Possible UK Jaguar/Retro Games Scammer

[Clancy Wiggum]

To warn others I thought I'd post the details of a UK scammer looking to get money out of Jaguar / retro games collectors.

 

A guy calling himself John Jones posted several ads on Gumtree in December 2016, at least one of which was an Atari Jaguar games bundle on sale for £250. Gumtree messaged me unprompted about "suspicious activity" associated with his account. He has good contact initially and sounds friendly, but doesn't post the items you pay for.

 

He uses a mobile phone number ending in 294, his bank account number ends in 264 and he claims to be from the Forest Town / Mansfield area of Nottinghamshire, England. The same mobile phone number also appeared on an advert for a PC sound card in February 2016 under the name Dave.

 

Below is a picture of the bundle he said he was selling. You'll see that the Flashback box has a yellow price sticker on the front it; the Alien vs Predator box has a tear to the front at the top, left corner and has a security tag partially over the barcode on the back; while the back of the Raiden box also has one of these. If you could keep an eye out for these features on Ebay listings or ads elsewhere that would be great. Also below is the text of the ad, in case he tries it again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Boxed Atari Jaguar console, pad & extra boxed controller & 8 games.

All the contents are in excellent condition.

Games:

Wolfenstein 3D (sealed)

Raiden

Cannon Fodder (sealed)

Dino Dudes

Syndicate

Aliens Vs Predator

Brutal Sports Football

Flashback

The console itself is PAL, but the games are a mixture of PAL and NTSC. As the console is region free it can play any of the games.

All working.

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Edited January 5, 2017 by Clancy Wiggum

[+xucaen]

What's the scam? Were the games actually reproductions or is he just not delivering and taking the money?

[Clancy Wiggum]

As far as I know

 

What's the scam? Were the games actually reproductions or is he just not delivering and taking the money?

 

As far as I know it's taking the money without delivery. I think something else happened with Gumtree too, as they e-mailed me regarding him, but they can't say because of the Data Protection Act.

[Welshworrier]

What interests me here is I bought some jag games off Gumtree last week from someone in Derby. I drove to pick them up and we ended up having a nice long discussion about all the games he's selling for various consoles.

 

He mentioned that he'd sold a lot of his stuff, including Jaguar, to a local guy called John (who was picking up about 200 gameboy carts that afternoon).

 

Probably coincidence but due to the nearness of the locations, and looking at the background showing the other consoles, makes it a bit curious.

[Welshworrier]

I should also add that the games shown in your picture are ones he said he had recently (about July) sold on.

[JaggingUK]

on gumtree i only ever do it locally and pop round to collect as loads of people on there are scamming - on a few occassions i have seen things listed near me (great set of marvel comics once - N64 bundle etc) and when i have phoned and said i can come collect they always say i can't collect. One time it was in the village next to mine and he said postage only even though the postcode location of the seller was two miles away. It is easy for someone to list anything and use any post code as the location. And if you look up the photo you can often find used multiple times if you do a google search of 'gumtree atari jaguar' as the crooked sellers often use the same photo of desirable products they know will get a response.

Ebay is safer, but even on there I have seen Jaguar Cd machines that were constantly being put on by the same person who kept closing the listing then relisting at £600 again and again with no change to his feedback that he had ever sold one. I know some people on ebay do offer a seller a lower price for a quick sale and sometime the item does disappear because of that, but when an item comes on again and again you do get suspicious. I would steer clear of gumtree unless you can pick it up and they agree you can pick it up and pay cash as postage on Gumtree is a lottery. I do dislike ebay (when I sell things on there) due to their charges, but they do often send out offers of things like 75% off final value fees, or the best I had was £1 for final value fee on any item I sold so a few expensive items of my fathers went on there when he retired from work and we got rid of lots of stuff, one of which went for £250 and it only cost £1 in fees.

 

I nearly got caught out once years ago on ebay when I sold a professional piece of equipment for £2000, the buyer was coming to Carlisle to pick it up and said he would paypal me the money once we met at the train station and then I could check it had gone into my paypal account, I agreed, but the day before we met I had a check on ebay scams and discovered the paypal scam of meeting someone in person, sending them money and then saying it was not you who sent it and your account was hacked - so had i turned up and he had put £2000 in my paypal account, once he was back on the train, he would have contacted paypal and said he had not authorised the transaction and would have got his money back and i would have never seen my equipment again... There was so many stories of this happening that I phoned the guy buying the equipment and told him it would have to be a cash transaction and he moaned like hell about having bought train tickets etc, but after a few phone calls I never heard from him again once I mentioned the paypal scam.... It is very easy to get caught out, and the paypal scam was (if there is such a thing) a great scam as you see the money in your account and think it's safe, only for the buyer to claim it was not him who turned up to collect the item and therefore get his money back. There really was zero you could do if you had handed over your equipment - a signature from him would be worthless to say he had collected as the guy would just say 'it was not him who collected' and you would lose your money every time.