Got scammed, bigtime...

[Mike80911]

Sorry to hear you got taken that way. There seems to be an awful lot of that going on.
The one thing I love about Pelican is that the forum members here are always wiling to help each other out. I was looking to buy a car from Florida and asked if any local Pelican members can go take a look at it for me? Within five minutes 3 people volunteered. Maybe your loss as unfortunate as it is can teach all of us a lesson. If you are interested in a car that is to far away for you to actually see and touch post a thread asking for help and let one of us go see it, to make sure it is legit. I know if anyone needs someone in my area to do that I would love to help.
Hope this all works out for you

[Outlaw_singer]

mattdavis11: that is interesting to read! Any possible lead is better than nothing. Still can't believe that there are people out there without any moral. I told the seller i was actually buying the car with money i had been saving for my baby. With rate of interest being nearly nothing over here, a Porsche seemed like a good investment...
Would you be willing to do so? Wow, thanks a lot!! You guys are great...

[Jim2]

Outlaw, in Canada, any incoming funds to a bank account which come from an outside source are held for about 7 to 10 days (or more) until the funds clear, which bank tellers have mentioned is for laundering and fraud reasons. I don't see how these culprits access the money since all USA institutions must have similar rules to Canada. Seems this would provide you a window of opportunity for your bank to contact the recipient bank and halt the payment. Off to your bank as soon as they open, deal only with your bank manager, bring copies of all paperwork in hand...

Best of luck.

[1990C4S]

Wired funds likely clear immediately, unlike a cheque. If the seller did not have his money he would still be stringing the buyer along and pretending to arrange shipping of the car he likely does not, and probably never did, own.

I still say that the seller was likely not in the USA.

[LeeH]

Based on your original post, it sounds like the wire's destination was a Bank of America account. Did you verify that the routing number was, in fact, a BoA number?

[Outlaw_singer]

Jost got home again from an exhausting day. A quick reply to the latest posts before going to bed...

Mike80911: the more i think of it, the more i realise that i should have asked here for someone who was willing to have a look at the car. The biggest reason not to was that this ad had no signs of a scam to me at the time which is why i just went for it.
jim2: that sounds like a good method for having situations like this resolved. It would be awesome if that would be applicable in my case but unfortunately texas is not part of canada as you know. And a scammer knows this as well probably which is why they wouldn't choose a canadian bank i guess. Anyway, first thing on my list tomorrow morning is going to my bank. I also found out now that there is a belgian department of the bank of america which i will be giving a call as well.
1990C4S: i'm afraid you are right. The one thing i don't understand is that when wiring money to the US, we need to make sure the name of the beneficiary is spelled correctly. When wiring, somewhere along the route this is checked with the account number for in case someone uses a false name. That must mean the owner of the account probably used a false ID card or it was indeed a Stewart/Stuart Diamond... He might have sent Stewart to me while it actually is Stuart. A bank may cause this 'error' as a matter of misunderstanding.
LeeH: do you mean if the account number i received was indeed a BoA account number? If so, yes, it was. When passing the sellers bank data to my bank for the payment, i only had an account number, a SWIFT code (which corresponds to the BoA) and an owner's name and address (which where high likely false). Also, when speaking to one of he supervisors, i passed this account number to her and she checked the number, never telling me this was a BoA account. She just couldn't tell me any info about the wirement because of the secret policy they handle.

[stomachmonkey]

FWIW, found a Stuart Dimond (note the spelling, Dimond, not Diamond) south east of Round Rock.

Free people search and contact details for Stuart D Dimond | 411

Edit, looks like he may have lived in Round Rock a couple of times.

http://radaris.com/p/Stuart/Dimond/

[Scuba Steve]

If it's the one in Manor his Facebook profile has a lot fewer cars and a lot more cats than I would have expected.

Outlaw_singer, do you have any of the pictures that you were shared? Maybe a reverse image lookup would yield results of some kind.

[mattdavis11]

I'll do the ground work, keep the hits coming.

[dewolf]

See if you can post on an internet slueth site.

[stinkindiesel]

I'm in Georgetown, just 9 miles north of Round Rock. Let me know if you need me to put eyes on anything.

Gary

[Outlaw_singer]

stomachmonkey: thanks for trying to help. It very possible that it might have been a Stuart Dimond. The reason i say it's stewart diamond is because that is what he sent to me by text. Perhaps the different orthography is a reason for banks to not recognize any evil when a certain name is pronounced exactly the same. Sounds very likely for a scammer to pull a trick like this to make it harder to find out his real identity. And i guess, having live in round rock texas would possibly leave him with an old ID saying so if he reported the ID stolen or missing. Unfortunately, i'm not sure where i might take this info.
Scuba Steve: Here's the only picture i had saved on my phone. Don't know if it's any good...
mattdavis11: thanks, there's still the 1% hope I cherish...
dewolf: i'm not sure what you mean by that. I tried some google and the best i can come up with it that it's some sort of internet investigation page, correct?
stinkindiesel: thanks a lot but at this point, i don't know what i could possibly ask you. It makes me see even more that i should have asked if someone was willing to check the car out before buying.

As for an update, there isn't really any... Went to my bank this morning, spoke to the headquarters on phone, called some people i know which might be able to help me, in the end it all came down to this: "has the money left your account already, sir? Yes? Then i'm afraid there is not much we can do but to file a claim" Which in my ears sounds as another document to put on the pile...
I need to say that I'm happy that there haven't been any comments like 'djeez, do guys still fall for this?'. Even if it does have some truth in there, it's something you really don't need when in a situation like this.
With all i had, I tried to still make things right in the last couple of days but i'm starting to reach a point at which i see i don't have any more tricks up my sleeve. I'm not actually surrendering, but i'm starting to think that i will be needing to try and forget about what happened and move on the sooner, the better. I can only hope karma catches up with him. I've heard about the biker gang shooting in texas. Maybe it already has...

[dtool242]

No hits for the image on tineye.

[john70t]

Originally Posted by Outlaw_singer

john70t: i'm not sure in understand this correct but if i do, i don't believe i will be accusing the bank for not seeing this scammer used a false identity. Is that really an option in the US?

After 9/11, especially, all sorts of federal banking security measures were put in place.
You need a valid picture ID(name address) and a Social Security number to open any account.
All of that should be on file in BOA records and there shouldn't be any question of who he is.

It should only take an investigation by law enforcement, or a subpena from a lawyer (or yourself if acting as a Pro se attorney) to obtain this information.

There shouldn't be any road blocks. Federal banking and telecommunications crime were committed.
It doesn't matter if it's a small time scammer or an AlQuaida arms dealer.

If BOA opened an account knowing the name spelling was incorrect as well as other info, then they may have been an accessory to a crime.

[LeeH]

Well, bad news. Found the same car for sale on Craigslist in NY:

1981 Porsche 911 SC

Don't know if this is another scam or just where the scammer pulled the pics from. Ad is 25 days old. Probably want to pull a screen shot to reference for the future.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by LeeH

Well, bad news. Found the same car for sale on Craigslist in NY:

1981 Porsche 911 SC

Don't know if this is another scam or just where the scammer pulled the pics from. Ad is 25 days old. Probably want to pull a screen shot to reference for the future.

Damn.

Thought there was something odd about the pile of snow in the pic.

Austin area does not get that much.

[mattdavis11]

That's more snow than our sno-cone trailers have. I didn't have a chance to get to RR today, maybe tomorrow.

[LeeH]

Here's the ad:

[A930Rocket]

Anybody ask questions about the NY owner yet?

Is it a scam or maybe he's the real owner?

[Scuba Steve]

Anyone know how to reply to them in a way that should get a little info out?