folks
i have to say i'm well impressed..speaking from a police point of view we could do with a thousand more like you!!!..the normal standpoint of the police is usually to class this kind of thing as a civil debt..i know..hear me out before you all go off on one!!..LOL..it usually takes place like this...
Furious Ebay bidder comes to police staion to complain of fraud.
they bring with them a printout of the payment invoice and a bank statement showing the funds have indeed been payed to an unknown seller.
so far this is all we have to go on,so next step is to contact Ebay to get the sellers personal details...for those of you who have dealt with Ebay you will know what im talking about,we have to fill in a small rain forest of paperwork just to get a name and address,this can take anything up to 2 months or more!!
Hey presto we have the name and address of a person...he lives in the back end of Nigeria and is directly descended to Dr Livingstone..no joke ive had much worse,one case of fraud i investigated it turned out that the computer that had sent the fraud Emails had in fact been donated by good samaritans from this country...you couldn't make it up!!!
at this stage the cost of the investigation has far outweighed the cost of the item thats ben payed for and the plug is pulled "NOT IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST TO PURSUE"..
sites like Ebay are a goldmine for the dishonest and unfortunately for every scam that fails another three will bear fruit...this gives you an insight as to why most police officers will normally run a mile when Ebay is mentioned,but the tides are changing at my station a CID taskforce will activley take on any investigation to do with Ebay and are getting good results...
my caps off to you keep up the scambusting
Andy n Sue
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