Scammer contacted me via forum beware

kelpbeds

I put a' Want To Buy' ad for a Cali76 stacked in the classifieds of this forum and a guy contacted me saying he knew someone who was selling one and sent me his email.
I contacted the guy who replied and sent me photos.
He wanted £250, which seemed a fair price and spoke like he knew what he was talking about.
I asked for Paypal, he said he didn't do it, so I declined.
He then came back and said his son had a Paypal and we could use that. So I paid him with protection. (I paid the extra)
He then made up lots of excuses about it not being cleared (even though it was) and asked me to click on the button in Paypal which would have confirmed me receiving it (I may have been a bit stupid over this but not that stupid!)
Anyway I've escalated it to Paypal am waiting to here. Will be a while though.
Just wanted to make people aware so they don't get caught out.
The seller goes by the name of Russell Moore, the guy who contacted me went by the username !Jay9j! (can't find him on the forum and I should have looked earlier then I might have been alerted)

Schnozz

Thank you for flagging this up - Much appreciated.

I've just put some stuff up on Gumtree and I'm getting lots of scam attempts at the moment (certainly more than usual!).

Pleased you sussed it sooner rather than later, as my friend's sister recently lost her violin due to something similar.

Roland

jJay9j was banned as soon as we became aware of his behaviour. There are two techniques common to this and other scams: using private messages to keep things out of the public eye, and responding to WTB threads.

kelpbeds

Yeah it just seemed legit with the photos and everything. So glad I used Paypal protection. Cheers for the info

Creed_Clicks

Looks like something I'd get caught out in if I were in a rush or busy and clicked whatever PayPal buttons I thought were necessary. Anything else we should be looking out for apart from the above?

webrthomson

@kelpbeds ; - report him to the Police, they may or may not do something about it but fraud is fraud

kelpbeds

Yeah i thought about the Police and looked it up but apparently they rarely do anything in these situations, thanks.

kelpbeds

Creed_Clicks said:

Looks like something I'd get caught out in if I were in a rush or busy and clicked whatever PayPal buttons I thought were necessary. Anything else we should be looking out for apart from the above?

Not really! Just make sure if you put a WTB ad in and you get a response it's from a legit forum member with a history I guess.

kelpbeds

Actually just looked again and can report it here, so will do that. Thanks

https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/reporting-fraud-and-cyber-crime

russpm

He contacted me recently and put me in touch with the same guy trying to sell me a Jam pedals Ripply Falls as I had a WTB post on here.
They guy emailed me and something just didn’t feel right so I passed. 

Thank god I did. 

PengaMax

Thanks for the heads up, such a shame there is so much of this kind of thing happening at the moment. Bastards

prowla

I've been having an issue with a scammer these past few weeks...

K33EU

in his defence he may not be scamming you. I have had many problems with paypal releasing funds / putting funds on hold that in one case took THREE MONTHS for them to release it to me. In fact, despite my platinum ebay/paypal status they put funds on hold more often than not. They have used a myriad of excuses so they can to hold on to money for as long as they can. I assume this is to benefit them with liquidity.  I specifically will not ever use Paypal again unless its vital for this and a whole host of other reasons too numerous to mention. In short most times i find its paypal that are the scammers... 

K33EU

good luck with escalations to paypal BTW. They usually take at least a week to respond. Lately this rose to more than a month...anyway enough ranting from my end..paypal use beware i think you can tell!

kelpbeds

Cheers chaps, he is definitely scamming me. Says he has refunded me when he hasn't and is now being abusive. Just waiting for Paypal to escalate it. 

russpm

He is defo  a scammer, I could smell it!

Philly_Q

Funnily enough, I know two people called Russell Moore.  I doubt this is either of them, though.

kelpbeds

I can't escalate it through Paypal until 24th, will let you know what happens.

prowla

There are things you can do, including registering a case with Action Fraud; a number of us have been going through the process with another scammer.

kelpbeds

Yep I have found that, thank you

darthed1981

Surely this is risking a criminal convinction for relatively small amounts of money - is it a compulsion these people have?

Scumbags - sorry to hear this is happening to so many here.