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That fugging sucks.
Scumballs get away with this schitt all the time.

I too have been took by a slime bag on an intranot deal. This POS was slick in that he made a bonafide transaction on an item and payed real quick and smooth. Then inquired a few weeks later about multiple items I had. Like an idiot I fell for it hook line sinker, boxed it all up and shipped it. Turdhead went off the radar, phone straight to voicemail.

I ended up finding his wife’s cell number and she picked up. I told her what was going on and miraculously he called with a sob story blah blah blah. Never heard or saw money again. I was able to get his home address and employer but decided to leave it be.

This is a scam. Look over on the Smith & Wesson forum, same name and address.

http://smith-wessonforum.com/guns-sale-trade/618710-scammer.html

This bit of fiction in response to your asking for tracking -- "I drove to Oklahoma to visit my parents, they are really old and i
havent seen them since the whole covid 19 episode, i would be back
home tomorrow. shipped the package on my way leaving town. The papers
is in my wife's car and she is a nurse" -- doesn't give much hope that you'll get your due from this guy.

Am wondering how he magically got those papers with tracking info from Oklahoma into his wife's car. I despise liars and thieves...

I take it that this was the .300 wm? I think I was the first to pm this guy and we exchanged some emails before he scared me off . I sent PM's to a few guys who responded on the thread later on and also contacted a mod about it but I guess nothing was done. In hindsight I should have posted something directly in the thread.

I think he is using his wife's name for the payment. He gave me the name Hanchett Venetria for payment. When I googled the name, I got info for Venetria Hanchett living at the same address. His story was that he was selling the gun without her knowledge to raise $. I suppose he just flipped the name around to throw people off??

Here's Venetria:
https://www.mylife.com/venetria-hanchett/e347137842828

Venetria tried to get me on Rokslide. Tikka superlite. Googled her name/address and got a string of bad signs so I backed out. The communication was piss poor and she/he was really set on getting the payment tracking # to be able to sign for it if “anything happens”.

Can't SOMEONE that's close go visit her with a baseball bat.......

His/her story to me was that the rifle kicked to more than she liked and that he was selling this one to get a 243.
I have to admit, I did wonder about wanting a tracking number on the money order.

Wrong move. You let him move on for another scam another day.

It's a fairly simple matter to sort out who's who. Don't buy from someone new you don't know of (at least casually) from the fire. Do a google search of the add (as has been demonstrated on this thread). The longer the poster has been here, with a greater variety of posts, the better. I'd never buy from someone that only posts in the classifieds, and has been around less than a couple years. Also, get a phone number and talk first... it's a pretty straight forward thing to get the measure of someone on the phone.

There are a pile of guys on this forum whose word is their bond.

+1

You do have to be careful, but, by never buying used-online, you miss out on a ton of great deals and lots of cool old guns. Just do some homework, be smart, and listen to your gut - same as a face-to-face transaction. If someone is honest, they will cooperate with you to show they're an honest seller. Meaning, don't be afraid to ask questions. Maybe ask a more experienced friend for some input before committing to a purchase for your first couple of transactions. I tangled with a couple of bad sellers a few times in the beginning, but I learned the simple tricks of vetting a seller, and I am way ahead by buying almost all my guns used and online.

Just leary of new guys that wanna ship to ffl from non ffl.

Specially if you suggest or insist to them to use a ffl to ship, and then use that ffl holder as your payment proxy to him and offer to pick up all the cost and they hum and haw about all the hassle from that.

That just screams big alarm bells and sirens.

Lots of established guys on here and ways to determine like others have posted.

The email only contact thing is a big alarm.
Vast majority of excellent sellers on here are 100% comfortable with phone conversations and pm.
2 way Commo is a good thing.


Kinda sucks for new sellers that are trying to get established especially when they have great items for sale.
But the scam artist are out their and they are the cause of distrust.

People just don't want to get involved, and aren't willing to fight, even when they're the one who got screwed? Sounds like a real pussy cat to me. We need to look out for one another, there's a bunch of sorry sob's in the world.

Police are involved

Hope you get some justice pullit. This stuff just sucks. I've bought probably 12 to 15 firearms from members here. Been lucky so far, but I am getting a little more nervous every time I hear about a deal like this. Wish you luck in this matter and keep us posted on any changes.

Classic scammer MO to some degree. He joined Feb 2019 but all 133 of his posts were in the last 30 days. Scammers typically do this to build post count to give the illusion of being a longterm member.

Someone else posted the above and exactly what I thought. I just went through a similar affair on the SigTalk site. The scammer joined the site three years prior and had over a thousand posts, but when you look at them they were all accumulated within 6 months. He did a PayPal transaction. But PayPal didn’t back up because it was gun related. He had a great price on the item and quick responses. Unfortunately the item never arrived never gave a tracking number. Only thing that saved me was on PayPal I used a Barclays credit card. The computer address was from Nigeria, even though he was using a good address in California. Barclays was able to have PayPal reverse the charges because they should have done a more thorough job of seeing who opens PayPal accounts. Sorry to hear it sucks I know.

One other thing here’s a link to the FBI online complaint form as they do investigate these

https://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx

Everyone was right on this, the Post office sucks.

I have some experience dealing with this kind of stuff, professionally and personally. Trying to get the Feds involved seldom works as they have such a high dollar value threshold for prosecution that a $700 dollar deal just doesn't interest them. Forget the whole post office/postal money order thing...too few Postal Inspectors and they are too busy doing major cases and/or drug shipments. Determining who has jursidiction is always a PIA too; where did the crime occur? Where you live and mailed the payment or where the dipshit purports to live? Local prosecutors don't like to expend their resources on such questionable cases and local police don't like chasing these cases as they usually have a lot of other casework to do. These dipshits that do this scamming know this.

I've seen some happy endings, but it usually takes involvement from a motivated local police officer at one end or the other. Helps a bunch when the dipshit has some other illegal things going on that the police can jam them up on.

So the best thing is all the preventative steps mentioned here. I've had a lot of very smooth transactions here and on other 'Net forums but I only deal with established people and if I have any concerns I will google things to confirm. Even FB can be telling.

Sorry for your loss, hope you get your money back, but you might want to chalk this up as a big lesson. At least you didn't buy a stolen rifle (fair and square via a FFL from Gun List with all receipts and such), and try to cross the American/Canadian border with it like I did. I damn near spent the night in jail and was soon thereafter standing tall in front of my boss explaining what happened.

The link I posted has a pic and says that she's employed as a nurse. Also says shes unmarried so prob either her or her boyfriend pulling the scam in order to cash the check.

Might want to look her up on the book of faces if you have an account. I'd prob start one over something like this. I'd also try to find out who her employer is and let everyone I could know that shes a scumbag. Maybe the social pressure would get your cash back.