UPS UKASH UKCASH Gumtree Scam and scams in general

cheekychap00

pro lite deep rim 42mm aero wheels £90 london 1004610603
massive job loy carp fishing tackle boxes £100 london 1004611321
jsm heat press t-shirt transfer £60 london 1004557331
mamas and papas sola carrycot £30 brighton 1004548017
lovely calligaris solid beech..table £160 luton 1004547266
kayak playboat canoe £70 london 1004605866
bosch gsb 18 ve-.. £100 london 1004564831
pine chest of drawers 3+2 £60 bath 1004458517
indesit condenser tumbler dryer £50 london 1004245192
solid pine dressing table and 6 chairs £100 york 1004128077
corner suite leather £189 nottingham 1004072451
mostly ebay lifted 99%
gumtree ukash parcelforce scam massive scam
i hope that other posters list on this thread so that gumtree
take real notice of how busy parcelforce helpline is with this scam
and some people are going to end up with a very poor christmas and a bitter taste in their mouth

GTK

Seby, you are 100% spot on in your comments. Plus, I am finding a bit of a “generation” difference where “young” online buyers seem to not think “twice” about not SPEAKING to sellers… whilst “older” (old fashioned) buyers tend to be more suspicious if you cannot SPEAK with a seller to “private” classified ad (ie not from company selling the item).

As you say you “really wanted to be the first to buy it so I added my mobile number”. This is exactly the problem, and Gumtree have now implemented my suggestion of making it HARDER to give your mobile when the seller hides their contact number.

I spent a long time assessing how this scam "works" before writing to gumgtree with ideas they can implement to hinder it… and they have now implemented. So there is a “willingness” with Gumtree to improve things.

The great news, is the scammers are now being forced to use “spottable” garbled messages or characters ON EACH NEW ad to ask a buyer to provide a mobile or contact number, so it appears this change has made a direct impact to the scammers behaviour! As this is major international scam with 100s of scam ads, putting unique text onto each ad is cumbersome and may move them off Gumtree… or make them CHANGE their scam.

Hence, my point… WE MUST EDUCATE novice online buyers with what to “look” for in suspicious ads. Like spotting odd and garbled characters is a real giveaway! Not being able to SPEAK to the private seller. Or, the seller not wanting to use Gumtree's secure email system. All real giveaways. And, everyone on this this thread has been amazing in helping with sharing this knowledge.

Look at post #489 for excample scam dodgy text that scammers are now being forced to add onto new ads.

Like CheekyChap says, Gumtree could improve the “Warnings” visible on the reply form web page to help warn novice buyers too.. plus other excellent measures he suggests (to make posting scam ads even harder)... so I suggest keep those ideas coming to improve Gumtree's own system too, as we are making progress to make things harder for scammers! And... tell Gumtree too!

GTK

cheekychap00

leather settee and sofa £60 london 1004599329
pearl target 7 piece drum kit £100 kent 1004537218
garrett ace 250 boxed £90 london 1004567524

a small minority of innocent looking ads ie
including a mobile in your reply would be fine
mobile would be necessary for contact
both scammers
what concerns me is that the ads i have reported to gumtree are still there and showing 2 days old
now gumtree says it will look at a reported ad in 5 to 6 hours.
but nobody seems to be in
one ad above even describes itself as a lovely christmas present
if we could disrupt them before christmas then that would be a lovely present for us
i messaged daniela at gumtree telling her i had reported about a 100 ads lets see how long it takes to take them down
how hard is it gumtree - we are doing your job for you
if they dont take the adds down then its a waste of time
any thoughts

cheekychap00

here is a strange one
chesterfield 2 seater leather red oxblood sofa settee ad 1004716744
for £100 london
sold on ebay 3 dec for £211 ref 281030327482 sheffield collection only
the poster offered no tel number
posting ads since dec 2012
pasted in original ebay description and pics
and used no coding to ask for a mobile number
now either he is reading on here and trying to fly under the radar
or thats his method
ad posted mid afternoon / reported mid afternoon/
now gone - either removed by himself or gumtree?
so not all scams are using the fishing technique be careful

MrTarff

My wife almost got scammed by the same person as well, identical emails and messages as all above, I thought it was a bit weird from the start and when it came up with the last delivery email I googled 'gumtree paypoint scam' and found it to be fraudulent, we've reported her and I am currently looking reporting the incident further. Thank goodness I googled it in time as my wife was convinced it was for real and was only asking me as she'd never heard of paypoint before.

cheekychap00

here is gumtrees responses to my feed back suggestions
hello
firstly i am sorry that you have had to experience this
we work hard on reducing the risk of this kind of activity from being experienced on our site,but on THIS occasion we werent sussessful. we take matters like this extremely seriously and will do our best to use the details that you have provided to prevent any further occurances of this or similr incidents. ...
and this other reply from gumtree services
hello
thank you for contacting gumtree customer services.
we value customer feedback and are constantly working to improve our site.
i can assure you that we do have a fraud team working round the clock to get rid of these types of ads.
unfortunatley not all ads are processed by our systems so certain ads do go live automatically, this is the reason why users can also report certain ads to us so we can further look into them.
once again i would like to thank you for your feedback and for taking the time to share your opinion.

my opinion is this
1 gumtree would like you to believe when you e-mail them after being scammed that its an isolated case. not so
2. gumtree have been too lax over the last couple of years that the scammers have overwhelmed them.
3 i put on just over 100 fraud ads from about 20 odd regions that i found over three days - tip of the iceberg.
4 gumtree are far too slow to take the ads down i bet if i checked some/most are still on there.

the scammers only put the ads on for a certain time to hook you
then they take the ads down and you dont have a clue because you did not take the ref number.
that works in the scammers favour because they have not been caught and do not have to register again
trading standards need to take a good hard look at gumtree.
all i got from trading standards was advice.
they get paid by our taxes and could stop this scam as could gumtree
its good that we are saving some people but what about the others who we don't hear about

Katelyn90

I was scammed by [EMAIL="lisa75morgan@gmal.com"]lisa75morgan@gmal.com[/EMAIL]
I too bought a ukash voucher for £70 thinking i was paying for a parcelforce delivery for a lovely dining table and 6 chairs from Truro Cornwall on Gumtree.
I sent a photo of the voucher in response to the parcelforce request, I took a closer look at the voucher, (after hitting the send button),noticing the warning not to pay for goods on Gumtree at the bottom of the voucher, I then typed into google ukash and found numerous scam/fraud warnings! I frantically rang around and managed to get through to ukash and luckily managed to cancel the voucher before the nasty so and so's got to cash it in (or whatever they do with it?!)
Of course i immediately called the police fraud line and reported the scam. I'm not sure how ukash works but surely there must be a way to track the person that is trying to cash my voucher number????????? When i put this question to the police officer their reponse was; that was something I would have to take up with ukash!!
I exlpained the scam to ukash and the person i spoke to there said it was a common scam and that she wasn't sure if they would be able to track it and that i should call the police.

It seems that no one wants to take responsibility for this scam there must be something we can do to stop it occurring again.

I am going to make it my mission now to make sure all paypoint retailers are aware of this scam and ask customers what the ukash vouchers are for - although in one of the emails from 'lisa' she says to tell the shopkeeper you are buying the voucher for poker/gambling as you will avoid 20%VAT charges SNEAKY SNEAKY!!


the following emails are the ones that 'lisa' uses;

[EMAIL="pop3.mailbox.server@gmail.com"]pop3.mailbox.server@gmail.com[/EMAIL]
[EMAIL="lisa75morgan@gmail.com"]lisa75morgan@gmail.com[/EMAIL]
[EMAIL="Courier-updates@post.com"]Courier-updates@post.com[/EMAIL]
[EMAIL="royal-mail@courier-updates.info"]royal-mail@courier-updates.info[/EMAIL]

telephone number: 07425620661

I was going to post our email conversation but this already a rather large post.... but if anyone thinks it might be usefull to see her emails please let me know and i will gladly post them!

Thanks for reading.

cheekychap00

just checked this morning and ads (some) still there
havent checked them all - too many
so gumtree not taking reported ads too seriously
idea what if every time we spotted a fake ad
we pasted the same ad only for a million pounds
if there was enough of us we could collaborate on different areas
then you would see a say dining table for £70
and the same one for £1,000,000 enough to ring alarm bells
the scammers could probably report us but any ideas

rimmy

this morning i looked for the ads you posted above, cheeky and all had been taken down. which are still live?

cheekychap00

quick check rimmy
mosa diesel welder herefordshire £450 ad no 1004549679
pine chest of drawers £60 bath ad no 1004458517
martindale easypat £160 london ad no 1004563387
epiphone sg g 400 cherry red london £70 ad no 1004530819
honda gx390 £230 london ad no 1004392175
york aspire treadmill £70 cornwall ad no 1004317164
this is not a full check but ads are now between 5 and 8 days old
cheers