Ebay, Gumtree & Autotrader Vehicle / Car Scams

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Re: articles

Thank you yet again for agreeing to be filmed for the programme.

Received your mail today and have had a good look through it all, needless to say the replies you received bear me no surprise.

May I also add that torlief did take both Barclays and Natwest to court but sadly it was ruled there was no case, luckily he was not ordered any costs against him.

I have to stress that I would not advise court action before fully exploring the merits of your case, I would hate to see anyone suffering further loss due to costs.

[PhilipCohen]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scam. Barclays provide Fraudsters Accounts

As far as all the UK (and US) consumer protection authorities are concerned, I have had exactly the same disinterested response (actually no response, in the main) therefrom with regard to eBay's demonstrable calculated facilitation of shill bidding auction fraud on consumers, and I supplied all the necessary facts thereof to make the case.

You really do have to wonder if indeed these large (many unscrupulous) corporations are now running the world for their benefit alone, and that they have bought and paid for our bureaucracies and elected representatives ...

The ugly reality of eBay Inc.:
eBay's crooked auctions marketplace ... http://bit.ly/11F2eas
eBay Motors (UK): Auction Fraud Galore ... http://bit.ly/I2gTEU

[Tools]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scam. Barclays provide Fraudsters Accounts

Philip, although I do agree with your views on shill bidding, sadly that is not an issue for this thread.

You are more than welcome to begin a separate thread on the issue under the Ebay section of the forum.

Please do not be offended by this but I would rather keep this thread focused on the issue of non-existent vehicles being sold.

[geordielass]

Re: Barclays and vehicle scam via ebay and gumtree

I was scammed £5000 in September 2013. I have followed the same path as yourselves. Harlow Barclay's have the fraudster on CTV which the police have and even an address, but all no help so far. I am just another number with the police Action against fraud team. Geordielass

[Tools]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scam. Barclays provide Fraudsters Accounts

Several more account numbers added to list in previous post #483

Some obtained from victims but most from Scambaiting, thank you to all involved

Rod / Boycie / John Barry and anyone else please feel free to add these to your lists for publishing

If anyone spots a listing or an account that they suspect to be fraudulent, please feel free to PM me and I can pass it on, try to include a link to the listing.

We are now aware that some of the listings contain a script that redirects the viewer to various hacked websites. Please make sure you look at the url in the address bar an example can be seen highlighted below, many thanks to Tomoland for spotting this particular one.

IF YOU DO COME ACROSS A FAKE PAGE DO NOT CLICK ON ANY BUTTONS IF BY ACCIDENT YOU DO OR THINK YOU MAY HAVE, IMMEDIATELY CLOSE YOUR BROWSER, CLEAR COOKIES AND THEN REOPEN THE GENUINE EBAY WEBSITE BY PHYSICALLY TYPING IN WWW.EBAY.CO.UK AND CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD. THIS IS ONE METHOD USED BY THE SCAMMERS TO ACCESS YOUR ACCOUNT, SUBMIT FAKE LISTINGS AND POSSIBLE TRADE OR REMOVE FUNDS FROM YOUR PAYPAL/BANK ACCOUNT.

[PhilipCohen]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scam. Barclays provide Fraudsters Accounts

You may find this video of interest …
eBay XSS JavaScript Redirect Hidden Iframe Contents
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuAvWduvzh0

[Rod Jones]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scam. Barclays provide Fraudsters Accounts

I've sorted and updated my own copy of the list. Pretty damning stuff. Seven Lloyds TSB accounts that we know of, yet Barclays ones outnumber them by ten to one!

Oh, and have some more logistics scammers.
http://gillerats.com/
http://a1moveautomotive.com/

[Amethyst]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scam. Barclays provide Fraudsters Accounts

You may find this video of interest …
eBay XSS JavaScript Redirect Hidden Iframe Contents
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuAvWduvzh0

So, can ebay make some kind of change to stop this javascript redirect being inserted into listings?

[PhilipCohen]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scam. Barclays provide Fraudsters Accounts

So, can ebay make some kind of change to stop this javascript redirect being inserted into listings?

I would imagine so; they have no trouble filtering listings for strings such as email addresses or any number of other innocuous expressions (which they then invariably misinterpret), and blocking such listings; it's all a matter of priorities; Ed Koon suggests that this problem has existed for ~10 years; but, as long as it does not detrimentally affect eBay's income, there is no problem as far as eBay is concerned, apparently ...

[Tools]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scam. Barclays provide Fraudsters Accounts

I've sorted and updated my own copy of the list. Pretty damning stuff. Seven Lloyds TSB accounts that we know of, yet Barclays ones outnumber them by ten to one!

Oh, and have some more logistics scammers.
http://gillerats.com/
http://a1moveautomotive.com/

Rod, have you reported these sites anywhere? If not I can send them to the site killers at 419eaters.

[Rod Jones]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scam. Barclays provide Fraudsters Accounts

Not reported anywhere, I stumbled across them today when searching for some common terms they use.

[Guest]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scam. Barclays provide Fraudsters Accounts

maybe there could be or is a solicitor(no win no fee) who on behalf of several of us victims of these fraudsters request details of the barclays account holder were our money went under section 35 of the data protection act, the information commisioners office told me this has to be requested by either a solicitor or the police.

This is similar to my own ambitious objective - a class action lawsuit - but I think taking Barclays to court is even less likely to succeed as my own aim of taking eBay to court. Devil's advocate says that if you send money to someone else (via Barclays, say) then the bank can't be blamed for that decision. Yes, the question of due diligence is oft discussed (i.e. the ease with which scammers can open mule accounts) but this is, ultimately, somewhat detached from the crime itself for which compensation is sought.

I maintain that The Fraud Act 2006 is straight-worded and unambigious. I've posted extracts from it earlier in this thread so I won't do it again, but I believe that the 'hotter' part of the crime is not the money laundering but the promotion of the scam itself - the listing on eBay. It is an advertisement for theft. Now, eBay *might* be excused from culpability for not finding these scams themselves on their own website, but as we all know there is a reporting facility that people like myself use rather a lot for exactly this purpose. I have reported over 6000 scam listings in about 8 months, almost half of which I have stored as full web-pages on my hard-drive. When someone gets scammed in this way (for a car, a campervan, an excavator etc), the timing is important - if I report that listing BEFORE the victim sees it, there is a strong case for enforcement of a law that has been drawn up to protect victims of scams just like the thousands seen on eBay. In the recent case of a JCB excavator scam, I DID find it and report it before the victim did anything about it - and that gets to the heart of the question of culpability. Had eBay deleted the scam listing quickly - within a few minutes - then the woman we now know to have lost about £3000 would never have seen the scam at all (actually it was her partner who saw it, and told her to transfer the money). Now, it's possible that if the partner had never seen the scam he might have ended up seeing another similar one, but that's speculation and hypothesis; in this case there are some black and white facts, including the fact that the money was transferred FIVE DAYS after I had reported the scam to eBay. I think they took about 6 hours to remove the scam listing, which is about average for them but very evidently it is too much time because it still offers enough time for a scam listing to find a victim. It is in this specific regard that eBay are in breach of The Fraud Act 2006 - that's not an opinion, it's a plain fact of law. What is needed is a lawyer familiar with that Act who can prove that this particular victim would not have lost that £3000 had eBay acted promptly, because they WERE told about this scam before it materialised.

So forget the banks - it's too long a shot from a legal standpoint - even if the law surrounding due diligence is in obvious need of a root-and-branch re-write. That hasn't happened yet, so until that day comes, the good news is that there is a different law - The Fraud Act 2006 - that doesn't even need to be amended, its wording is just fine. eBay are breaking the law in the UK (because every element of the offence takes place within the UK) and I am looking forward to the day when I will prove this in a court of law.

[Rod Jones]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scam. Barclays provide Fraudsters Accounts

Here's my opinion and recommendation. It's all perfectly doable.

eBay have a responsibility to remove listings in a timely manner
1) If a listing is reported by an eBayer with a reasonable reputation it should be immediately removed from search results pending checks. The "reasonable reputation", coupled with sanctions for malicious reporting, should prevent the use of reporting as a means of taking rival sellers out of the search.
2) It should be possible to provide further information at the point of reporting. "You believe an item is fraudulent" together with an item number box is NOT a sufficient means of reporting when you have previous deleted listings, similar user IDs, nests of inter-feedbacked scammers and so on.
3) If the listing is found not to be fraudulent in the eBay staff's eyes, the listing should be reinstated (for now) and the reporter contacted for further information to support their claim.
4) If that listing is removed, everyone who viewed that listing should be contacted, regardless of whether they won it, bid on it, watched it or even clicked on it. A link to the now-removed-from-sale listing should be in that email, obviously the buyer is looking for such an item and they need to be aware if the scam is repeated.

The bank has a responsibility to freeze scam accounts in a timely manner
Where an account is reported for fraud, it should be flagged immediately.
1) Bank transfers placed after this time should be be held pending further checks with the sender before being allowed to go through (in the same way that your bank will pause a transaction and request further information if you suddenly make a £6K debit card payment), but even then the transfers should be reversible. Much as HSBC do with your money anyway, but this time with good reason.
2) Bank transfers from these accounts should in turn trigger fraud flags on the recipient accounts as per (1) above, this time triggering checks on other sending accounts as well.
Buyer A sends to Scammer B
Buyer C sends to Scammer D
Scammer B sends to Scammer E
Scammer D sends to Scammer E
Buyer C reports Scammer D, this should trigger a check forward to E, which in turn should trigger a check back to B and in turn back to Buyer A (who could be just another scammer in the bank chain, Scammer A who fleeced Buyer Z)
3) Cash withdrawals from these accounts should be blocked using the "HSBC method" of Spanish Inquisition and CCTV leading up to and following that withdrawal (inside and outside) immediately downloaded from the branch's system and made available to investigators. Copies should be taken of ID requested for the same reason.

The police have a responsibility to take action
Action Fraud may as well call themselves Survey Fraud.

The buyer has a responsibility for their own money and safety
Would you walk down the high street with five grand in a clear plastic shopping bag? No. In that case:
1) When it comes to vehicles and other large goods, don't hand over money without even seeing what you're buying. You don't mail order a car.
2) If meeting a seller, don't walk into an ambush. This is a tricky one to avoid, but for example don't go alone. Check the address on Google Street View. If you don't like the look of it, contact the seller at the last minute (e.g. when you're about five minutes away) and ask to meet somewhere nearby, such as a petrol station (always lots of CCTV there) or outside the cop shop. A reasonable seller would be happy to do so. Don't tell them what car you'll be in before you set out, this puts your money at risk along the entire route from your house to the seller.
3) Do your homework. Especially with postable, expensive items such as cameras and test equipment. Google chunks of the item description. Copy the link to the eBay image and use the camera icon alongside Google Image Search to search for matches. If Google turns up a match but it's gone, click Google's pull-down and look for the cached version. If that's not available, get really desperate and use Bing.
4) If you've spotted a scammer, don't goad them or put in "killer bids" using your normal eBay account as they'll be able to retrieve your details, even if it involves waiting for you to sell something, then buying it themselves to track you down. Use a spare account with a fake address.

[Tessadog]

Re: Barclays and vehicle scam via ebay and gumtree

having read the many posts on this issue, clearly this is well organised and obviously very profitable for the criminals involved and must deserve some attention from the relevant authorities and certainly by Barclays who are responsible, if only because of their lack of due care with the genuine customers of other more reputable high street banks, we too have tried to contact the CEO of Barclays with no response to date!!

[Amethyst]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scam. Barclays provide Fraudsters Accounts

I have removed some posts from the thread as they are not helpful to the situation people find themselves in after being taken in by these scams.