Ebay Clasified Ad for Car Sales Fraud

JP1977

In a nutshell, my Father-In-Law bought a car through an Ebay classified ad and it's looking very likely to have been a scam and he's lost £3000.

I can't see any way he's going to ever see this money again, which is awful, but I want to make people aware and also ask if there's any success stories in getting money back from this type of fraud?

Seller on Ebay is suffolkmotorhomesltd and they're still on Ebay. Transaction was via bank transfer, seller said they'd deliver as it was quite a distance away, car never turned up, depsite many promises and phone calls, refund promised over a week ago, now no response.

I got wind of the whole thing last night and couldn't believe how many red flags this was sending out (Zero Ebay Feedback, Companies House registered address is a Sainsbury's Supermarket, Bitcoin listed prominently as a payment method on their website etc).

I don't know how he got so far as to pay them money without ever seeing the car in person, but here we are.

Ebay are useless, but that's to be expected - they can't be expected to vet every classified ad and the transaction, whilst originating on Ebay, was conducted off site (Ebay do not offer an on-site method or any buyer protection for paying for Classified Ads). But their response to investigating the seller or pulling them from the site seems very non-commital and a bit wooly. They also seem very unconcered about the 'inconvinience' of my father-in-law having £3000 stolen by a seller listed on their site.

soolin

I think the issue is that as you say there are so many red flags that I doubt many would buy, and even eBay seem to acknowledge that classified ads are a bit of a minefield with this statement.

“Information about the vehicle above is provided by the Dealer for guidance. eBay does not make any representations or warranties that such information is correct. eBay does not have control over and does not guarantee the quality, safety or legality of items advertised or the truth or accuracy of the content of this information. Please satisfy yourself before purchase that the information is correct by contacting the seller.” 

I do wonder though about the bank , virtually all main stream banks now warn people about making bank transfers to people they don’t know, did your FIL get such a warning? If not might it be worth approaching the bank asking why no warning was issued , I don’t honestly know whether there is any leeway with that, but it’s worth asking about the warning.

Is there anyway of tracking down the actual user, I don’t think the bank will disclose any info but it might be worth investigating other options for tracking down these scumbags.

Also report the seller and report again until eBay block their account, there will be dozens of other similar scumbags on classified, a year or two ago we had a long running thread naming them and trying to get them closed down. In case it helps I have reported the account. One last thing, the photos can probably be revere search in google to find out where they were stolen from and it might be worth contacting the real sellers to see if they can report as well. The photos are obviously all stolen as the background on each is different. 

Slinky

Wow. Seriously dodgy looking site, called Suffolk Motor Homes, and not a single motor home amongst them. 0% positive feedback.

Most banks seem to have huge flagging systems to warn about fraud now so he'll be very lucky if he ever sees his money again I would think. The only one I can think of that doesn't is Chase.

JP1977

Thanks for your comments. All good advice. He's accepted that he likely won't see his money again and is gradually becoming less stressed, now that he's accepted the truth of the matter.
That said, he's been in touch with a solicitor (extremely unlikely to be able to help if it's a criminal entity), the police, his bank (no help) and action fraud and is waiting to see what comes off the back of that.
I think there are three things that are brought in to focus here:

How easy it is for someone to steal your money.
How hard it is for the indiviual to undo the mistake (2 minutes and 3k is gone, seemingly forever, no undo button).
How all of the involved parties are just so ill-equipped or uninterested in dealing with it.

forgotmyname

Not only ebay.   Autotrader also had issues.

Business would list quite a few vehicles on Friday night which were advertised elsewhere or vehicles in supermarket
carparks. There would be a phone number and address of a genuine business but in the description an email address
to use instead.

I was reporting tons of them every weekend,
I found a little trick to searching the website for dodgy sellers which made reporting them easy but they blocked it.

Autotrader then made it harder to track the sales.   Well done Autotrader.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Is this classed as an Authorised Push Payment Scam? 

If so, OP you can ask the bank if they are signed up to the Contingent Reimbursement Model Code and if the money was sent to a UK bank account they should generally refund the victim. 

Which lists the following banks as members of the code:

Bank of Scotland

Barclays

Britannia

Cahoot

Cater Allen Limited

Co-op Bank

First Direct

Halifax

HSBC

Intelligent Finance

Lloyds Bank

M&S Bank

Metro Bank

Nationwide Building Society

NatWest

Royal Bank of Scotland 

Santander

Smile

Starling Bank

Ulster Bank

Virgin Money

If the money went to a bank account outside the UK I don't think there's much to be done sadly.