ScamVictimsUnited.com

Im not 100% sure how i got in contact with this seller. I surfed muscle car message boards for years in search of classic Camaros. I got an email back in July of 2004 with the seller telling me he could sell me his wifes camaro. He told me he owned a business. Well times were tough for my parents so he decided to sell it to me first at 800.00 then lowered the price to 500.00+shipping. Well i sent him all the money(original 500.00) then he told me to send it fast to his friend in the UK or the car would be sold to another interested buyer. Well i did this but he refused to send the car because he said his debtors owed him money and he couldnt afford to ship the car because he was in the UK dealing with others cars because he was scammed once and they took him for all his money. Months went by and he told me if i sent him 80.00 the car could be shipped so i sent the money via moneygram 11/1/04 and then he told me this bogus claim that i owed 100.00 more to insure the car gets here safely so like an idiot i sent it because i was sick of waiting. I sent that money 11/8/04. He told me that i gave him the wrong reference numbers and that his business manager left for Nigeria(where i sent money to the last 2 times) and that he couldnt fill out the papers to ship the car and i would have to wait till mid december till he comes back to ship it. He told me his business manager had a time limit and i took to long to send him money. What makes no sence is he told me the car was shipped friday since we corrected the numbers and that the car would arrive monday 15th but monday the car did not arrive and he told me it was my fault and that i have to wait till December now for him to arrive. Now he tells me he needs 150.00 for his sales manager to cancel his trip to Nigeria and to come back to canada to send the car and i can tell hes scamming me now. He refuses to give me his phone number, people from toronto tell me theres no such car dealer as Praise Autos in toronto where he told me his business is, and he refuses to give me any information to where the car is located other than Canada and he will not tell me the shipping companys name nor phone number. He claims he has no money because he was scammed and him and his wife are getting back on their feet yet he can pay for a sales manager? i definitely think something is wrong there.... He keeps putting blame on me for stuff that i shouldnt have to do. The original deal was i send him the car payment and then he sends me the car. Pretty much its been i just keep sending him money and he milks me for it with no product. Since i have AOL i only have like 6 out of hundreds of emails we conversed with because AOL deletes your mail after 7 days and i did not know i was dealing with a possible scammer or whatever he is and if i did i would of saved each individual email. When and if you contact him hes going to change the story around because thats the type of guy he is... He will tell me such stuff as "im not a scammer, i hate cheating, i am a christian" blah blah blah yet he woulnt answer my questions.. Sounds to me like hes hiding something. Hes promised to ship my car atleast 15 times since July but obviously it is not here. I threatened him with the FBI but he told me the FBI cant do nothing to him. Numerous times since he has sent me me money orders that I have cashed. The all cleared but the final time. The fraud investigator here told me not to deal with him anymore or to accept any moneyorders but she would get back to me within 2 weeks. Well when were told by this Smith that we would get my car and this is the last chance we could give him or he accepted he would go to jail so we went to the bank and asked if we could cash this. They said “We have heard from our fraud department and its been a while so if anything bad has happened, you would have known by now so we can cash these money orders and put them in your account.” 3 weeks later they get back to us and tell us “oh they were counterfit and you owe us 10,000.61” The bank is so at fault here. The bank talked to us like criminals and treated us so badly that we want to sue.

What can we do to solve all of this? All help is appreciated. Thanks! We have all necessary e-mails and forms that had anything to deal with this scammer.

Alex folino(17 years old when this happend, 18 as of Feb15th)If that matters
Pittsburgh pa

Please help somebody! Any suggestions?

Alex this unfortunately is what you will face if you attempt to sue, the banks know where all the loopholes in the laws governing them are, and you will have to prove very strongly failure of due dilligence and the fact that they had special knowledge of the fact that these scams are being perpetrated through alerts from your attorney generals office in your own state, as well as alerts put out by the fbi and SS. Then it becomes a real battle to say the least , they will attempt to weasle out around every corner and unless you have a kick butt attorney to counteract the stupidity they will spew good luck.

I would start be gathering alerts that were put out just before or during the time that your incident happened, you can do this on http://www.fbi.gov, http://www.sss.gov and your state attorney general's site. Then you can go to bankersonline.com and check to see if the particular bank that you deal with has a past history of counterfeit items being presented.

You can try to get as much information as possible from http://www.fraudaid.com as well concerning these crimes and how they are perpetrated.

Once you have a narative of what happened in easy to read format and these other items of proof go see an attorney and show him/her what you have , ask if there is a prayer of getting anything accomplished by suing the bank.

BTW What bank are we talking about here?

You may want to talk to the attorney also about the fact that when this happened you were a minor see if that helps any.

National City is the bank name. We feel we shouldn't owe the bank anything because of their misinformation on top of this all. Yes they said not to send any more money but failed to get back to me so when we went to find out if we can again they didnt stop us and pretty much told us everything was ok.

What do you suggest i do? We shouldn't have to pay back this money since they messed up just as much. We gave them 5k of 10k so far. I think this is fair?

Can anybody please answer how i should address this situation? I do not believe i should have to pay the bank back for their mistakes as well. Yes i was told not to send the man any more money but i was told i would get back to. 2 weeks went by and i went back to the bank with new money orders after a long talk from the seller of the car(scammer) that i was promised a car if i could complete this final transaction. The people at the bank said they heard something about me and believe the last money orders had cleared and that i would be ok to cash these. So right there they contradicted themselves. I owe 10000.61. We have already paid about 5200.00. We got all of this news 2 weeks ago. I think atleast we had paid half and this is a fair deal since the banks mistake but i dont think they will listen to that. What can i do here?

Guest unfortunately you are in the same boat a lot of others are currently in. The banks feel they are above the law, that the law is always on their side.

Its a tough call as I havent seen anyone yet who has REALLY won against a bank.

Gessh makes you wanna stuff your cash in a special matress with a safe embedded in it LOL.

Push em more, see if you can get an attorney to write them a letter that would scare the socks off of them, even if you cant afford to go full strength to court at least an atty would know what terminology to use.

Good Luck

So should i contact all the authorities and explain the whole story?

Also do you agree the bank is at fault a lot on this after given me two different unstructions on these moneyorders?

Unfortunately the FBI, SS may take a report but that would be about as far as it would go with them. As for holding the bank responsible for all or part, good luck, they are snakes with loopholes all over the place in the laws, and they know how to take advantage of them.

Most likely you will be told to sue them in civil court by authorities. Even then its you against their fancy legal staff.

its ridiculous how the hard working citizen gets screwed over not only a scammer but the bank and all other aspects that were involved. Im doing whatever it takes because i REFUSE to let my parents suffer because of this

I agree and good luck with your quest, never hurts to push buttons to see what kind of a response you get.