Want help identifying scammer who is (was) a member

[JeepTK]

Drama. You want it, I got it! Here's a thanksgiving tale of woe about two guys and a forum member who scammed us at the same time.

I'd love to find out who it is and get our money back. $500 each! Ouch.

A recent post in in the member market place by Rex3rd (now banned from this forum) listed some NIB baja designs LP6 lights. $500 dollars shipped. Seemed reasonable (not in hind sight!), about half price for lights they claimed they had a while, sold their jeep and was looking to get rid of... I checked their stats and posts and they seemed legit, but it was too good to be true.

I sent a DM and struck a deal, they wrote back saying they got the payment and would send the parts. Then after some back and forth about not getting the payment I got a message from them saying they accidentally sent me the wrong address. I know...looking back, I get it. Then I said I wanted to wait a couple days until the money was back in my account and they said forget it, they would sell it to someone else. That upset me since we had a deal ( I know...red flag, and I got emotional about it...my mistake for sure.) and I let them know I was upset all the while working to get my $500 back (used Zelle). Then there was a period of silence and when I pressed and said I'd gotten my money back from the "wrong address" they said okay, they would would sell to me and gave me another address to which I sent the money. Then they wanted confirmation of payment by having me take a video of me logging into my bank account (which I said no way!...I know, another red flag, but remember I was emotional at this point and not thinking clearly)...Long story short, they got my money, ghosted me and ta da. Scammed. Dang it.

Meanwhile, apparently, they were posting more deals too good to be true ( some wheels and tires) and I found out that another member got taken by the same post for the lights as me. Bummer for us both.

Rex3rd's profile said he was in Utah, but I'm certain that's a lie. Just wondering how a member with those stats was able to be on the forum for so long and then run a scam like this. Also, would like anyones help in finding the jerk(s) and getting our money back. I know it's a long shot, but I have faith!

Thanks everyone!

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[Elff]

Was the transaction tied to a credit card on your end at all?
That way you could go through them.

I always do that, even though it ends up adding some fees, unless I absolutely know the person.

A mod may be able to pull up the IP addresses that account connected from, but that could be faked with a proxy. Might be worth a shot at least to make an attempt at location

 

[Escape.idiocracy]

Rex3rd had an interesting post history- super active until the end of 2021 then basically nothing until November of this year…. I wouldn’t rule out that there account was jacked. ( as far as original poster to scammer).

 

[JeepTK]

Was the transaction tied to a credit card on your end at all?
That way you could go through them.

I always do that, even though it ends up adding some fees, unless I absolutely know the person.

A mod may be able to pull up the IP addresses that account connected from, but that could be faked with a proxy. Might be worth a shot at least to make an attempt at location

It was tied to my bank account with Zelle. BofA. I might be able to get some satisfaction with them. Thanks for the suggestion. I agree that paying a small fee worth it. Dang hindsight

 

[JeepTK]

Rex3rd had an interesting post history- super active until the end of 2021 then basically nothing until November of this year…. I wouldn’t rule out that there account was jacked. ( as far as original poster to scammer).

Yeah, probably was jacked. I was just thinking the inactivity came from selling the jeep and had stuff laying around...wasn't really thinking scam. I've always had good luck on this,and other like minded, forums. Thanks for your input.

 

[Mr._Bill]

You paid with Zelle, there is no recovery through the bank. They warned you about that when you sent the money.

 

[Lunentucker]

PM the admin and ask them to review the account's IP history. I'm guessing it was a legit account until it got hijacked from a data beach somewhere.
If that's the case then your money's gone and it ain't coming back.

 

[22EcoDs]

Friendly reminder to enable 2fa(mfa) on your accounts and have a strong password. https://www.jeepgladiatorforum.com/forum/account/security

 

[IamPro2A]

Sorry about this. Reviewing his activity, IDK about the account jacking. When he "came back to the group" he was also actively posting in a few other topics besides the sale stuff. Those post show a reasonable knowledge of the Gladiator. Sure, a scammer could have gleaned it all from reading forum posts, and posted to make the account more believable, but that's more than most internet scammers bother with, especially since english is often not their primary language. I will note that back when he was first posting, he claimed to live in Alabama, not Utah. So who knows? Scammer, or dirtbag, doesn't really matter. Just matters that people got screwed.

Unfortunately that user name doesn't seem to have much of a presence outside this forum. Often people use the same user name when possible across the internet.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

PM the admin and ask them to review the account's IP history. I'm guessing it was a legit account until it got hijacked from a data beach somewhere.
If that's the case then your money's gone and it ain't coming back.

Ya beat me to it - the admin can see the IP address of every post - at least I can on the AMC forums. The IP address is visible to admin account, PM or forum public message.
It's not easy at all to hijack a forum account with the software I'm used to - the password is encrypted on a SQL server and even the guy who wrote the software can't break the encryption. The account is associated with an email address, so to get a password changed, you have to have access to the email account. (the only way I'd know of is if someone sent me a request to change the email address because the member changed email hosts and the new email was placed in the forum account)

Friendly reminder to enable 2fa(mfa) on your accounts and have a strong password. https://www.jeepgladiatorforum.com/forum/account/security

Wise words!
Human nature is to resist strong and complex passwords so it can be a struggle.
Amazing how I got push-back when I worked for the state and the central IT boys said "8 characters, combination of this, that and the other thing" and I had a woman come to MY office and start shouting at ME - all I did was forward the central IT message to our staff. Man, she was pissed.
I had some fun with the boss when I invited him into my office and showed him how I could get full admin access to windows machines by booting from a Linux disk and expose all passwords and the web cache that held our client PII including DOB, SSN and more. He freaked and ordered hard encryption of all drives and turning off USB and CD boots and password locking the BIOS settings.

 

[Fropek]

I wonder if it's the same user that attempted to sell me OEM fenders for $400, again a price that's too good to be true. I did my transaction through PayPal so I had that layer of protection. Luckily I bailed on the deal and reported the user before I lost any money.

Anytime you're buying anything online, if it smells fishy than it usually is.

 

[Lunentucker]

Ya beat me to it - the admin can see the IP address of every post - at least I can on the AMC forums. The IP address is visible to admin account, PM or forum public message.
It's not easy at all to hijack a forum account with the software I'm used to - the password is encrypted on a SQL server and even the guy who wrote the software can't break the encryption. The account is associated with an email address, so to get a password changed, you have to have access to the email account. (the only way I'd know of is if someone sent me a request to change the email address because the member changed email hosts and the new email was placed in the forum account)



Wise words!
Human nature is to resist strong and complex passwords so it can be a struggle.
Amazing how I got push-back when I worked for the state and the central IT boys said "8 characters, combination of this, that and the other thing" and I had a woman come to MY office and start shouting at ME - all I did was forward the central IT message to our staff. Man, she was pissed.
I had some fun with the boss when I invited him into my office and showed him how I could get full admin access to windows machines by booting from a Linux disk and expose all passwords and the web cache that held our client PII including DOB, SSN and more. He freaked and ordered hard encryption of all drives and turning off USB and CD boots and password locking the BIOS settings.

I helped admin a forum for about ten years, and the IP history was invaluable.
The one and only time I was wrong was when a member was posting from different countries all over the world, often just hours apart, and was listing high end stuff for sale in the classifieds.
Other members complained that his coms were erratic.
He turned out to be a commerical international pilot and his world traveling was a day on the job.

Windows passwords. LOL
My Jeep payments come from people who can't get into their own machines and I boot to a USB stick with Lazesoft and clear the password in 3 minutes.
Works out to be about $40/minute

 

[kevman65]

You can ask the Admin for info, odds are they won't give it to you.
Liability issues and this Board is likely owned by a Corporate entity so then legal gets involved.

If you file charges (this is a Federal case, wire fraud over the internet) then the investigating department can get a court order for the info and then it will be given.

Boils down to how far you want to push it.

 

[Lunentucker]

I did find an obituary once as the reason someone didn't follow through with shipping after payment was sent.
It's certainly not common but it's not impossible either.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

You can ask the Admin for info, odds are they won't give it to you.
Liability issues and this Board is likely owned by a Corporate entity so then legal gets involved.

If you file charges (this is a Federal case, wire fraud over the internet) then the investigating department can get a court order for the info and then it will be given.

Boils down to how far you want to push it.

I don't think they are asking that an admin turn over IP information - but to look at and analyze said information to see if there was a sudden change in the pattern of IP vs posts.
Can be really tricky in the days of cell data - my IP address says I'm posting from WI, then from IL, then from SD, and it looks like I'm all over the country - but there should be patterns a good admin can recognize.
If the IPs are pretty much from one group or from one provider, then all of a sudden appear to come from another provider in another place........ there's a flag - maybe not red, but not far from it.
There's no need for an admin to turn anything over - just LOOK.
I've done that - and even here, I've done research on phone numbers and other stuff and found people who have contact me have a history. Last one who said they had the dash cubby pad would have looked legit except for the low posts - and when I ran their phone number, it showed up like the Christmas tree at Times Square. A person can search email addresses, too - or run them through forum spammer lists. It's free.
If someone tries to join the forum I admin and their email address shows up in a list - the forum software automatically blocks them from joining (at least using that IP address) and similar for IP addresses - although VPN can get around that....... it at least filters out the dummies who aren't smart enough to cover tracks or try to hide under some blanket.

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