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KEEP SAFE WHEN BUYING ONLINE

Karl

The Boss
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First Name
Karl
Elgrand
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For all the members on here who use Facebook, chances are you will have seen the events that have happened over the last few days, but for those of you who haven't, and those of you who don't use Facebook, this applies to EVERYONE.

OK, the background. We had a member join the ElgrandOC Marketplace (which is the selling page on Facebook for club members). He came into the group breaking a white S2 E51 Rider. As you can imagine, the vultures were quick on the scene asking for all the nice parts that he had to offer. He was quoting ridiculously cheap prices for these parts, and I think this is where common sense left the room, got on a plane and took a holiday in the Bahamas.
The seller requested payment up front (pretty standard really), but would ONLY accept bank transfer.

Now, at this point here, my alarm bells would be ringing, but apparently this was not so for the poor people who agreed. Bank transfers were made, and in total the guy received (we believe) in excess of £2000.

A few days went by, and the promised tracking numbers were nowhere to be seen. Alarm bells starting ringing at this point. I stepped in, messaged the seller, and he replied to me just saying that he'd got more orders than he'd expected and was behind. So again, alarm bells stopped ringing (at this point, I didn't know that people were paying him by bank transfer).

Yesterday it came about that the guy is a fraudster. His Facebook username (James Scorer) was a fake. His location was wrong, and he had no car to break at all. He'd took the money and was rubbing his greedy fat little fingers together.

At this point, I started to do some Digging. @chris wills mentioned that he had done the same in the Delica club last year. So I went snooping and found a post on their club that named his alter egos, and also mentioned his partners name (all bank transfers were into HER bank account).

From this, I did some more snooping and found a for sale add in a Wallsall selling page for a Samsung TV. I made out that I was local and wanted to pick up and got an address. A step forward... but this was going off pieces of a puzzle I'd put together myself, and also taken from other people. I had NO evidence that this person I was talking to about a TV and had an address for was actually anything to do with this. She could have just been someone who happened to share the same name.

About 15 minutes later, James Scorer messaged me to tell me that I had to stop messaging his girlfriend. And thus, the loop was complete. There was now a direct link between Sam Tinsley and James Scorer. Bingo - thank you for that - straight to Action Fraud with the information.

Not only that, but he was stupid enough to tell me that the address was not his address, and then proceeded to send me photo's of his benefits award from the DWP to give me his address. If you're going to scam people, you need to have some brains about you because, come on, that's just giving all the information to the police so they don't have to do any work. He might as well just go to the nearest police station and hand himself in.

Long story short. We have members that are out of pocket and may never get their money back. You have NO protection when sending money via bank transfer (unless you are paying some sort of insurance for online fraud. which most people are not). But the culprit painted his own hands red and them put them over every dealing he'd had with anyone else.

The police may or may not actually do anything, I have no idea what they do in instances like this, but chances are the members will never get that money back. So, read onto the next post for hints and tips of how to buy online.
 
1. Only ever use PayPal to buy from someone unknown on the internet. You pay for GOODS/SERVICES. This means that you are protected by the PayPal Buyer Guarantee and if things go wrong, you WILL get your money back. If the buyer states they will only accept a bank transfer, or PayPal payment as GIFT/FAMILY then WALK AWAY!!!! You have NO protection to cover this transaction, and if the seller is conning you, you will find it very hard to get your well earned back. The problem here though is that if you buy GOODS/SERVICES to get the buyer protection, the seller will incur a 3.6% fee on the money they receive, so be prepared to add up to 5% onto your total to cover their fees. If they don't agree for you to add the 5% to cover their fees (to enable the buyer protection) then WALK AWAY.

2. If someone NEW has come into the club, your life, a group, whatever, and immediate starts selling. Be exceptionally careful. I imagine that most people in this club would have no problem at all with sending me money by bank transfer because, although they may have never met me, they know who I am, they know I have been around for the 3 years, they know that I've not conned anyone out of money, and they know I wouldn't ruin my reputation like that. But someone new, who no one knows, and no one can vouch for... that's a BIG RISK to take. So if you DO buy from them, remember point 1 and KEEP YOURSELF SAFE.

3. If in doubt, contact a member of the admin team. Although we have NO responsibility for transactions made between members... we will do what we can to help out. As you can see in the above post, although I did not lose any of my own money. I spent a good few hours searching to find details to help those affected with the fraud cases (both with police and their respective banks). We do care about our members and we will do whatever we can to help. We CANNOT do anything AFTER you've paid someone... but we can message a seller on your behalf and do a little bit of digging to give you a better idea of whether or not you should be dealing with the seller in question.

4. Use your common sense people. If something comes up for sale and it's half the price of anything you find anywhere else... either the person selling has no idea of it's value and you're in for a bargain, or you are being conned. But by doing a little digging, and being cautious (using PayPal Buyer Protection), you can take the edge out of the situation. Yes, it'll still be annoying, because you may have to wait a month for your money back, but you WILL get your money back, so you don't have to sweat about being robbed of £500.
 
I hope the scummy twat gets what he deserves by whatever means.

Well I have his DWP benefit details... and a direct link to the account he was scamming people from, so basically we have all the evidence to give to the police. I cannot see why they would not look into it any further because they don't even have to do any work other than turn up at his door and arrest him.
 
Sadly, seen this sort of thing happen a lot on a guitar forum I use, the police and action fraud were provided with evidence of multiple frauds worth tens of thousands, given addresses etc and still didn't go anything, and the people are still out there scamming today.

Fraud is only important if you're defrauding the government in some way.
 
Thanks for the info @Karl & most of all thanks to you personally for taking the time to help out fellow club members & getting to the bottom of it all. I think I can speak for all members (for once ;)) in saying that your hard work is appreciated by us all. It's good to know that you & the club staff as a whole go the extra mile.

I echo @Harvo s sentiments above. And sorry to hear that some club members have been caught out by the ****s
 
Walsall is probably out of his jurisdiction but I used to work with someone who's dad worked for West Brom police cracking down on this specific crime - people selling non-existent goods online under pseudonyms - either via social media or ebay or other similar sites.

So they're definitely on the radar, i just don't know to what volumes / values of fraud they commit before they get onto the target list.
 
I have no faith in the justice system.

Seeing as the guy wasn't doing 36 in a 30, he was just taking thousands of pounds worth of people's money, the police won't touch him.

Shame really.
 
It would probably help if one of those who lost cash made contact with the police and lodged a complaint, armed with the information on this thread
 
Seeing as this person is on benefits (evidenced by his benefits award from the DWP), I wonder if the authorities have taken into account all the FB income that he's getting for his trading/ donations when calculating his award?

Just to make sure maybe you should notify them of this months income (£2k?) - I think you can notify them anonymously as well: https://www.gov.uk/report-benefit-fraud

I'm sure the Deli owners club would help out here too :bomb:
 
wonder if he'll fall for the same thing :p

that an ELuvaGRAND thing you've done @Karl

maybe post the same info as a locked sticky on the for sale pages of the forum as a reminder
 
Well done Karl for what you have done for all Members and others it shows there are good people out there My son helps me Best 73s john in Kent moonrider 19.
 
If it seems too good to be true...I got scammed on mobile phones on a legitimate site...or so I thought....did my detective work reported him to the police and he was jailed. But I didn’t get my money back. I also told his bankers that he was defrauding people and they did nothing. I found out that after I’d told his bankers, he continued to defraud people and used the same bank account. I know, from my career, that his bank were in contravention of FSA anti-money laundering regulations. No wonder that bank found itself in massive difficulties and has had its reputation trashed. Moral is be very very careful...and if it seems too good to be true...it usually isn’t..
 
Justice system is crap in this country. Sherry Malik for example is out of prison and still selling Elgrands on ebay along with all his other dodgy dealer partners in crime. At least we know who they are and where albeit many still DONT look on here FIRST before buying thus they get conned with a piece of clocked crap.

I never got my money back off Malik and neither did my bro in law and he lost 7k from the git.
 
These are the kinds of scams/reasons I am glad i live in the 3rd world,we have the chancers but not quite at this level,yet.
 
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