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Scammed on Craigslist - Got my money back!
Sharp101
TorontoRegistered User regular
TorontoRegistered User regular
So I was scammed out of $400 buy some slimeball on Craigslist and I'm wondering what I can do about it, if anything.
Here's the situation: About a month or two ago I contact some guy selling really good seats for a Toronto/Edmonton Hockey game. He was charging $200 a ticket, which was just below face value and therefore a really good deal. After exchanging a few emails, we meet up in person and I pay him $400 cash.
Saturday night was the night of the game, so I excitedly head down to the Arena (The ACC). I get to the doors and the dude there scans my ticket at the scanner beeps funny. He tells me to go over to the box office. The guy there tells me that these tickets are void, as the guy that owns the Seasons Tickets requested replacements. He calmly tells me that this happens a lot and my only options are to try and get my money back from the guy or call the police. He couldn't give me the tickets back, but he gave me a photocopy, a brief description of what's wrong with them and his/the box office's contact info.
So, what are my chances of actually getting anywhere with this? I mean, I paid cash on Craigslist and don't have a receipt or anything.
The information I do have:
Should I even bother calling the police?
All I've done so far is email the Scammer saying I knew what he did and that I would be contacting the police unless I got my money back or replacement tickets. I may have called him a Scumbag in my email as well...
Here's the situation: About a month or two ago I contact some guy selling really good seats for a Toronto/Edmonton Hockey game. He was charging $200 a ticket, which was just below face value and therefore a really good deal. After exchanging a few emails, we meet up in person and I pay him $400 cash.
Saturday night was the night of the game, so I excitedly head down to the Arena (The ACC). I get to the doors and the dude there scans my ticket at the scanner beeps funny. He tells me to go over to the box office. The guy there tells me that these tickets are void, as the guy that owns the Seasons Tickets requested replacements. He calmly tells me that this happens a lot and my only options are to try and get my money back from the guy or call the police. He couldn't give me the tickets back, but he gave me a photocopy, a brief description of what's wrong with them and his/the box office's contact info.
So, what are my chances of actually getting anywhere with this? I mean, I paid cash on Craigslist and don't have a receipt or anything.
The information I do have:
- The Scammer's name
- The Scammer's phone number
- The main intersection of where the Scammer lives
- a short email trail organizing the transaction
- photocopies of the tickets with contact info for the ACC Box office
- Possibly a bank record of me taking the $200 from an ATM - Although I may have taken out more than $200. Need to confirm this
- Assuming the guy that sold me the tickets is the actual season ticket holder, the the ACC should have his full contact information
Should I even bother calling the police?
All I've done so far is email the Scammer saying I knew what he did and that I would be contacting the police unless I got my money back or replacement tickets. I may have called him a Scumbag in my email as well...
Sharp101 on
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If the former, give him a few hours to respond, meet up with him, and get your money.
If the later, go directly to the police and bring down the hammer of judgement on his ass.
And to finish my story, I did end up going to the game anyway. I was going with my girlfriend's parents who are from Edmonton and have season tickets there. I also bought a pair of tickets from someone else for them, so they just let me use theirs.
These tickets were actually a few rows up from the scum bag's tickets, so I kept watch to see if he would show up. Some other people were sitting in the seats though, so I assume he sold the replacements he got.
Police are generally very interested in this sort of scam, so I would definitely report this to them. You aren't necessarily going to get your money back though.
meet him
???
profit
I don't think this is a situation in which you want to be playing Encyclopedia Brown. Leave the investigating to the professionals.
??? might equal Stabbed or Sweet Talked in this case
Not that it helps OP in resolving this problem, but :^: for StubHub, which will let you avoid this sort of thing all the time.
2a drug him
2b drag him to your rape van
2c strip him naked and tie him down with saran wrap
2d wake him up and show him the photocopies of the bogus tickets
2e stab him in the chest
2f dice him up and toss him over the side of your boat
or in short '???' = 'go Dexter on his ass'
(This is a much worse idea than going to the police)
As a counterpoint, I hate going to StubHub because 1. the markup 2. the ridiculous fees and 3. these business are scummy in general. They typically have deals with the primary vendors so that they can buy out whole sections at face value and resell them high while giving kickbacks to the venue, which (for concerts at least) leaves the performer out of the loop. There isn't really a great option for secondary market tickets, but I wish you better luck next time.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
I want to echo invisiblespaceninja's thoughts on Stub Hub. Prices are almost always $30-50 more than Craigslist or even eBay.
Robman: I kept this in mind when writing the emails I sent him. I don't want to get fucked by me getting angry and getting accused of slander or something.
Thanks again everyone. I'll update when I have more info.
Basically, in very broken english, he told me while visiting Toronto he found the tickets and after asking friends decided to sell them.
Now the trouble part of his email:
So this guy seems genuinely surprised and wanting to make things right. Now I just have to figure out how to get my money back from god knows where...
He found tickets and suddenly doesn't live in the country. Sounds like a good excuse to never see him again and not call the cops on him because, hey, it wasn't his fault.
edit: Forgot to add, could be real too. Those two sitting in the seats could've lost their tickets ahead of time and ordered extras.
Currently painting: Slowly [flickr]
Sounds to me like you got scammed by your typical 419-esque scammer. He probably pays a guy in Toronto to go around giving these to people. He probably pays that same guy with fake western union wire transfers.
He also said in his original posting/email that his english was not that good.
Also, like I said earlier, the people in the seats I bought were not the people I purchased them from.
One final thing - I googled his email address and the only results that came up was his original post selling these tickets. No other listings come up, not even on other sites. So this makes me think that it was just a one off thing.
I'm still very wary of this whole thing, but I'll give him a chance to refund my money.
I'm waiting until he responds again. If he can get me my money in the next day or so I won't bother with the police.
Currently painting: Slowly [flickr]
If you were selling void tickets, what would you tell the person who came back to you after they realized what happened? The most obvious excuse is, "What? I just found these and sold them. I had no idea!"
Are you expected to believe that some tourist finds hockey tickets on the ground, puts them on Craigslist, and then leaves the country?
Edit: Also, you should have approached the people sitting in those seats to see what was up.
edit: How much easier is it to float the 'not in the country' excuse if you CLEARLY saw he couldn`t speak proper english?
Scammers, more clever than you think.
This is Toronto we're talking about. There is almost a better chance that the guy doesn't speak perfect English.
Would you be willing to pay a $30 premium to avoid being fucked like you just were? Because I would.
I did buy these tickets back in the beginning of February, so that was about 6 weeks ago. More than enough time to finish an extended stay in Toronto and then go home.
But still fishy as hell!
I did plan to approach the people in the seats, but they didn't show up until right before the game started. And with the rush of people between periods I lost track of them. There was no way I was getting up during the game to talk to them :P
But yeah, Looking forward to his next email... :P
Yeah, but the $30 premium is on the $100 tickets. The $200 tickets have at least a $50 fee, if not more. I'll go look some up now.
-edit-
Comparable tickets on Stubhub are $350 each. I paid $200 and $250 for mine off craigslist.
And then on top of that, doesn't Stubhub charge shipping?
You got scammed. You have no reason to trust this guy. And even if he somehow pays you back on his own (fat chance), he'll scam someone else.
Currently painting: Slowly [flickr]
Call the police now and sort the details out later if they do reimburse you of their own free will.
- And looking at the paper the Box Office guy gave me, it does say the "Season Holder requested replacements for Lost Tickets"
Call during the day, because otherwise you'll be caught in phone tag with a detective, maybe, if they ever get back to you...
Call now and file the report and be done with it.
It is true that you will pay more, but you're also getting tickets that work. $450 for 2 pieces of paper that don't get you into a game or $700 for 2 pieces of paper that _do_ get you into a game. Sure, the ones that work are more money, but _they work_.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
So I just got home and made a call to the Police Station. After being bumped around to 5 different people someone finally told me I need to go across town and make a report in Person.
Awesome.
I've also talked to this guy again. He's apparently in Korea. I talked to him around 6pm EST and he said it was around 6:30 am there. We discussed how I don't know how he can get me my money, and about how he really wants to make things right. Apparently Paypal isn't an option. So he's going to spend today trying to find out what he can do. I told him I expect a response by the time I wake up, so he has about 12 hours.
He asked for my account number (specifically he said "What is your A/C") I told him there was no way I was giving him that info. I'm going to stop by my bank tomorrow morning and see if they have any ideas how to get money from Korea to my hands.
I also tried calling the number that was on the original Craigslist posting. No answer, but minutes later I received a text message back saying "Who is this? I can't answer because my work". I responded with "I have some questions about an online purchase. I was given this contact number. When can I call you back?"
Still waiting a response.
So - A little progress has been made.
-edit-
His Response: "I don't know you what's wrong? I'm busy do not contact me"
:P
And now I just received $400 to my paypal account.
Problem solved!
And now to get that $400 out of paypal ASAP and cut off Paypal from accessing your bank account.
Could still be a scam if he claims you sold him $400 worth of stuff and didnt give him it, since paypal almost always sides with the customer. I don't know how much proof he'd actually need of that though, I'm just saying I wouldn't trust paypal with that amount of money.