Help I have been ripped off by a scam on gumtree

r8chie

Hi all, any kinda constructive help or advise would be greatly appreciated.

I was looking to purchase festival tickets and found an add posted on the Gumtree website. One ticket for sale for £180. The face value of the ticket is £155, I thought this was pretty reasonable for the sold out event. I contacted the supplier via the gumtree website to see if the ticket was still available, of course it was... The location of the seller was a 3 hr drive away from me so she suggested I send payment via a bank transfer... I stated my reservations, to which she came back saying, 'well you have my full name and adress and my bank details (which was a britsih natwest acc) so I couldn't rip you off as you could go to the police!' Yes, i thought, thats true - how can i be ripped off when I have all those details?? Well, here I am 5 days after the transaction has cleared, with no ticket and no further email correspondance as i have since been ignored.

My bank does not want to know as I authorised the transfer, the police are not that interested. Natwest wont even spk to me... so I am £180 poorer, very gutted and looking for some advise!

Surely there must be some way of tracking it, otherwise wouldn't everyone be doing this?

NotQuiteNorbert

I think you're scuppered, sorry.

shadowspy24

Well is suppose you could pass on those bank details to fraudsters so that she gets scammed in the future. But i doubt you will get your money back.

MsCrow

If you have email correspondence and all their details I would go straight to the police as this is theft. Failing this route - they should be helpful, serve the person papers via money claim.

soolin

Unfortunately this is a very common scam and is very difficult to recover anything from. When you took address details though did you check them out against electoral roll or anything like that? If so and if the details are correct you could try small claims.

The scma usually works though as victims rarely ever check the details they are given so the address is usually a false one.

Premier_2

Did you check out the name and address were genuine before sending off your money?

e.g. if a business, are they really there, in the phone book or yellow pages etc? A check on google maps can sometimes be quite telling too, either a satellite view or even better if they have the new street view available.

If a private individual, are they on the electoral register at the address specified, or even in the phone book there?

If the address is genuine, you can always try for recovery through the small claims court as long as you think there is a reasonable chance the seller has the means to repay you.

r8chie

Thanks for you replies guys. Its such a kick in the teeth - though I am aware now that i have been a gullible, trusting, idiot!

I just cant believe no-one is prepared to do anything. This must be such a common scam if it is so easy to get away with. Its frustrating that my bank and the police have her bank details and wont just dip in and take back my money!

If you were to steal money from a shop the police would come down on you so hard. this to me is the same - but I guess its too small a fish for them to really care!

I hate being so helpless - i am now even more ashamed to admit that I think the adress i was given is a phoney! I'm never normally so dumb... i just wanted the tickets!

frivolous_fay

If you can track down anyone else who also fell for the scam, the police may be more interested if you act as a group.
I do think it's nuts that no-one will act. A bank account only belongs to one person.

Bowling_4_Gold

You can't really do a lot, I'm afraid. Gumtree is a local site and is intended for face to face trade only. You have been a victim of a scam which is easily fell for. You can either take it on the chin, or you can try and fight with your bank and the police, but again, they can't do a lot.

Next time, please pay attention to the notice at the top of every ad page:


[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Don't hand over any money until you see the item. Trade face to face. See our Stay Safe section.[/FONT]

[/FONT]

Enfieldian

Hmm, could you use their bank account details to set up some online direct debits? To charities or similar?

soolin

Enfieldian wrote: »

Hmm, could you use their bank account details to set up some online direct debits? To charities or similar?

You could but as the owner of the account is completely indemnified against fake DDs only the charity will suffer. I work for a charity and really don't want to pay the book keeper to have to sort out malicious fake dirtect debits sending us donations that we enter into our books only to be clawed back under the DD guarantee.