[Luke567]

OK, I feel as a responsible digital spy member that I should warn you all of the possible scams which are around to get you to buy cheap phones.

Last weekend, my dad e-mail a seller of 20 P900's to ask if he would sell in 5's or whatever, and what the payment options were.

Then, suddenly the auction disapeared from eBay.

A few hours later, an e-mail from denmark(if I remember correctly) arrived. It said that they had my dads email address in thier contact books and that they were selling lots of phones in bulk of 5 for really great prices (working out at around £100 each for p900's).

So, my dad e-mailed them back and they said they would deliver 1 phone, and upon arrival my dad would then give them payment for the rest of the phones.

The next say, there was another email saying the phone was dispatched already and should be at UPS by now.

About 30 minutes later, there was an e-mail from UPS . It said they had a package for my dad and that they would dispatch once payment arrived.

It looked very dodgy, but the e-mail was from 'services@ups.com' so most people would have fallen for it. However, when we investigated further the e-mail has been sent from the same IP address as the e-mail from the phone sellers, so this was obvisouly a fraudster at work.

They could have got away with it if they made the e-mail more proffesional and didnt send them so soon after thier e-mail.

Anyway, im sure I have bored you all enough now so I will shut up.

I would however like to enforce that if its too good to be true, it most probably is! Dont fall for these kind of scams and always look sharp and dont get tricked by the fraudsters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Regards, Luke.

[lalaland]

If I were you I would forward the email with a copy of the email header to UPS and let their fraud team deal with it.

UPS will take this matter very seriously and attempt to take action against the hoaxter.

[muffinhead]

it's funny that the email was from denmark - could it have any connections with centraleuropages? does anyone have the IP address for Dino & the fake UPS address?

[Luke567]

Ill get my dad to check over both the IP's.

It was wuite funny becuase we sent them a message saying that my dads brother was worknig nearby and would arrange a pick-up.

They responded rather quick saying that it would not be nessicary(sp?) to do so.. lol

[mrsdev]

Good for you Luke, taking the time to tell us all about this scam.
Did you let E-bay know? The usually want to now about this sort of thing to try and put a stop to it. Well done your Dad for not being conned, alot of people would have just acted on faith, as alot of e-bay deals are really.

[pukey]

surely they could never get away with it.

Wouldn't eBay have their Address?

When i buy off eBay, i always make sure the seller has a good history of positive feedback, that way you can be almost certain of a good transaction

-Luke

[o x y g e n]

Thanks for the tip-off Luke. Very useful to know esp for those of us looking for bargains on ebay.

[Luke567]

Well, we could not be sure if the seller we asked a question to was connected with the people who e-mailed later.

It could have been that when he knew we were interested in these phones that he had a 'catch' and then took the add from eBay thinking he had a victim.

Btw, the company was in Holland and not Denmark like i originally suggested.. sorry.

There is not much proof to present to eBay and it is really out of thier hands as we dont know if the eBay seller was linked.

Just be carefull when your dealing off ebay, you dont have the protection you get whilst on it.

[benzippy]

While we're on the subject of frauds and cons, does anybody know if the matrix phone schemes are a con, i suspect so, but i just wondered if anybody had anything to say about them???


Ben

[Luke567]

They are not illegal(should be) but never buy info from anyone on ebay.