We unfortunately lost nearly £5K last week. Same bunch of scammers I suspect. The vehicle was in Scotland. I am normally very suspicious and clued up but the vehicle unfortunately held the solution to some pressing problems. So through tiredness, stress and excitement they caught me off guard. Have been beating myself up over it as we have 2 small children and not a lot of money. We borrowed the money and still have to pay it back. Gutted. I have been tracking down further examples of the same thing as they are not surprisingly still doing it. I was got through Gumtree with a fake Ebay invoice. Ebay seller 'kay-b20'. The email address used was
[email protected].
[email protected] is another one. Haven't even had a response from Ebay. It wasn't technically through Ebay but their invoice did link up to their official website, so they've hacked in to it. I know they are using Autotrader, AdTrader and other similar sites too.
I checked the IP addresses from their email headers. One address was near Skipton, Yorkshire. The other in Bucharest, Romania. I am also trying to find as many other examples of their parasitic work as possible. The UK Police weren't interested as it didn't meet several criteria; less than 10K, less than 9 victims, no forensic evidence, the list went on. The Romanian Police made 90 arrests in one hit, last year, trying to help stamp out online shopping fraud (read a Times article). They seem much more interested. It is a multi-million pound business, but the UK Police just see too many individual cases, too many man hours without a guaranteed result. The officer I dealt with told me her superior had instructed her to close my case as they have to concentrate on bigger money. So as long as they're not interested, it will go on! I just hope others see these warnings and avoid making the same mistake.
