I'm not sure whether anyone has had problems with scams like this here before but I thought I'd post it anyway.

I responded to an ad on Gumtree a few weeks ago for a Honda S2000 which was exceptionally cheap... the ad was then promptly removed and I forgot about it. Last week the seller got back to me saying that my message had gone to his spam folder etc etc.

"Hi,
You emailed about my 2004 honda s2000 on gumtree few days ago, I couldn't reply sooner because your email arrived in my junk folder. The car it's up for sale at £3750 now and I believe it's a good price for a car with 95,000 miles and no accidents.
I have uploaded some pics below so, let me know if you're still looking"

The original price was £4900 so taking more than £1000 off for no reason lit the fires of suspicion. I typed his email address (Arthur.Aarts@yahoo.com) into google and got a hit on an MG-Rover forum discussing a similar sounding advert from the same guy, only this one had gone a step further with the 'seller' having explained that he was a dutch soldier with the 'Royal Defence Forces' stationed in Northern Ireland and due to head to Afghanistan in 15 days...

I thought I'd try and pull the seller in a bit so suggested that the price was so good I'd be willing to put down a deposit to secure it, and sure enough I got the 'Royal Defence Forces' message. I was tempted to continue pretending I was interested but decided it was more fun to randomly abuse him. so I sent him this...


"The Royal Defence Forces do not exist. How dumb do you think I am.

Why don't you go and ---- your ------- you thieving little -----.

Get a real job.

You're lucky I only have your email address because if I knew where you were you'd would be in ------- hospital for trying to scam me."


amazingly, he actually replied to me. After calling me a "mother -------- english little cook " he went on to say...


"man...believe me ...i'm a winner in all this shit because I make thousands / month while you wake up at seven and ..for only 1000-2000 pounds/month"


I'm amazed he has the bare-faced cheek to admit to it like that. But I think the best way to get back at him is to make sure everyone is aware of his scam. Please tell anyone you know who may be buying a car to watch out for people like this.

If a car looks too cheap to be true, it probably is.

I would never send anyone a deposit outside of ebay/paypal - I would never buy a car from gum tree either.

There must be somewhere you can send a transcript of the emails and report him.

Shame you didnt play along and get the details of where to send the money...
Would have made it easier to trace him - Well done for having your wits about you though

I guess I could have kept him sweet and got more information from him, but I'd rather just give him some greif. It seems to have hit a nerve too as he's still emailing me.

he sent me this after I'd suggested he gets a real job in McDonalds:

"man...i don;'t need to get a job believe me...i have enough to start my own shit so...keep on serving in MC donalds, i may give you a tip if you behave"

amazing that people like this actually exist.

Never seen the site Scambaiters??

Full of people winding up nigerian scammers and the like for fun, even getting them to pony up money in some cases.

one of the best books ive read in a while -

Delete this at your peril - Bob Servant - read it and you will weep....

check this scam out if you own a bike its still going on ..

i recently put an 09 ktm 450xc up for sale and was contacted by a well spoken sounding guy telling me he was disabled and housebound, so could he pay by card over the phone and have the bike delivered next day to his sons whos birthday it was..

i told him i didn't have a card facility so was asked if i had a friend or someone with a facility

so i asked my mate who owns a motorcycle shop he said ok but don't let bike go for a few days just in case so i ring him back and tell him same..

he said he understood but its his sons 21st and the bike he was buying, the seller had pulled out at last minute so he really needed it next day...

anyway i happened to be speaking to a friend later the same day who owns triple d motorsport and i mentioned i was selling to a guy for his sons birthday

to which he replied "it wasn't a posh sounding guy, disabled, for a 21st was it?"...

turns out they had had 2 brand new ktms from them a couple weeks before on card details stolen from well off old people..they had tried on another of neils(guy from triple d) mates selling a dirt bike also..

anyway niel is over the moon and contacts the police about it as i am still in a deal with the scammers..

i was contacted by police from 4 counties.. possible more i can't remember as i was on phone nearly all day with them.. all on that same day as the scam was countrywide and had had loads of people..

anyway get this...niel asked if i would drive to meet them with bike and coppers in my van and backing me up to try and capture these guys.. it was suggested to both merseyside and cumbria police (where triple d is) that me3mbers of the public were prepared to help catch them from lending vans to even offering a bike as bait in case i didn't want to put mine up if it went wrong ..

and do you know what the police said ?

oh its not our durastiction! that was cumbria

its not our durastiction! that was one of the southern counties

even though the bikes were scammed from triple d in cumbria they were delivered to southport merseyside and other bikes bar some delivered to somewhere in south were delivered to merseyside also ..

basically they all, bar one leason officer from merseyside, didn't want to know! not one force wanted to catch them i got excuses from its only the minions collecting the bikes.. to the banks are making good the money so unless the banks report it as a crime they can't do anything! and this one guy tried and was told at every turn by superiors to leave it alone ..he was that frustrated he said its not what he joined the force for! to see old people being conned and shops done over as well as people like myself scammed was a crime needing stopping in his view..

what they were doing was ringing wealthy old people pretending to be from the banks and confirming thier details which gave them card numbers/account details etc
then ringing up people selling dirt bikes as most are not registered (difficult to trace)so are easy to sell on..doing the housebound birthday scam on shops and high value private sales then selling and apparently making tens of thousands per month..

so after all this activity and me not delivering the next day i get a call from the guy asking whats up and why i didn't deliver..

i told him i knew it was a scam whereupon he instantly changed accents and said he was from fraud squad and was trying to catch people dealing with these scammers!

it threw me for a second or two but having been round the block a few times i am not that easy to divert so i told him nice try but don't hold your breath on delivery

the cheeky sod asked me how i got on to him so i told him everyone in the dirtbiking world was on to them by now and they were due to get caught as the police would be delivering them and had tried to get me to do it in the vain hope they would give up

so he then told me it was doing no harm as the banks were making good and if i still wanted to do the trade he would buy for a couple k more so i would share in the spoils so to speak! can you believe it!

even if the banks make good in the end, imagine the worry and mither involved..my mate from triple d was worried sick 2 new bikes were near 14k it would wipe out most of there years profit as it had been slow year with the financial climate as it was..

just thought i'd share that

don't please say anything in defence of the police..do not get me started on them!

I doubt the banks will be 'making good'. They used to a good few years ago, but changed the rules so it's the seller who'll be left out of pocket.

Gumtree is rife with scammers, I've put a few adverts up on the community section on behalf of a local group I'm involved with and the number of scam emails we've received to the inbox is huge.

We don't sell anything, heck we don't even charge but we get all sorts of 'we want your financial backing' etc.

I do believe they make a lot of money too, because there are people stupid enough to buy cars without going to see them first, or who believe people who put up a convincing story. I enjoy responding to them, I once told one guy who wanted backing for his diamond mine to apply to go on Dragons Den, and I sent him the link. Less than polite response.

the police will never bother doing anything that involve hard work! as my mum works for them in the money and seied goods, always tells me of the stupid things they do, rented vans parked up for weeks and never retuned to the rental firms,trying it with over time (best of all when she declines there over time!mostly always)
getting her to count money bags and i mean BAGS! with just 1p or a couple of pence inside that some old biddy thought would be funny to hand in to the police, that then has to be loged and dated then processed, a wast of time! awh!

I think it was on scambaiters that I read a few items a few years ago. One of them was very long. Didn't help that I had to stop a few times as I had tears in my eyes and my stomach was hurting from laughing so much. Kept getting a scammer to send him money in the hope of getting large sums of money. There will always be people that scam instead of working for a living as long as there are people gullable enough to fall for their scams.

I would say always send your money via Western Union..

You are guaranteed a fantastic deal in loss of hard earned cash..

You also know that those poor nigerians need your cash, c'mon how they supposed to live and survive..heh?

LOL.............


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Obviously a joke...

If you value your money than think before you spend!

If something seems too good to be true, then make sure you know where he lives :-)