I thought everyone should know about a recent scam a friend almost fell for.
My friend lives in France but got her eye on a very nice 2009 Equi-Trek horse box being sold in UK are a very reasonable price via a local trade magazine.
Fortunatley my friend came to me to ask to use my paypal account to pay. For the benefit of this dialogue I shall call my friend "dobbin"
Here is what she told me.
"Amy Sheppard" was selling a horse box as she didnt need it since her husband died (recently) . "Dobbin" was sure it was genuine as "Dobbin" came from the area she originally lived and the surname Sheppard was a common local name as well as an unusual spelling.
However Amy Sheppard had just had a bad experience with a potential buyer who tried to pass off forged notes to her so she was frightened to have anyone call at her house as she was on her own.
Amy offered to deliver the horse box to "Dobbin" in France rather than have Dobbin or a representative call at her house in the UK. Lots of photos were proivided to sahow how good the box was and why Dobbuin didnt need to come over to Uk to see it before buying.
She also declined to accept a direct bank transfer as she preferred to use Paypal so that "Dobbin" was covered by the buyer guarantee.
She sent a link to Dobbin so she could read the guarantee and how she could reverse the payment any time up to 30 days.
Dobbin was mad keen to pay her money and get her shiny horsebox delivered to her in France at knock down price.
Now i don't know if your alarm bells are ringing at this stage but mine were
The email address of Amy Sheppard was amy.sheppard@ccuri.co.uk
Now personally I have never seen that email domain before so i checked on it. ccuri.co.uk was a private email domain which had been registered by Amy Shepperd a few weeks before under the address 24 Grosvenor Square London. A quick google reveled that is the US embassy in London!
Checking the buyer protection link she sent revealed that to be a fake site.
Dobbin contacted the magazine who immediately took the advert down declaring it a scam.
Dobbin then checked and found the same advert elsewhere in the same magazine and later found it on ebay; all identical pictures and descriptions but different stories/locations etc .
Ebay have also now taken the advert down.
So I guess the message here is beware; if it seems too good to be true it probably is.
This scammer put a lot of effort into trying to develop a believable alias including fake websites and email addresses.
There are doubtless lots of other similar adverts around posted by this scammer so please beware and be especially aware if any email address ending with "ccuri.co.uk" as the email domain is owned by a scammer.