- Messages
- 105,084
- Reaction score
- 101,346
- Points
- 10,583
- Location
- Billingham
- First Name
- Karl
- Elgrand
- E50
- Region
- North East
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.
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.