Ebay, Gumtree & Autotrader Vehicle / Car Scams

[Rod Jones]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

Same old search criteria, new scam sites.
http://das-moves-car-guardian.com
Shares a server with LOTS of other sites which appear to be legit.

Incidentally if anyone's wondering what I use to get the other sites hosted, there are several reverse lookup engines out there (and I try a few) but this one seems to be the best. http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/we...on-web-server/

[Boycie]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

In view of your last post, the use of pool staff at different branches, it occurs to me (& I may be wrong) but as these fraudulent accounts seem to be clustered within a particular geographic area the fraudsters may be getting inside help to set them up

Even if that's not the case 'righty' criminals will be attracted to bank branches where they've worked out their procedures and know that they can reliably circumvent them with regularity. It doesn't help that banks target staff on the volume of accounts they opened making it in the interests of staff to complete account opening procedures rather than decline them.

If you rewarded Las Vegas croupiers on the number of wins their players achieved there'd be no surprise that players would benefit from better luck. I'd like to call it a matter of unintended consequences of targeting performance, but actually it's been demonstrated in the most catastrophic way in the financial industry, that targeting performance only improves one feature of performance. If all it does is attract every criminal on the planet, it's encouraging an undesirable outcome even if ultimately it doesn't lose the bank money.

Actually how it happens is not my problem as I'll just compile details and facts and let others draw conclusions. A branch with multiple 'mule accounts' poses a risk to other customers and, if for no other reason, the bank should take action. Ultimately it will harm the bank.

[Boycie]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

An interesting news article

http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/13...il/story.html?

A conman involved in a £14,440 car sales scam has been jailed for 13 months.

Leicester Crown Court was told innocent customers answered adverts from a non-existent garage, Shaw Cars of Inverness, which offered vehicles for sale in Auto Trader.
Four people paid deposits up front. Another paid £10,500 for a vehicle that did not exist. Two victims travelled to Inverness, only to find they had been duped, said James Bide-Thomas, prosecuting.

Best of all is the prison term and the statement it was because he

….. allowed his bank account to be used to money launder profit from the bogus scheme

Much more of that and this fraud will soon be stamped out.

I've just noticed that I switched cars on the scammer in error and he didn't notice. It was another fake buyer buying that car. It's nice to know that the criminal can get baffled and confused too but it's unsurprising. The more fake purchases coming his way, and the more complex he has to make his processes to weed out fake purchases, the more likely he'll make mistakes.

[Tools]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

Boycie jack and rod. If you become aware of any victims of that last account boycie posted could you let me know asap please

[Rod Jones]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

A branch with multiple 'mule accounts' poses a risk to other customers and, if for no other reason, the bank should take action. Ultimately it will harm the bank.

If you want to put a Daily Mail style spin on it, you're EIGHT TIMES more likely to meet a member of an Eastern European criminal gang if you bank at Barclays. Crime and foreigners, the DM love that stuff.

[Boycie]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

There are documented examples in news stories where mule accounts have been set up specifically to target large accounts within the same banking branch. The principle being that it's easier to move money within a branch than outside it. 'Gatekeeper security' again. Once a criminal gets past the first level of security everyone presumes thereafter that the first level worked and subsequent checks are sloppy or non-existent. You may have an impressive list of checks and counter checks but there may only be one effective check and, if that's failing, there is no security.

I have only got one bank account so far, but with an impressively documented history. I'll just see if there is anything more to come from it - but I have more purchases in the pipeline and I'll keep a continuous stream running. To my intense frustration the same dealer was hacked for the second night running. No one can criticise victims when some of the UK's sharpest businesses are so easily duped.

[Boycie]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

With a planned hospital visit and one thing and another I was late getting to the fraudulent adverts on Autotrader UK tonight though I knew that they were there and I was planning to get them written up but, to my surprise/delight, I notice that they have been deleted. Nothing will 'hack' this phisher/criminal off more than his handiwork being deleted making his efforts worthless and pointless. He's operating quite a complicated and fiddly operation and any obstruction is going to be very disruptive for him. I can see that he's checking the ip's on my emails and also matching whether I've used different addresses before, and I'm happy to cause him more work. Masking my ip and setting up new mail boxes is no problem.

My error in confirming payment out of the wrong mailbox has prompted a curious response from him and, though I could drop him having picked up the account, I'm intrigued enough to play along. He claims that the money is being returned to me as I didn't properly notify the fake escrow company. As I never sent payment, it can't be returned so he's either demonstrating an annoying habit of 419scammers of insisting on adherence to their procedures to a ridiculous extent or, perhaps there is a strict division of labour between him and the account handling operation.

It's easiest for me to deny that the money has been returned, which is the truth.

[Tools]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

Not only that, the account was shuttered first thing this morning, received confirmation at 8:47am.

[Boycie]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

For a second evening the fraudulent adverts were removed promptly on Autotrader UK, rather than staying in place overnight. Of course that's no benefit for those already defrauded but it will help to avoid more victims joining their ranks. I'm sure that other fraudsters and sharp dealers operate there, but this one particular criminal organisation was/is operating on far too large a scale to ignore. I'll be watching closely what happens over the weekend when usually the scammer is at his most active and I'll be watching closely over the next month, and it would be a major success IF Autotrader UK can keep him from operating on their site.

[Tools]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

Do you think maybe they have introduced a night shift , or outsourced it maybe?

[righty]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

Do you think maybe they have introduced a night shift , or outsourced it maybe?

If they have its probably Quindell useless bunch of tossers

[Boycie]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

If Autotrader UK are taking more effective against scammers then I'll credit them for it, but previously their efforts haven't lasted for long. We'll see.

It seems that ad sites generally are facing problems with bad press

http://www.theguardian.com/money/201...on-ebay-fraud?

When PayPal refuses buyers protection against eBay fraud

Personally I'm not comfortable with giving anyone unrestricted access to my bank account and acting as sole arbiter of what they can charge to it. Whether you're a business, an ad site or a bank, if you become overrun with fraud, you no longer have a viable company.

I've posted up full details of the bait with the scammer I got the money mule bank account from with screen prints. For some curious reason the bait continuing which is making me suspect that perhaps the phisher/poster of the fraudulent adverts and the provider of the mule accounts are separate entities which is interesting to consider.

I have two new purchases taking place and I'm also putting a lot of obstacles in their path besides. The level of fraudulent advert posting on AT UK has fallen dramatically over the past few days and whether I'm having an effect or not, it's enabling me to devote greater attention to that small number. Actually one message back from the scammer suggests that I may be causing problems.

I detected just two 'singleton' fraudulent adverts and one dealer hack consisting of multiple fraudulent adverts on Sunday night, which is way down on usual levels, but still unacceptable and I'm only operating against one large scale organised scammer. I have no doubt that there are others.

Undoubtedlyt they are under pressure, and I don't think I'm helping, which is intentional. Loading them down with a variety of bogus purchase enquiries seems to be effective and I take copious evidence to affirm that the adverts I handle are fraudulent. I don't contact any seller that is bona fide. I only deal with criminals. One out of my two purchases has 'died' because the criminal's mailboxes got shut down, which is disappointing as I want his money mule bank account but, if he's losing mailboxes he's going to have difficulties.

I'll be in the market for cars again tonight.

[Boycie]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

An interesting post from 'holstein' at SW. I don't want to lift other people's post to a new forum but it's interesting in mentioning that the scammer is posting fraudulent adverts out of a range I'm normally looking at and he uses a slightly different script which exposes his ignorance and perhaps his origins.

http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/vie...214239#p214239

I am a little disturbed that the scammer may be using telesafe numbers which I wouldn't have thought should be possible, but I'll look in to that, and consider the ramifications as, if a card is being used to pay for it, he's identifiable.

[Tools]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

Slightly different approach there Boycie, as we have discussed before they will adapt their methods to the changing landscape.

As for the Telesafe number, these are now supplied FOC

Telesafe is a FREE service which protects your telephone numbers and allows us to block calls from unsolicited third party contact. If you would like to take advantage of this FREE service tick the Telesafe box.
The service works by offering customers placing adverts through Auto Trader, both on and offline, the ability to have their telephone number replaced by a new number that appears in their advert.
This new number is automatically directed to the original phone number, thus when a buyer calls they are immediately routed to the seller as if calling directly at no cost to the seller.
Unfortunately we are unable to support text messaging to Telesafe numbers.

[Rod Jones]

Re: Ebay & Gumtree Vehicle / Car Scams

Google Translate gives the following clues.

Bulgarian "комисионна": commission, poundage, brokerage
Japanese "歩合": commission, percentage, ratio, rate, poundage
Romanian "comision": commission, errand, poundage
Swedish "provision": commission, poundage
Vietnamese "tiền hoa hồng": poundage, commission