To anyone who has been scammed as a result of looking to buy a used car when Money Bookers is involved. First of all this is not a report against Money Bookers as I believe them to be a 3rd party for the individuals who are the Scam Artists. There scam goes something like this.
"Hello, thank you for your interest in the 2007 BMW 325i. I am selling the car for $8,900.00 U.S. This is my final price, I will not negotiate a lower price as it wastes my time. I would like to keep this car for myself but I have moved to Glaskow, Scotland and this car is designed according to U.S. standards. This vehicle has a clean title, no scratches, dents, dings or otherwise and this vehicle has never been smoked in. If you are interested in buying the vehicle please send me your full name, shipping address and phone number. Here are some specifics about the vehicle. It has 12,700 miles, silver exterior, black leather interior, 6 speed manual, full warranty and all documentation. I look forward to hearing from you."
I had received this e-mail and at first was overjoyed and thought I was extremely lucky and had found the deal of a lifetime. I was prepared to wire over a deposit of 30% via western union but would only send this over if it was insured by the FDIC. Furthermore I told him that I would put the other 70% into a separate escrow account for him to verify. Once I sent this information over to him, I received a follow up e-mail. His e-mail stated that since he was in Scotland he had pre-arranged the sale to go through a 3rd party broker named "Money Bookers" and that they have the car in their warehouse located in Provo, Utah. He also stated that any shipping cost would be taken care of by him to ensure the safety for the both us and that I had 10 days to test the vehicle out, if I found anything that I didn't like I could send it back and receive a full refund of my deposit.
This immediately raised huge RED flags. For starters I am the insurance business and know that no 3rd party broker would ever ship a car without an insurance policy on the vehicle and they would require their name to be on that policy until the car was delivered. Secondly no one in their right mind would agree to let "Joe Somebody" test their vehicle for 10 days with only a 30% deposit. Not to mention after doing a kelley blue book, I found that this vehicle in it's described condition would retail for no less then 30k. He had also provided me with the VIN# and upon running the VIN# through www.vehix.com I realized it had been searched a total of 21 times. This would be next to impossible because this car worth 30k being sold for $9k would not be passed up on by 21 people and I was not convinced that only 21 people did a vehix check on it since it cost $39.00 to run it.
I then e-mailed this person back after searching Money Bookers on google and finding hundreds of reports with the same exact e-mail I had received. I stated in the e-mail that not only is this a scam but it is also extortion. That anyone who had proof that they sent money would be entitled to damages. I explained that this scam consisted of multiple felony's, including Grand Theft, Extortion, Embezzlement and that it now became a federal crime since money had been sent across state lines. I went on to state the obvious which I don't believe anyone on here had stated before or written to this person.
I let him know that by using e-mail to perform this scam that there were several ways to track it back to him. One of the most effective ways being forwarding the e-mails to the "NSA" where they could extract the IP address used to send the e-mail and trace it back to a residence. Secondly anyone who sent money would have both a send and receive code. These codes are specific to one and only one location. By looking at their receipt for the transaction they can find out when and where the money was picked up. They could then alert the authorities who could pull the video tape for that day, hour and second putting a face to the e-mail and a location to the Scam artist.
With this information being sent to him, he decided to call me personally. He did block his number however any phone company can go back in the records and uncover the blocked number. He had question after question wanting to know how this could all be traced back, I responded by telling him to review the e-mail I sent. I also told him to think of the hard working family who has just had a new baby. They have taken every hour of overtime to save money to buy a safer car for them and their new child. Working all this overtime has taken time away from the family and now they are out this money, burned, back to square one and driving around in a vehicle that may not be safe for this innocent child. With this he responded by saying "how do you know I don't need the money"? Of course this really put me over the line. He then asked "Would I be a person who would testify against him if he was caught"? I responded by saying, YES! Again this arrogant person made another idiotic comment saying "He has an arsenal of weapons at his disposal and would not hesitate to kill any authority who came to his house to arrest him"! He then proceeded to say "If I ever testified against him he would see to it that I got my head blown off"!
After this I ended the phone call. Now, I never sent money to this person so I really have no case against him....but anyone who has does has a case against this person. You can use some of the methods I described above to alert your local authorities so that they can research it and make an arrest. I am not an authority figure so I can not do anything beyond educate anyone who has been scammed.
I hope this will help anyone who has been scammed, I truly hope that you will receive your hard earned money back and this person or this ring of people will be brought to justice. You can try to contact me through this website by leaving information on a post and I will do my best to respond and be of any assistance I can be. I would post my e-mail address on here for anyone to e-mail me directly however, my e-mail address contains both my first and last name. Again I hope I have helped anyone who has lost money to this pathetic person and I sincerely hope that my words will be helpful in your attempts to recover your funds.
Respectfully,
-Me
P.S. My name, city and state have been altered for my security against retaliation from this person. But I am here to help
Robert
West Bridewater, Maine
U.S.A.