Gumtree - large scale scam

Smaldini

Hi guys - I just wanted to post here to warn you all about an incredibly large scale scam on gumtree, orchestrated by a group of 10+ people using multiple aliases, phone numbers and e-mail addresses. It generally involves the sale of iphones, but these people are opportunistic, and will sell dj equipment, gadgets, and also reply to wanted ads.

I have personally reported about 20 of these adverts today, but they keep coming. They are incredibly prolific, and taking a lot of money off the back of people's trust.

To protect yourself, please watch out for the following warning signs (not all necessarily present at once):

Details in the advert are often s p a c e d out, to make it more difficult for them to be traced through google searches - particularly phone numbers. If there is a number on the advert, always google it and search gumtree, so you can see how many adverts it is attached to.

The adverts are frequently placed in the wrong section - i.e. iphones in "cars and caravans".

They offer face to face exchange - this is purely to make themselves look more trustworthy.

They quite often warn against people trying to scam them in the advert - again to look more trustworthy.

The advert will make it appear that the item is located somewhere, and then upon contact you will discover it is in another location. They will then offer to courier it out to you.

They want payment by bank transfer.

They may give reasons why they can't talk on the phone - i.e. I'm deaf.

They pose as a woman, but the bank balance is "their husband's".

They give unnecessary details, building a reason for the low price - "I need the money to fix my car".

If the price seems too good to be true... you know how it goes.

I know for many of you this may seem obvious, but this group of con artists have been honing their act on gumtree since early 2009, and are very good at appearing plausible and being persuasive. I'm just posting in the hope that it might spare at least one person from having their christmas wrecked.

Best Wishes,

Smaldini xx

Widelats

I used this site once, tried to sell a phone, i had 17 scammers contact me with various ways that they could pay me, not one of them by cash and face to face, usually the mails i got said "I'm contacting you about the item, i will pay you what you like for it, please send it to so and so, Nigeria, payment by paypal release once your tracking number is verified" it is a mail that can be copied and pasted to anyone about anything.

I had the "i know i should call you but i can't right now" thing too. Needless to say i gave up on their site totally.

joolsybools

A piece of good advice:

Don't use gumtree.

bosseyed

joolsybools wrote: »

A piece of good advice:

Don't use gumtree.

Meh, I've used Gumtree a number of times (to buy and sell) with no real issues. I think as long as you keep your common sense ticking over in the background and you're prepared for a percentage of people on there to be massive chancers then you'll be ok.

hartcjhart

bosseyed wrote: »

Meh, I've used Gumtree a number of times (to buy and sell) with no real issues. I think as long as you keep your common sense ticking over in the background and you're prepared for a percentage of people on there to be massive chancers then you'll be ok.

I also use Gumtree a fair bit,and as said above it is ok but keep your wits about you,
and to be fair they(GT) are trying to 'clean' it up a bit and are posting advice as how to get the best from the site

Enfieldian

As the sayings go...

"A fool and his money are soon parted"

&

"If it looks too good to be true then it probably is"

These do not relate specifically to Gumtree though, more like life in general.