Can someone advise on possible gumtree scam please

[pjm_82]

I recently listed an item for sale on gumtree for £350
Within a couple of days i had a text message from a person claiming to live close by to me and that they wanted to buy my item the same day.
i agreed to this and said i would accept cash on collection, however the buyer insisted that £350 was too large of an amount of cash to withdraw from his bank so he asked me if he could do an instant bank transfer.
At first i thought this was too good to be true so i gave my bank a call and they told me it was safe to give out my account number and sort code as these details could only be used by someone else to pay money into my account and not commit any type of fraud.
After listening to my banks advise i gave the person my sortcode and account number and he paid £270 into my bank account and told me he would be pay me the rest in cash upon collection that day.

I saw no problem with this and after listening to my banks advise i decided the buyer was genuine as why would they send me that large amount of money via bank transfer ?

I have been trying to contact the person for 2- 3 days now asking when they intend to pick the item up.. they have messaged me the first time saying they were busy with work and they were sorry for messing me around and they would be in touch to the following day to arrange collection.

Its now been 3 days and the buyer wont answer my calls or texts. i have £270 of his money and i still have the item i was selling. but this person has my name my mobile phone number and my address ?
so despite my banks assurance i am still quite concerned.
can anyone shed any light on this please or am i just being paranoid ?
thanks

 

[Chris Routledge]

Could be a genuine issue that he's having, things come up and it could be personal.

Fact is you have a good amount of his money and an email/ ad trail to prove why you have the money. This isn't something you can lose on seen as you still have the item.

 

[Chris Routledge]

Also if you need the full amount in a hurry and someone else comes in to buy the item, then you simply inform this buyer and give him maybe one extra day to collect or it gones to the new buyer

 

[pjm_82]

thank you chris . i did consider my self wise to these sort of scams before this .
ive listed things for sale before and have endless replies asking me to email them only rather than text.

however i dont have this persons email address or name even. only thing i have as any kind of proof is the text message correspondence and his mobile phone number.

it just seems very strange to pay someone a large amount of money and then not seem to be interested in actually collecting the item.

 

[Chris Routledge]

I appreciate the situation, one of my family members sold a motor bike and the person buying paid by bank transfer, needless to say they then had some family issues and didn't collect the bike for about 6 months.

You do have his name and bank details due to the bank transfer though, or at least your bank will.

 

[pjm_82]

thanks chris.
his name doesnt actually appear on the transaction but im relieved that my bank may have these details.
im getting tired of texting and ringing them now. its not really up to me to keep chasing them :/

 

[pjm_82]

ive just viewed the transaction on my bank account and it is as follows - *personsname*13APR14 350 PAYMENT*numbers*

im a little concerned after seeing this as it states "350 payment" even though 270 was the amount recieved ?

 

[HarveyIT]

not being funny or anything, but not sure that you can really call this a scam as such, as you have THEIR money for an item THEY were/are buying from YOU. You can't help it if they don't respond to you, it could be for any number of reasons. Totally agree with Chris here. Keep hold of the email/ad trail, transaction details etc. As soon as someone else expresses an interest, email/contact the other person to let them know, if they don't respond within a reasonable amount of time, then let the item go to the new buyer, and wait to see if the other one responds. Cannot see any way you could lose on this one really. If the original buyer eventually gets back to you, and gets annoyed that you didn't keep the item for them,.. well tough basically. You've got all the evidence to prove that you tried on numerous occasions to contact them. Personally I wouldn't lose any sleep over this at all.

 

[Bob]

Unfortunately there are scams on Gumtree - my daughter was nearly caught by an overpayment scam. If your customer says he can't raise the additional funds and asks you to repay what he has paid on account, you need to check with your bank that the credit has actually cleared and that there are no circumstances where they could be called upon to refund it. Scams here

 

[pjm_82]

thanks for the help people. i know this doesnt appear to be a scam but the potential or intent may be there somehow

 

[pjm_82]

thanks for the link bob. although the majority of that article focuses on cheque payments being the source of overpayment fraud and not bank transfers i am still a little concerned about the paragraph which explains that while my account number and sortcode may not be used to fraud me for money but they could be "farmed" in order to create to create forget cheques etc.. quite worrying

 

[Anonymouse72]

have you googled his mobile no.? you might find some additional info, it's quite surprising what can come up sometimes!

 

[mit74]

'350 payment' is the reference he would have put in when entering on his online banking. I wouldn't worry about it but as mentioned be careful if he asks for a refund. Make sure it's fully cleared first.

 

[Chris Routledge]

As mit74 said the 350 payment is just a reference, if fact it's better for you as it shows the payment is part payment of the full 350.

Really though your very safe here as bank transfers can't be reversed etc (to stop fraud). Not that that matters though as you still have the item.

 

[pjm_82]

hi sorry for the delay in reply.
Just to update , a few days ago i drove to this persons house. (the address and postcode they had provided me with ) .
It was quite a remote area out in the lanes. After checking all of the house numbers i am sure that the address 100% doesn't exist.
Although, the street name and postcode they provided me with are genuine ,the house number is not as there are only 3 or 4 houses on this street and all the houses have names rather than numbers.

i have spoke to my bank and they assured me it would be very difficult for my bank account to become compromised using the details of me that this person has.However i just cannot understand if this person was genuine then why provide a fake address ?

however , i cant help but still worry about the fact that this person may be able to apply for loans,credit cards, credit etc... using my name ,address,mob num, account num and sortcode.
My bank were unable to reassure me about this possibility and im not sure how much of a likelyhood this is.
Ive never applied for independent loans before using wonga or similar websites. ive also never applied for any store credit cards so im not sure how easy it would be for someone to apply for credit in my name fraudulently , any ideas please?

I did contact the police yesterday as caution regarding possible ID theft however they just pointed me in the direction of the actionfraud.uk website which i will persue .

As for googling the phone number and persons name, i have already done that but have had no luck.

 

[bsewell]

Do you keep an eye on your credit report? This may help put your mind at ease.

If nothing happens, then they have just given you £350 for nothing.

 

[DazRave]

Until something actually happens, i don't see how you can stop it. You've done all you can do really. If something was to happen it can be tracked almost instantly and probably sorted out just as quickly too.

So you really have to do less worrying.... after reading this entire thread I'm more concerned with your worrying/health then your bank account!

 

[wibzo]

Normally Account number and sortcode alone are harmless - Jeremy Clarkson actually posted his details in the paper just to prove it's non sensitive info. However if they have your address, phone number, previous address etc, they can actually do a bunch of stuff with it. It has been fairly common for these scammers to use these details to open mobile phone contracts.

Reading your post, considering the fact that it was £270 that he transferred and promised to pay you the rest in cash maybe reassuring. As stupid as it sounds most banks don't have a bloody clue of what their talking about when it comes to scams.

 

[MarkHopkins]

Normally Account number and sortcode alone are harmless - Jeremy Clarkson actually posted his details in the paper just to prove it's non sensitive info. However if they have your address, phone number, previous address etc, they can actually do a bunch of stuff with it. It has been fairly common for these scammers to use these details to open mobile phone contracts..

IIRC someone used Clarkson's bank account details to then make a charity payment of £500.

After which he realised it wasn't quite as harmless as he thought.

 

[josaswaste-andre]

Normally Account number and sortcode alone are harmless - Jeremy Clarkson actually posted his details in the paper just to prove it's non sensitive info.

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/01/07/jeremy-clarksons-bank-account-hacked-to-prove-a-point/

 

[wibzo]

IIRC someone used Clarkson's bank account details to then make a charity payment of £500.

After which he realised it wasn't quite as harmless as he thought.

Haha! thank you for pointing that out lol but surely the scammers didn't just use his acc no & sortcode to do the crime. They needed some additional info to go with the digits i.e. address, phone no. etc...

 

[DazRave]

I'd imagine that a scammer would have (to play it safe) deposited a smaller amount if he only wanted the account details. In fact, once he had them why deposit anything at all and instead just attempted to get money out?

I stick to my previous comment about how i think the OP is being overly paranoid/worried.

 

[HorseLatitudes]

It doesn't sound like a scam that I've ever heard about before but that's not to say it definitely isn't one.

As mentioned, I'm not sure there's a lot they can do with the details you've given aside from setting up the odd Direct Debit.

If you're worried about what they may be able to do is closing the account not an option?

I know it's a faff on but better to be safe and all that.

New accounts are easy enough to open nowadays

 

[FirstClassVirtualOffice]

Can you not email and text him to say that you are concerned about him not getting back in touch, and will pop round to his house tonight. If he makes an excuse, don't reply, but go to this house anyway. Lots of houses have a name and the local post office should be able to tell you if the address you have, exists.