It appears as if a few folk including myself have been scammed by someone selling second hand goods on another site’s classifieds section. I seem to remember that a couple of folk on here have had some success with pursuing scammers via the police, so thought I might as ask for advice on how best to proceed from here.

I’ve had a bit of contact with a couple of other victims, and I have the ‘sellers’ emails confirming receipt of my payment via Bank Transfer, claiming to have put the stuff in the post, letting me know he’d follow up the non-appearance and so on.

Any advice gratefully received.

Go to the police with the info you have?

is it for a decent amount of money?

otherwise i’d learn from it and move on. life is too short to get hung up on these sort of things.

Pinkbike?

I attended a police conference the other day about internet fraud.
One guy from a very large and well known internet based sales company talked about his fraud issues. Ten a week!!! Each one they would use their own forensic team to track down the individuals concerned, they’d produce a full and extremely professional breakdown of the fraud which ended with ‘HERE ARE THE CRIMINALS’. Each one is provided to the police fraud team.

Only one of these incidents has ever been investigated and followed to any conclusion. In that one the police kicked in the front door and found a house packed to the brim with stuff gathered fraudulently.

He was a very bitter man. He reckoned he could pretty much nail internet fraud in this country if he was given the powers of arrest.

You should also note that you are now more likely to become a victim of online crime than you are of physical crime. Physical crime is registered locally. Online crime is registered centrally and does not have to be reported. Think on that when your local police force tells you crime is on the decrease.

I may have some useful information. PayPal gift to my email for more info.

Sure thing, just let me have your postal address for the receipt 🙂

How much are you down by? Can you afford to lose the money? If so, bear in mind that it’s quite easy to set up a multitude of Direct Debits on someone’s account if you have a name, sort code and account number…