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Scam warning

Watch out for this scammer based in Italy, allegedly. I figured it was a scam, because of the €1200 asking price for a Lampizator 7 Lite DAC. The seller cannot do PayPal. When I asked for a photo of a recent newspaper with the DAC, the item is located 100 km away in their holiday home. Strangely, they can ship it quite promptly after payment is received....

This is the second HiFi item I have had the photo information below from the seller to try and instill confidence, so he is working under different email addresses, but seemingly with the same photos and information.

Bank Transfer Details:

Account name : Alessandra Laccarino Toni Azzoni
IBAN: IT61V0760103200001048211922
Swift/Bic: BPPIITRRXXX
Bank name: Poste Italiane S.P.A.
Bank address: Viale Europa 175 00144 Roma
My address: Via Ca Zuliani 6 30173 Venezia

Email: ‎Toni Azzoni [email protected]

These are the Photos sent to confirm ID:

Toni Azzoni by Stuart Frazer, on Flickr

Azzoni2 by Stuart Frazer, on Flickr

me by Stuart Frazer, on Flickr

family by Stuart Frazer, on Flickr
49583093057_cf5f22aa79_k.jpg
 
Just had a report by PM of what sounds like a scam attempt from a zero-post newbie using a similar MO to above. Even mentioned bloody Bitcoin! Now deleted, obviously, but I can’t catch everything.

My advice, as ever, is to use the pfm 50 posts/3 month’s membership security strategy we put in place and never deal with members with less than 50 posts that you have carefully reviewed unless you have very good reason for doing so. Even then tread carefully and don’t send money or goods anywhere unless you know exactly where they are going.
 
That's the dude who scammed me
It's not Anton Matton. This dude is rife on second hand selling sites like adpost.

After six weeks and having written 1450 euros off, I might finally be getting it back. If anyone wants to see the email chain with this crook, I have all the evidence.
 
I got his bank account shut down. No idea how he's accessing the banks

And I'm reporting all of his sales posts.
I got the exact same story about the holiday home etc
 
If he's a practised scammer he may have multiple identities and bank accounts. Although the doctoring of his identity card just by changing a letter or so looks a bit rudimentary.
 
Any chance you can share with us how you got your money back, might be useful for others to know the process you used?
 
zippy said:
I have a 100% sure way to avoid eBay scams.
I don't use eBay - simples..
Click to expand...

There are scammers on forums and ad sites as well as eBay, as the recent posts on this thread make clear. I've got hundreds of trades on eBay and have never fallen victim to a scammer there. Maybe I've just been lucky. Things can and do go wrong on eBay from time to time, as they can with any purchase.
But the only time I've ever been cheated, plain and simple, was buying from classifieds on a well-known UK forum. It was only a fiver for a CD, but others lost more. The culprit stopped using the forum in question after he did that. He's still an active member on here though.
 
Well, it was in 2012 that it happened. I don't want to trash someone publicly for something that happened so long ago. I can provide details to Tony if he thinks it's appropriate.
The member in question has been selling high value items here recently. I've no reason to think there was any problem, though.
 
irb said:
I've got hundreds of trades on eBay and have never fallen victim to a scammer there.
Click to expand...

Well, I knew as I typed the words above that they were rather bold, and I might come to regret them. But I didn't expect it to happen within a week. Unfortunately I'm now down £500, after the buyer of a pair of Martin Logans I sold on eBay claimed that they arrived with a panel not working. He lives 350 miles from me, and foolishly I agreed to meet him halfway for the handover. So I had no way to prove they were 100% when I handed them over to him, even though they'd been playing perfectly for me the night before.

The guy seemed straight at first but as the last few days have gone on his communications became pretty odd. I simply don't know whether he was telling the truth, or whether it was all a scam. But I suspect the latter.

Nonetheless, to cut a long story short, I ended up agreeing to a partial refund. Yes there were other options, but I judged they all had drawbacks that made them less palatable. (Part of that's because of the difficulty of travel at the moment, and part of that's due to personal circumstances - a family illness.)

Any thoughts? Any experience of this sort of thing? On reflection I think that meeting halfway was a mistake. I think the risk of being scammed would be much lower if I'd insisted on the buyer collecting in person, and I'd demonstrated that the speakers were working 100% before handing them over.
 
Bob McC said:
No it wouldn’t, he’d have still scammed you if he’d collected them.
Click to expand...

You're probably right.

Maybe the only answer is to avoid long-distance sales/purchases from now on. If I can't post it reasonably cheaply, or take it/collect it in a couple of hours max, it's no-go.

Most of my gear over the years has been long-distance, though, and I do like large speakers :rolleyes:. Generally, living in Scotland is a good thing, but when it comes to buying or selling second hand audio, it's a much smaller market up here. So I've bought/sold long distance many times. In the old days it was a case of poring over the small ads at the back of HiFi News, then getting on the phone. I think my first was around 1987, when I drove from Glasgow to Evesham in a Mini Metro to buy a Linn LP12 with Helius Aureus arm and Kiseki Blue cartridge. The seller turned out to be Geoff Owen, the man behind Helius. He had enormous Snell type A speakers which impressed me a lot.

It was fun, if a bit mad. But I'm feeling rather embittered about the whole buying/selling thing right now.
 
irb said:
Well, I knew as I typed the words above that they were rather bold, and I might come to regret them. But I didn't expect it to happen within a week. Unfortunately I'm now down £500, after the buyer of a pair of Martin Logans I sold on eBay claimed that they arrived with a panel not working. He lives 350 miles from me, and foolishly I agreed to meet him halfway for the handover. So I had no way to prove they were 100% when I handed them over to him, even though they'd been playing perfectly for me the night before.

The guy seemed straight at first but as the last few days have gone on his communications became pretty odd. I simply don't know whether he was telling the truth, or whether it was all a scam. But I suspect the latter.

Nonetheless, to cut a long story short, I ended up agreeing to a partial refund. Yes there were other options, but I judged they all had drawbacks that made them less palatable. (Part of that's because of the difficulty of travel at the moment, and part of that's due to personal circumstances - a family illness.)

Any thoughts? Any experience of this sort of thing? On reflection I think that meeting halfway was a mistake. I think the risk of being scammed would be much lower if I'd insisted on the buyer collecting in person, and I'd demonstrated that the speakers were working 100% before handing them over.
Click to expand...

Sorry to ready this. I think you have been unlucky. It sounds as though the buyer is just the sort of type that does this sort of thing.

Did you consider sounding him out to meet him halfway again and re-exchange? It might have flushed him out. I appreciate it is a difficult time with what is going on with CV-19.
 
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