Unfortunate scam in f2f watch deal

[civic4982]

Saw this terrible story and felt it should be shared amongst my watch friends:

“Scam alert!

This is the saddest day of all my watch-loving journey. I was scammed yesterday by a band of thieves. It happened in Milan, Italy. This caused tremendous damage to my morale, it meant a physical risk to me and my wife and it caused a big economic harm too.
This is how they operate:

1. They contact you through Instagram, showing authentic interest in your watches. They make a credible story. “An old man, retired, who lives in Italy, Swiss citizen and is looking to invest”. He even lived in Spain and speaks good Spanish!
2. They build the credibility gradually, through lots of polite calls, messages, anecdotes. Then shows interest on a face to face deal. We negotiate the price at market levels, not a suspicious huge offer, something fair.
3. When the face to face occurs in a convenient city, appears “the son”, telling stories. Very polite, young, smart and good looking. Wants to do the deal in cash only, not wire plus some cash as agreed. With a lot of hurry. The father on the phone, making “banking arrangements” The deal is cancelled by me at this point.
4. But they get back with calls, “I will be there in a moment”, “you check the money, bank note by bank note.” We met at a public place, a hotel, but in private. Two guys appear supposedly the “insurance and transport guys” They show real money (they bring a machine) but distracted me saying “write a note on a paper for each set of bills counted” and swap bills with facsimile bank notes while you are talking or writing, in an envelope they seal in front of you.
5. They almost snatch the watches from you afterwards, saying “Mr good old man” is coming in 5 minutes. All with my wife next to me. The bad feeling can’t be worse I open the envelope later at my hotel, and discover it’s all a terrible scam!! Watch out! Be aware!
PLEASE SHARE!”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Tanukjaju]

Really sucks. Sadly, wherever there is money to be made, scammers appear.

[Mellons]

+1

[Emilio]

Scary!

Everytime big money is involved you can't trust anyone who is a stranger.