Victim Location 54639
Total money lost $3,800
Type of a scam Online Purchase
I was purchasing a second hand motorcycle from eclassiczone traders (Patrick Bartlett). They required payment upfront via VISA & MasterCard gift cards rather than giving credit card details. This should have been the alarm bell. Their reason was fake credit cards and people not honoring payments. I paid a total of USD 3800 to them in two separate payments. They confirmed the receipt of the payment and advised that the delivery would occur on the 7 July 2019. No delivery took place on the 7th July and on the 8th July 2019 when I emailed to follow up both the website and the email addresses that I had been using no longer exist.
Prior to making the transaction I spent hours researching them on line via chat groups and previous customers who had ‘submitted reviews’ from several other websites. Many customers expressed reservations but it all worked out for them including refunds when requested so the reservations were unfounded. In addition I matched the VIN number of the motorbike to the same address as one of eclassiczone’s warehouses. Once the website was not functioning I also could not find the references I used to evaluate the risk. ‘Patrick’ clearly did a scam on me.