Scammers working on the platform

[Chat]

Hi All,
I don’t know where this thread should be posted but just want to make you all aware that I recently made a purchase on this very Forum to a guy that had access to the forum and messaged me about ABS pump that was under the wanted section.
They claimed they knew a guy called Barry and that I should email him.
I then conversed with Barry for some time seeking pictures etc to gauge the pumps condition.
We then negotiated a price which I was happy with and then agreed for me to make the transaction via PayPal.

Once the payment had been sent I then noticed the name on the PayPal account was under Rebecca Thomson.
That got me thinking hhmmmm how legit is this. So after doing some investigation I found the same very picture he sent me
Which was of a ABS unit in the states hhmmmm. What’s going on here……
Unfortunately by that time the communication came to a halt and then the messages on FDOC was deleted.
So I guess what I’d like to get out of this is to spread awareness on the forum and perhaps for this to be investigated.
Many thanks FDOCERS

 

[Matt]

I've been looking into this, thank you @Chat for providing details so quickly. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to prevent this when users go off platform.

I'm sorry for your experience, the good news is that @Jit had already banned the user on Friday so this account can't message anyone else.

This interaction had some major red flags, if others are reading this please watch out for these signs and report anything you don't think looks correct:

• User was brand new with no history
• Messaged regarded a wanted add (wanted ads are often targeted as they know you need the part)
• Wanted to take things off the forum (So we can’t track)
• Provided payment details where the name didn’t match the email address
• The picture of the part provided by the 'seller' was easily found doing a reverse image search

I'm always happy to investigate and ban scammers however, it gives me much more joy to do this prior to them scamming anyone.