. Video yourself packing the original and unpacking the "return" and you will likely prevail selling on amazon. I have.

Ebay sadly does not even provide you with a way to submit such evidence.

I've submitted video evidence to eBay before. Just include a link to an unlisted Youtube video.

Thanks for letting us know, that is actually very helpful

If you ship USPS, you might be able to go through them. Mail fraud is a federal crime and they don't fuck around with it. (you don't get the same protection with UPS/FedEx/etc.)

and if the fraudster is from another country? will the mail police order ebay to return the money?

How would you prove you were opening the box as shipped?

If investigative news meant anything, they'd be all over this. But most investigative news is gone, and there's so few investigative reporters and trustworthy news outlets left that its hard to hold ebay's feet to the fire.

You'd need to also record yourself putting a real phone IN the box when you're shipping it, but it seems that even if you did, your evidence would just be ignored by ebay.

I mean, you can put a real phone in a box and film it but it's not foolproof as you can just open the box again and ship something else. it's not an easy problem to solve. especially with different jurisdictions in different countries.

Even if you had a film of the box being delivered to the post office you could have a corrupt post office friend or a post office worker that is scamming things on their end by opening packages and replacing the contents.

I took a photo of handing it to the USPS man.

So? You can still swap it out, or give him another box, or get your mate to dress up as a USPS man.

There is no 100% way to prove you sent what you say you have.

How about sealing it with glitter nailpolish? Take a picture of the dried seal, it's nearly impossible to produce the same pattern again.

So, you (the scammer) does this but leaves the bottom of the box open, and then remove the item, and glue the box back together, with a brick inside...

This is the same (sort of) reason that mailing yourself something is not proof of anything, as you can mail yourself a bunch of empty, unsealed, envelopes, then seal them with whatever inside them at some time in the future.

100%? No. But I was sure to include his USPS badge in the photo, as well as the address on the box, and the background of the behind-the-counter post office. I figure it raises the difficulty of faking it substantially.

Even legal process (especially civil legal process) doesn't rely on 100% proof to reach a result; it would be unreasonable for any dispute resolution procedure to do so.

I tried something along these lines. No luck. There is zero protection for sellers.