Horsebox scam alert

[Caramac71]

Just wanted to warn people of what is obviously a scam :mad3:

I contacted someone on Horsemart about an ad for a horsebox for sale in Kent. It was a coachbuilt 2006 Vauxhall Movano and I guessed the price on the ad was an error as it was advertised at £5500. I received an email today from the seller, saying he apologised for the delay in replying. He has recently divorced and the box is now in Scotland. He said he would deliver for £100 and if he opened a transaction with Ebay then we would both have protection. Over a series of emails (I guessed right away he was a scammer but I thought I'd try to get as much info as I could on his scam) he "persuaded" me to set up an Ebay account as I'd told him I didnt have one, and then I could do a bank transfer. If the box wasnt as stated on arrival, then he would refund me in full.

So I sent over some fictitious Ebay account details and I then received 3 emails from Ebay. They are very very convincing and I think if anyone was waivering on whether he was genuine or not, if they didnt know better they would believe these Ebay emails were real. One was a "congratulations on your purchase" email. One was an invoice with his bank details to transfer money to. And the third was a "seller opened a resolution" email whereby Ebay was vouching for the seller being genuine!

I have reported this to Action Fraud, Ebay, Horsemart and Halifax and I just wanted to alert as many people as possible.

I would never buy anything unseen, but I guess some people do. To be honest, if he'd sent over pictures of a £5,500 horsebox instead of a £12,500 horsebox then I would have been far more likely to think it was genuine in the first place.

Oh, and a quick google search showed me the Ebay ad that the photo's and description had originated from. Seller had listed her phone number in the ad so I have contacted her and warned her - she sold the vehicle for close to the asking price last Saturday!

 

[Optimissteeq]

Just wanted to warn people of what is obviously a scam :mad3:

I contacted someone on Horsemart about an ad for a horsebox for sale in Kent. It was a coachbuilt 2006 Vauxhall Movano and I guessed the price on the ad was an error as it was advertised at £5500. I received an email today from the seller, saying he apologised for the delay in replying. He has recently divorced and the box is now in Scotland. He said he would deliver for £100 and if he opened a transaction with Ebay then we would both have protection. Over a series of emails (I guessed right away he was a scammer but I thought I'd try to get as much info as I could on his scam) he "persuaded" me to set up an Ebay account as I'd told him I didnt have one, and then I could do a bank transfer. If the box wasnt as stated on arrival, then he would refund me in full.

So I sent over some fictitious Ebay account details and I then received 3 emails from Ebay. They are very very convincing and I think if anyone was waivering on whether he was genuine or not, if they didnt know better they would believe these Ebay emails were real. One was a "congratulations on your purchase" email. One was an invoice with his bank details to transfer money to. And the third was a "seller opened a resolution" email whereby Ebay was vouching for the seller being genuine!

I have reported this to Action Fraud, Ebay, Horsemart and Halifax and I just wanted to alert as many people as possible.

I would never buy anything unseen, but I guess some people do. To be honest, if he'd sent over pictures of a £5,500 horsebox instead of a £12,500 horsebox then I would have been far more likely to think it was genuine in the first place.

Oh, and a quick google search showed me the Ebay ad that the photo's and description had originated from. Seller had listed her phone number in the ad so I have contacted her and warned her - she sold the vehicle for close to the asking price last Saturday!

Hi - there's actually a few of these doing the rounds at the moment - I spotted two on Horsemart (one was also on the H&H website) where someone has obviously copied pictures from another seller who does horsebox conversions. I even found the original seller on Ebay who was selling Horseboxes for around 16K, and the scammer wanted significantly less (£8200).
I am not sure if it's the same scammer - two different stories for the horseboxes I inquired about on horsemart. Both sellers were very keen to go via Ebay and didn't answer any questions about the horsebox but pushed to get my details. The first story was similar to yours, the guy had got divorced and moved to Scotland so would ship the Horsebox etc and give me two days to view or I could get a refund (yeah right).
The second person told me his horse had died and that he was being posted off to Afghanistan in ten days and was stuck on the 'base' so I couldn't go and view the box. For a quick sale he was saying I could buy the box for £9k via Ebay etc. Alarms bells were ringing from the word go as both seemed too good to be true (and they were).
I did verify that the seller on Ebay was not in fact the same seller on Horsemart, and that the Horsebox in question for the first one (for which I received lots of pictures) , had in fact been sold. I did get enough detail to report both scams, but someone else had beat me to it.
In both cases the scammer tried to tempt me in by knocking over a significant amount of money for a 'quick sale'. They also tried to offer re-assurance that go via Ebay would offer buyer protection - I don't believe this is the case anyway as Motor vehicles are not covered. Personally, I would not contemplate buying a horsebox unseen and was only inquiring as to when I could view the horseboxes (via Horsemart). There may be some people tempted so thanks for highlighting!