Got scammed, bigtime...
 

Hi Guys,

i have mostly been a reader here on the pelican, not so much of a poster. Mostly because i became a porsche enthusiast about two years ago and at first, there is still so much to learn rather than to teach...

Anyway, i got myself up in a situation where i thought i might start a thread over here. Maybe rather than trying to get a solution, this may prevent the scammer from making other victims who read this. Here's the deal, described very briefly.

I'm from Europe and have bought my previous Porsche through craigslist. While i had someone who wanted to buy that car from me a few weeks ago, i decided it was time for something else. Last sunday, i found this 1981 911SC on craigslist: silver over black car, sports seats, second owner since 1983, 160xxx miles, about 30k of invoices... Anyway, a very nice car at a very reasonable price, yet not as cheap as the typical scam. I got in touch with the seller who name himself Stewart Diamond, living in Round Rock, Texas. I had a 10 minute chat with him and when i came to the point that i told him i was willing to buy, he said he didn't prefer selling overseas since he didn't want to wait for the money and he would be selling it locally since there seemed to be plenty of interest. The next day, on monday, i called him again to see whether the car had been sold. It didn't so i asked him again if he wasn't interested in selling to me, saying that the money would be there by the end of the week. He agreed but seemed a bit reluctant. Immediately after having sent the payment i told him i would send him a payment confirmation the next day. Again he said he didn't like who this went, saying that i could cancel the transaction and he would sell it locally. I called again for a few minutes and he agreed again. On tuesday i emailed him the confirmation but never received a reply. From then on he didn't reply to my messages/phone calls either. Friday morning i called and the phone rang but no response. 3 hours later, the phone number is no longer reachable... I tried al kinds of stuff at that point: my bank, the police, bank of america, seemed like noone is capable of taking any counter actions...

I'm sober enough to see the money is probably gone by now. The only thing i which i haven't done yet, is to try and file a claim in America, as i was advertised to do so by a fellow pelican whom i have been in touch with. For me, it looks like the end of my particular Porsche dream but hopefully others will read this and be extra carefull when it comes to this stuff. I have been buying online for years from all over the world, never had any serious issues before. I guess that is what made me fall for this...

At this point i'm still not very sure if the scammer was a pro or someone who couldn't resist the seduction. In case of the second part he might have actually sold the car locally and scammed me. If so, the VIN of the car was WP0AA0911BS120135 and any info about this vin is more than welcome.

Best regards,
Robin

I'm sorry to hear of this situation and of your apparent loss.

As I read through your post, I began to conclude the same thing as you finally stated in your last paragraph--he sold it locally and kept your money. His reluctance to sell overseas is not typical of a pro scammer as is his being "pressured" to sell to you against his will. This is just my take. Given that, the name he used is likely his true identity and it may be possible to locate him. Whether or not any resolution may come from that is another story.

The information about him and the VIN is helpful for others, sadly at your expense.

Try these guys.

FBI — The Internet Crime Complaint Center

Did you get any kind of bill of sale, even an email or text message, showing that he received your payment? Do you have a signed cashier's check, wire transfer confirmation, or anything like that? Unless you mailed an envelope of cash it should not be too hard to track down this guy.

Unfortunately he may never have even had/owned the car so the VIN may be a dead-end. Same with the phone number which may have been a "burner" cell phone.

I just googled "Stuart Diamond, Round Rock, Texas" and got a hit on a whitepages site. Coincidence? I don't think so. No hits for "Stewart Diamond."

Good luck
Larry

How did you pay him?

Maybe look for a local private detective, it's worth a few bucks. The guy is likely still around, he left a trail of some sort.

Start with the VIN and see if the car ever belonged to the guy...and if he just sold it locally.

Got scammed, bigtime...
 

Damn sorry this happened to you. I'd love to sell my SC overseas so I know I'd never see it around anymore. Id get melancholy for sure.

The overseas sale seems really complicated for both parties.

Hey guys, thanks for being responsive. It won't bring anything back but it's just nice to see...
I answer to your questions, remarks:

ossiblue: i hope we're both right because in that case, he might actually still be traced.
GWN7: thanks for that lead, i had actually already filed a claim there, after receiving that link from the FBI which i had sent an email
campbellcj: the only correspance i have had with the 'seller' occured through phone. I have spoken with him and we exchanged text messages. That stopped after having sent the payment, or better said, he stopped responding after that. I'm not sure what you mean by that wire transfer confirmation but i do have a print screen with all the relevant data on and a copy of the payment order which i signed at my bank. Other than that, i'm afraid i have nothing...
LWJ: Yes, i found that same lead on friday but it didn't make me any wiser.
1990C4S: i used a wire transfer from my local bank account directly to his at the bank of America. Although unknown terrain to me, I might try that local private detective if i managed to find a good one.

Thanks all!

Vash: to be honest, the overseas sale isn't complicated at all. I've bought through ebay.com before also and in both cases, the sale went flawless. Although the second car had many flaws which hadn't been described by the seller, i took that as the risk of buying this way. In this case i had the money sent on tuesday and by the end of thursday or friday it must have been on his account. Especially while i payed extra duties to have the payment marked as urgent. I have mentionned it here before in some thread i believe: the risk is actually at the buyer's side, which is once again confirmed... The problem i have here is that thursday and friday were holiday and so i didn't manage to get in touch with my bank on time to see if there is anything they could do. I spoke to a supervisor at the bank of america for about an hour. Gave her his account number, all my data but in the end she told me she couldn't do anything for me. I was hoping she could have the amount i transferred blocked but apparently she couldn't. It almost felt like if they support this kind of crime...

Damn outlaw. Best of luck.

Does anyone think there might be a correlation between Smokey Sales and the 911 which was marketed here? I have no idea myself, just tossing the idea around.

It impressed me how our members here could identify the Smokey ads, I sure couldn't.

Best of luck Robin.

Too late for Outlaw, but escrow people. Pay a local lawyer if necessary. These remote transactions are high risk. For all we know the seller was a scammer in Russia...

Contact his bank that received the wire immediately and report the fraud/theft. If he used a false identity to open the bank account then that's probably another felony. I'd also ask your bank if they can help but that seems less likely.

I'm on my mobile so I can't check, but someone should run Stuart Diamond through the Williamson County tax office and see if he owns a place over there. If there are no hits try Travis County since Round Rock is on the border. This could get you a physical address.

Texas does not have vehicle property tax so you can't use the tax assessor's website to see if he actually owned the car.

Yes.

Banks have all sorts of federal national identification checking procedures to open any bank account in the USA.

If that bank account was opened fraudulently, someone along that chain of command should be legally culpable.
Maybe the bank itself.

On it.

Property Tax Search

Not Stewart Diamond but Larry Diamond and STEWART G SWERDLOW.

Hmm, Stewart claims to have been abducted by military officials posing as extra terrestrials who experimented on him due to his psychic abilities.

Stewart seems to be a bit of a nutjob.

He has some youtube videos so if you spoke to him maybe you recognize the voice.

https://www.youtube.com/user/stewartswerdlow

Did you try running the phone number through Google? Even if it's now disconnected, there may some hints.

The bank is not your best friend in this situation. I have heard of banks keeping funds "frozen" for many, many months (a pal sent nearly $30K to Smokey Auto Sales months ago and still hadn't gotten the money back last I spoke with him - although he was able to stop the transfer).

These guys are sophisticated. The psychology of seeming reluctant to accept money from the buyer is a way of making the scammer seem less so. "Burner" phones with numbers they can drop after the transaction is done; that's a key part of the scam.

Chances are, no names or addresses suggested by the 'seller' are in any way related to the seller.

This seems like a big industry as there have been many many listings of '65 911s for $8000 on Craigslist in multiple locations, as well as other underpriced cars (the Smokey SWT, for another instance). Lest one thinks it's limited to Porsches, there's a guy purportedly in Colorado advertising an Audi A3 for under $3K at the moment - but only listing in in Southern California - over 1000 miles away. Wonder how many times he's "sold" that one?

One of the great benefits of this community is that you can ask for help from a local - almost anywhere in the world, and many Pelicanheads are eager to help. Just today, I had help in Texas to check out a car. Worth asking.

Checking on what Scott found, there is an automotive shop near the house of the same name. It might be possible there is a relation. I know the area well as I was a sales rep for the shop, but can't recall much other than the feeling that some shady stuff goes on there. It's more or less a compound, multiple shops, with a bunch of hacked up cars everywhere.

More than likely, I'll be headed that way during the week, and will run by the shop and the house.

I might not be very responsive today since i just got home from the baby shower for my newborn son and within an hour i have to leave again for the baptism of my godchild. Only one week ago i thought i would have experienced this day with a different feeling...
I'm just saying this so that noone would think i'm not apprectiating the input given here, it's just that i have a very busy day today while my mind is going at 110%. In reply to:

Jim2: i'm not aware of the smokey sales thing yet but I have been able to see through scams before. I have 'unmasked' this scammer 'mike tammi draughn' before and if i remember correct, i had even put a thread up here on the pelican to aware people. I hate to say it but it's pretty ironic that i'm the one who got scammed now...
campbellcj: like i wrote in post 9 in this thread, that's exactly what i did on friday. I gave one of the supervisors from the bank of america all the info necessary but after about an hour on the phone i had to setlle with a polite: "i'm sorry Sir, but there's not much i can do"... Before she told me that, i had high hopes because in my eyes, they were the only ones who were actually able to do something at that point.
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?
Scuba Steve & stomachmonkey: this stewart guy sure looks like he's missing a nut and would be able to pull a trick like this. On the other hand, i'm not sure he sounds exactly like the guy i spoke. Could be but could be not even so. I surely don't to be blaming someone who isn't guilty. Thanks for the effort!
LeeH: i did. I ended up at 'reverse phone' who supposedly had one hit for me. Of course, i needed to register and when i did, nothing came up... I found nothing else. The number he used was 512-417-1092
He also gave me an email address but he never responded to that so i'm not sure if it is his. I didn't end up receiving a 'failure delivery notification' so it should be an existing email address. It was sdemon530@yahoo.com
I pointed out the demon part at first but he told me 'not to worry. Sdemon stands for speeddemon and there wasn't any evil intent'. It sounded plausible but afterwards it sounds ridiculous...
techweenie: true that as i've noticed so. I already would have been happy if they had actually frozen the money i had wired but even that was too much to ask. A significant price difference with market value should ring a bell immediately but this one wasn't actually. I wish i would have tried to buy that audi A3 before and got scammed. That probably wouldn't have make me fall for this and would have saved me an awful lot of money... Looking back, i should have tried to ask for help here to maybe have someone check the car out but i never had done so before and it went smooth those times. This brings us to the presumably most thought of sentence at this point: if i had only...

I'll be passing at my bank tomorrow. This will probably be more of a necessary step to follow than a step towards a real solution. If it is, i'm buying drinks... Thanks for the help guys, it's a small plaster on a larger wound but i appreciate it!

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

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...

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.

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.

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?

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.

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/

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.

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

See if you can post on an internet slueth site.

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

Gary

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... http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1431978514.jpg
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...

No hits for the image on tineye.

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.

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.

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

Here's the ad:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1431997197.jpg

Anybody ask questions about the NY owner yet?

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

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