Scammed - Desperatley need help

dstill

Hi, I am hoping someone may be able to guide me as I believe I've have been scammed. I'll keep this as brief as possible for the time being.

I placed a wanted ad on Gumtree for kids toys, a private seller responded and we agreed a price.  The next day they said they had other toys I may be interested in, after seeing photos of the items we agreed additional monies.  They contacted me a third time and the same thing, more toys and we agreed a total price for everything.  When the seller said they had dispatched the items I asked for the tracking details which they had promised they would provide me when we were negotiating. After many requests they have basically fobbed me off and as such I have no tracking info.

The seller asked me to pay with Paypal friends and family which I now realise I shouldn't have done although I was naïve about this at the time of paying.  I've contacted my bank, they say I need to wait 14 days before they can look into it.  I've contacted Paypal and they cant do anything, I've also contacted Gumtree and they can only restrict the sellers account and finally I've logged this with the online Fraud / Police website and now have a crime number.  Not sure what to do next??

[Deleted User]

 Nothing you can do. You willingly paid money in one of he oldest scams around. 

dstill

Thanks but that wasn't very helpful.

JJ_Egan

Nothing you can do not helpfull??

KatrinaWaves

Do you have any details of the person, real name, address? If not, what do you expect the police to do? 

You could try contacting the recovering bank but it’s probably in a fake name and closed now. 

PayPal have two methods of payment, one for buying stuff and one for giving money to friends. You chose to give money to a friend on PayPal. There is nothing PayPal can do. 

Think of it like giving money to a stranger in the street who promises to meet you there tomorrow with your stuff and never shows up. What do you expect anyone to do about it? 

eddddy

dstill said:

I've contacted my bank, they say I need to wait 14 days before they can look into it. 

Do you mean that the payment came from a debit card or credit card - and you want the bank to attempt a chargeback?

If so, you need to consider how PayPal will react to a chargeback.

Apparently, PayPal will suspend your PayPal account while they challenge the chargeback.

If you 'win' the chargeback claim, PayPal might permanently ban you. (I don't know if they do this after one chargeback, or if they give you a second chance.)

Then there are stories of banned people trying to open new PayPal accounts with different email addresses etc, but PayPal keep closing their new accounts.

So it depends how important having a PayPal account is to you.

KatrinaWaves

Paypal will ban you after a chargeback on friends and family. You’re basically attempting to steal from PayPal at that point. You can’t circumvent their security (and fees) then try to get your money back through your bank. 

PayPal could of course defend the chargeback with the bank too. So you will still end up out of pocket with no PayPal account either. 

waamo

How much money have you lost? If it's substantial then you can attempt to find the details of the miscreant. This may involve a further outlay.

 If it isn't substantial then there really is nothing you can do

dstill

waamo said:

How much money have you lost? If it's substantial then you can attempt to find the details of the miscreant. This may involve a further outlay.

 If it isn't substantial then there really is nothing you can do

Thanks, Its a significant amount for me especially the way things are for the country at the minute.  What would I need to do to fin the details?

waamo

How did they communicate with you? If it was from a mobile try putting the number into a search engine and see if you get any hits. Same goes for an email address. Search for identical adverts on other platforms, you may be surprised at what comes up.

If you have enough information a tracing agent may help. 

I have to say I wouldn't get your hopes up. There is a possibility they are working from abroad which would make tracing and recovery pretty much impossible. Not only that they are likely to have covered their tracks very well. I wouldn't go throwing good money after bad.

dstill

It was via Gumtree messaging and also another email address they sent a photo to me with.  No phone numbers exchanged. I've searched the usual auction sites using different variations of the email addresses but nothing is showing up