BEWARE OF FRAUD with this member

There are some unanswered questions in this thread. For it to be useful to the community it would help if the OP could clarify some of what took place with the initial transaction.
When you accepted payment into your PayPal account, was the buyer’s address the US based address and was it ‘PayPal Verified’. One can only assume that it must have been the US address since you said you’d seen no mention of an overseas address prior to shipping. In which case, you ought to be protected under PayPal’s Seller Protection program. If the buyer changed his/her address after the transaction with you, that really should have no bearing on your claim.
Can the OP please clarify, otherwise it’s just another ‘I got screwed’ thread and teaches us nothing other than not to get out of bed in the morning.

Did you see his feedback numbers? Did you communicate with him via phone (preferably) or email before agreeing to the deal? Did he have many or any posts on Audiogon?

I've even looked people up on LinkedIn.

Common sense things, but I wouldn't do a transaction like this without doing it.

Sorry for the hassle/loss you went through, but for anything over $100 I want to sell, I try to make it part of some trade in deal, or just hang on to it until the next dealer transaction. If a dealer won't offer a trade or at least to sell the item for me, it is tough for me to do business with them, but not impossible.

Good luck tracking this fraudster down.

I had an issue that involved both PayPal and eBay.  eBay chargedback my PayPal account from a transaction 5 years before!  Claiming buyer never received.  eBay had no records of anything regarding a dispute, yet they still debited my associated PayPal account.  PayPal was no help.  After multiple emails, escalations, etc, eBay gave me a credit against future eBay charges to the amount they debited my PayPal account.  Didn't get my money back per say, but it was a wash.  Soon after, eBay disassociated itself from PayPal. 

Is anyone really surprised that people with ill intent figured out how to scam people thru PayPal? It could be why they're always updating their user agreement policies that they say will affect you.

It's easier and cheaper for them to put their wagons in a circle than to seriously look into and update their verification policies. I'll continue to use them for my purchases as long as they are local or I've done business with others before.

All the best,
Nonoise

You could consider yourself lucky that it was only a $500 item. I lost $1200 on an amp sold on audiogon. The seller sold the same item to 10 others here and never delivered the amp to anyone. This place has always had its share of scammers. You’ve been scammed. Sorry but these are the rules of the AG system but AG never to my knowledge gets involved with sales or purchases. I’ve been here since 1997 and I’ve never seen it.