Ebay CTSC ripoff

M

melmark

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A warning and looking for some help as well. A buttwipe named tony vanesti (or vanestie) if indeed that is his real name, listed a used NSX CTSC on ebay last thursday and took "deposits" from people to sell the unit directly to them for 2 grand before the auction ended. Both he and his add sounded stupid enough to believe that he'd sell a new style CTSC for only 2 grand. I had his add yanked from ebay when the ripoff became apparent.

So if anyone else sent this clown money, or if you know of anyone in the miami area that might know this guy, let me know because the FBI is interested. He claims his nickname is "trax", but I doubt is that is real either. I did a phone trace on his number (vero beach) , but it's the "pay as you go" type with no user info.

I knew it was a HIGHLY suspect transaction to begin with, and the risk of losing the deposit was a good 50/50, but the quest for cheap power took over my brain. :rolleyes:
 
:eek: There was just a thread on this! you didn't see it? we suspected it was a scam. Whenever there is an item like this, always say "I am going to be in the area, I can come and buy it in person. Give me your address". If the seller makes an excuse, then its a scam.
 
Danny said:
How much of a deposit did he hit you up for?


Here's a post from the S. Fla region, several of us spoke with him, when I offered to drive down with my mechanic (personal friend) he told me he needed to call me back, never heard from him. Several other FL guys had a similiar experience.

http://www.nsxprime.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74002
Click to expand...


$500. At least I had minimal brain input and didn't send him the $1000 he asked for.

You can make a complaint to the feds via the Internet Crime complaint center at www.I3C.gov to nail this fu**ing jerk.

Too bad I didn't see the posting, I didn't think to look under the south florida forum.
 
I called him and asked him what year it was for, and he said "all of them". I told him the NA1 kits were different than the NA2 ones and asked him what year his NSX was. He told me a 1996 and when I told him I would only consider a NA2 kit for a 97, he said he was mistaken and it was a 97 he owned:rolleyes: Needless to say, I was not interested! I have a brand new one in the box right now anyways, so I am not sure what I would do with it had it been legit. Instead of Twin Turbo I could have said I owned a Twin CTSC NSX!:biggrin:
 
melmark said:
$500. At least I had minimal brain input and didn't send him the $1000 he asked for.

You can make a complaint to the feds via the Internet Crime complaint center at www.I3C.gov to nail this fu**ing jerk.

Too bad I didn't see the posting, I didn't think to look under the south florida forum.
Click to expand...

I can't believe you fell for it! I called him and told him I'd only buy it if he used Escrow.com. He gave me a song and dance about being in the Air Force and the payment from Escrow.com would take too long to reach him via his APO address yadda yadda yadda.

He suggested I send him $800 via Western Union but make the payment out to someone else's name so he couldn't pick it up but could call WU to see if I was legit. Then he'd give me 7 days to have it inspected before making full payment. Yeah right! LOL

Western Union? WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP. Immediately set off the scam detector.

Try giving the FDLE a call and see if they can help you out. Throw away phones need to be recharged and the cards used to purchase addtional minutes on them can be traced to the point of sale.
 
Any auction that includes directions to e-mail outside of eBay to make a deal is a scam.

Any auction that includes directions to send money via Western Union is a scam, etc.

These things have been happening since eBay first started business and have been extremely well documented for the last several years. There is no excuse.
 
I posted a response to the original thread, after I had the original auction's phone number looked up, and it pointed to a disposable cellular phone in southern Florida... for whatever reason the mods of this site decided it would be best to delete that thread, although I also forwarded this information to eBay.
 
While looking for a NSX, over the last few months I have encountered several Ebay scammers. Either offering at a extremely low "buy it now" price/ or selling while demanding a Cheque or bankdownpayment within 24H after the sale.
These guys are soo obvious to detect, YOU NEVER make a non refundable downpayment! If you do, you are just plain stupid in my opinion.
I am irritated however by the way that Ebay acts on this: I reported a scammer once as he was so obvious to me and Ebay reacts about a week later with the simple standard answer never to make (down)payments in an unsecure way, that was all of the Ebay reply!!! So clearly they do not act on scammers, even when pointed out to them, making it very easy for them to continue scamming.

My advice:
Best advise when dealing with a unclear/suspect party: ask for additional pictures of specific parts of the for sale offered item, if the seller can't produce that, whatever excuse given, it is almost certainly a scam
 
Well I am going through the same thing with ebay now. I ordered a BRABUS bobdy kit for my Mercedes and paid with PAYPAL a month ago. Ebay is still saying give it time and see if the seller contacts you. It is obvious I have been ripped off and they seem to be dragging their feet with going after this guy.
 
Could form a company that handles these type of situations... Kinda like that bounty hunter TV show... Dog? We could call it "The Big Stick".:biggrin:

"Hello, thank you for calling The Big Stick. Who needs to be set straight today?"
 
i'm curious:

if the end result is the same (send $'s, vendor receives $'s, customer never receives the product, vendor doesn't acknowledge communication efforts, and vendor doesn't refund $'s), how is this different than known, "credible vendors" who take money but don't deliver product?
 
Sorry to see this happening. At least you didn't send him the full amount.


I do remember when I believe Shumdit first posted a thread about this. I chimed in right away about it being a fraud. Then that thread disappeared
 
I'm sorry that you lost your money :( I guess the old saying stays true. If it's too good to be true....then it is. This seems to be always the case for NSX related items.
 
A few things (make a local copy this, posts are getting deleted for any or no apparent reason):

If anybody was paying attention, those images on Ebay were originally from Dali when he broke open the first box of the new style of SC's.

**
<b>melmark</b>

It is www.IC3.gov and don't hold your breath. There is no special agent ready to solve your crime or recover your loss. I know because few months ago I finished off a module for the IFCC, it is merely a statistical operation and a "transport" that forwards your information (in XML) to the "most appropriate" agency.

It is unfortunate, but local agencies are not set up for crimes where victim's and suspect's are in different jurisdictions. Is the handling agency the one where the suspect resides or the victim or the location of the crime? If suspect locale: How do you get the victim to testify or make identification? If the victim locale: how do you properly investigate a suspect that 1500 miles away, across 3 states and you really aren't sure who you are dealing with? Other agencies sure aren't going to spend their time working cases for another department, they have their own problems.

It costs $6K-$10K in real money to bring a suspect across state lines, and another $15K in personnel time. Doubtful a victim is going to show up three times (and spend $1500 each trip) at a remote city to go along with the proceedings either.

The upshot of your report: The local agency just deletes the emails every few weeks, usually after counting "How many internet crime email thingies we had". (Just about every law enforcement agency have no idea what to do with XML either.) This is all very sad.

And the FBI--the worthless organization that it is--is worthless, don't even get me started on how stupid that operation is, they should have been disbanded long ago.

how is this different than known, "credible vendors" who take money but don't deliver product?
Click to expand...

BIG DIFFERENCE: You have a name and an address that you can make crime reports or take civil action.

Helpful information:
The only way to protect yourself on remote deals is to use credit cards, google pay or paypal and complete the deal within 30 days. Cancel any deal that is not <i>completed within 30 days</i>.

COD is useless. They can send you a box of rocks and you still have to pay for it. Try and give back an open box to UPS and demand your money back.

Drew
 
drew said:
<snip>

BIG DIFFERENCE: You have a name and an address that you can make crime reports or take civil action.

Helpful information:
The only way to protect yourself on remote deals is to use credit cards, google pay or paypal and complete the deal within 30 days. Cancel any deal that is not <i>completed within 30 days</i>.

<snip>
Click to expand...
given the number of unresolved disputes between certain vendors on prime vs the costs of pursuing legal action and obtaining restitution, i'm not convinced there's any practical difference in the eventual outcome. (agreed that it's the victim, errr, customer's choice to pursue or no)

good tip, btw.
 

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