Scammed by Daniel Williams / [email protected]

Posting on behalf of my mothers boyfriend.

He was looking on eBay for a trike motorcycle as he recently had a knee operation/knee replacement and found 2 wheels a bit hard to cope with hence the reason he was set out to buy a trike. He got a loan out for part of the amount and the rest he had in savings I believe. He found the trike he wanted, a Honda Goldwing GL1500 E in Gold with the registration started A18 I believe and it was up for £4900

The bike was advertised in Aberdeen Scotland but he was getting texts off an Irish number starting +3...

He contacted the seller, after a brief to and fro of messages he paid £4900 into this persons account through a paypal link that the seller sent him. Turns out its a phishing scam, and the paypal address he sent him to pay the money through wasnt a genuine paypal site, and neither was the eBay advert, the seller ' nsales88820 ' had copied another users auction (or so i believe after spending 2 hours investigating) the original seller I believe was ' scarsnl '

I did a bit of researching, and from what I can make out [email protected] or Daniel Williams is also linked to [email protected] and the [email protected] has an ebay account with the name kay-b20 (or something along those lines)

Bit more digging found this daniel selling a vintage caravan on Gumtree, along with a mobile number which i rang , and after a few attempts a woman answered, I asked to speak to Daniel Williams and she hung up, several more attempts and a man answered, I asked if he was Daniel Williams, he wouldnt tell me and became very hostile and asked who I was, how i got his number, so i explained the scam, who got scammed, mentioning names, amounts, and the trike in question and I mentioned that 2 police forces are investigating and he said its nothing to do with him and hung up.. strange. Didnt sound scottish or irish either.

Anyone provide any info on this person(s) ? Police are investigating aswell. My mums partner is adamant hes lost his money, its a bit rough as he is 60 this year so people of the older generation are more trusting, and are not aware of scams, phishing and what not. hes just had major knee surgery, took a loan out for it and has even modified his garage to accept the width of the trike he doesnt have.

Ebay don't want to know as he bought it outside of ebay, paypal dont want to know as it was done through a phishing site, even though its come up as a registered verified user.

Money was paid into a Natwest Account, with the account number 70673713 sort code 600905 with a name of C L POPA

Cheers

Welcome to Scamwarners 'findingdavid' and I'm sorry to hear that a relative has lost money to these criminals.

We're well aware of the activities of them and they are a large organised gang, based in the UK, operating on every major ad site and if you look here you'll see daily listing I make of some of their posting on just one ad site - Autotrader UK -

http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=82849&start=570

I'm sorry to say that I must confirm that there is little chance of recovering the money and this has been going on for many years and the gang are very well organised and, if there is any action being taken against the gang, so far it has proven ineffective.

I know that a victim on another forum of which I am a member is taking the issue up with her MEP and the situation s only likely to improve if victims take the matter up politically. People must be more aware of how widespread frauds are on ad sites, and I would never use one to purchase anything and the UK banking system is loaded with bank accounts set up simply to receive stolen money. Once they receive a payment they're simply closed but there are so many in existence it barely inconveniences the criminals.

The situation is very frustrating and I spend a lot of time posting details of their fraudulent adverts and trying to get details of their activities. The greater concern is that this criminal set up for disposing of stolen funds has the potential for use in much larger frauds. I suspect that it will only be time before they become more ambitious.