The following information relates to an individual that tried to sell me my own rig to me. Thanks to some friends and my own desire to catch the scam artist, I have been able to compile to following information as it relates specifically to this scammer.
Aliases:
Brian Tobin Robert Mancer
Physical Address. Using the name Robert Mancer he gave the following address as the location for me to send him money (via Western Union):
Robert Mancer 326 High Holborn London, WC1V 7PE United Kingdom
USPA Number. Using the name Brain Tobin he said that his home zone was Bay Area Skydiving - Byron in California and that his USPA # is 120516. I contacted them and report the issue.
IP Addresses (as determined from email responses). His ISP is AOL and to report him to their fraud department, contact Isaac Green at (703-265-1000 & ask for Isaac). Since he continues to link through his AOL account to his Yahoo email, he is still using the same group of IP addresses. Make sure that you check the header of any email sent to you. You can do a simple WhoIs search on anyone and determine where they really are.
Email Address (this may change, but he used in the last 2 scam attempts).
opaquehelluen@yahoo.com
Western Union Info: I have reported this scum to AOL, Western Union and the authorities. He will try to get you to send money via Western Union. Be aware of the risk and read the info at their site: http://www.westernunion.com/info/fraudindex.asp.
Posting Photos: When posting a photo, try to overlay a personal logo or user name, so that it can not be easily air brushed or cropped out. A recent classified that I posted (ID 40578), shows an example of how I used my username as the overlay. It might not solve all the issues, but since most scam artist are lazy, they will probably look for another target to rip off.
I hope that this info has been helpful and that this thread helps to catch a few of the bad guys.
Well this confirms it. I talked with "Brian" for a couple days and asked him a number of security questions about the Mirage G4 he was selling. Apparently they werent enough. He got $1300 and it appears that Im getting nothing. His handle was Brianinthesky and Im attaching all the information from our discussions to make sure this doesnt happen to anyone else. Guess my first rig is going to cost $1300 more than I thought it was going to. First time I've been scammed in 15 years on the net. Was a nice looking rig, I was pretty excited about.
Did you happen to call Bay Area or at least have your DZ look up that USPA number? I have to admit that he answered all the questions with a lot more info then you would normally expect a scammer to know.
Only thing that jumps out at me is Mirage does not use C-17 as a harness measurement. SunPath uses that format, MirageSys uses a different format for their harness sizes.
Yep I called both his DZ and my DZ. His DZ just confirmed that he had jumped there before and my DZ confirmed that his USPA # matched his name and that it expired in 2004. I found it curious that his rig was DOM 2005 with the 2004 expiration but I figured that was when he moved to the UK and switched affiliations. Unfortunately the C-17 thing slipped past me. I've learned alot about gear in the last few months but I havent learned it all.
(This post was edited by xanlith on May 23, 2008, 5:32 AM)
Yeah - he emailed me after his ad suddenly disappeared - LOL! Asking for Western Union payment has certainly given himself away... and now I found this thread. It really is a nice looking rig - whomever owns it... LMAO!
DropZone Thread.doc
