Complaint of theft on Laser Forum

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Merrily

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Friendly Dragon has reported a problem with a member, Neon. Friendly Dragon sent money for a sail, and Neon has disappeared without sending the sail. I notice that Neon has a number of items for sale in the Laser and Sunfish forums and the ads sound similar, new discounted product. It's not out of line to get some back story from a seller on the origin of product and a bit of personal information about the seller.
 
Welcome to teh interwebz. This invariably happens on all internet forums. I've been on a couple that implemented rules in "for sale" sections to cut down on scammers. I can make some suggestions if you wish.
 
Welcome to teh interwebz. This invariably happens on all internet forums. I've been on a couple that implemented rules in "for sale" sections to cut down on scammers. I can make some suggestions if you wish.

Yes, please.
 
Things I have seen on other forums:

1. A minimum of 100 posts is required to list a for sale ad.
This ensures that people selling stuff are established members of the forum. The thinking is the classified section should be for the benefit of people who are active members of the forum.

I'm not sure how well it work work on this forum. It doesn't have as much traffic as some automotive forums I am on. I personally bought my current boat through this forum from a person who was not an active contributor. It also becomes a sore point for people wanting to sell stuff who don't have enough posts. They start making dummy posts to get their post count up, and moderators must spend time monitoring this.

2. A price must be listed.
This shows that the person selling something is a serious seller and understand the value of what they are selling. If the price is ridiculous or information in the post is vague, very high possibility of a scammer.

3. There must be pictures of the item being sold.
This shows that the seller has real items for sale and gives an indication of the condition. What often happens is people put up a thread, and say "I didn't have time to take pictures today. I'll post some up in a day or two." Moderators spend a great deal of time strictly enforcing this rule, deleting threads if there are no pictures.

To get around this, scammers post up pictures they find from Google searches. This leads to the next rule.

4. There must be a hand-written sign in each picture with the username, date, and name of the forum.
Again, this establishes that the seller is a real person with real items.
 
I only saw two items listed by Neon, have some of the other items been removed or sold ?
The sail looked like it had two buyers interested, perhaps there was some confusion in who actually got first dibs.

Do we have any comments or PM's from Neon with his/her side of the story ? Like Torrid, I've witnessed some bad deals on other forums, sometimes it's the buyer, sometimes it's the seller, but always a good idea to try and get both sides of the story before the lynch mob goes in force.

South shore of LI is one of my sailing locations, and have plenty of sailing friends there if we can help in any way.
 
Neon posted that he had a carbon tiller for sale on Aug 25, 2010 (almost two years ago). Don't know what happened.
And now there are a bunch of new ads from him on both the Laser and the Sunfish forum.
He last posted on May 25.

I am hoping for a positive resolution of the issue raised by Friendly Dragon.
 
Paypal offers buyer protection, this same type of scam happened in the early days of ebay,

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=security/safe_online_shopping

Craigslist is even worse, for both buying and selling

Anyone that has a deal that is too good to be true or offers to send you more money than you're asking is most definitely a scam artist,

a feedback system is also a good idea, just like on ebay, it would improve both forums and craigslist
 
I was also scammed by Neon. He is from the South shore of LI, from Patchogue, NY. Does anyone know him personally? He used to sail out of Bellport Bay YC, name is Anthony Monzon
 
OK, now we are at an unwritten rule of internet forums. Once someone has scammed multiple people, they are subject to public crucifiction.

What's interesting is this guy doesn't seems to be the typical "Dear Kind Sir, please cash my cashier's check and mail me the difference" random scammer. He is clearly a Laser sailor, knows what people are looking for, and has a plausible story.
 
All money has been refunded to those who did not receive items for reasons that will not be discussed here. Check your paypal accounts if you have not done so already.

Coercion charges have been filed against one member who thinks homicide is an appropriate course of action following non-receipt.
 
Have fun with your years of probation Jon; if you're lucky enough to stay out of jail that is.

To everyone else I dealt with: Thank you for behaving in a more civilized manner. I would like to apologize for the inconvenience.

Due to my recent experience, I will no longer conduct sales through this forum.
 
Friendly Dragon has reported a problem with a member, Neon. Friendly Dragon sent money for a sail, and Neon has disappeared without sending the sail. I notice that Neon has a number of items for sale in the Laser and Sunfish forums and the ads sound similar, new discounted product. It's not out of line to get some back story from a seller on the origin of product and a bit of personal information about the seller.

In response to the first post, I was upfront with the origin of every item when asked and as FriendlyDragon reveals in his death threat, my personal information was never a mystery.
 
I certainly don't condone anyone making threats, but this thread was first posted two weeks ago. Presumably there was more elapsed time between when people sent you money and this thread was created. If you were unable to complete the transactions, for whatever reason, you should have returned the money immediately.

I think it is safe to say no one on this forum wants to do business with you anyway.
 
Seriously? YOU'VE filed charges? Since you share only the barest details, you appear to be shameless.

The buyer claimed to have filed a police report and FBI report based on non-receipt that was due to shipping delays on my end and notified me after the refund to his account was made. Considering that I was unreachable for a few days this was not 100% unexpected. I filed charges due to threats he made against my life.

Also, PayPal has a system for resolving disputes. When I have had issues with sellers not sending me items, I have received money back through PayPal's resolution process.
 
Non-delivery of goods is not acceptable but neither is making threats. When purchasing online from any site it is important to be responsible and perform due diligence to insure the seller/buyer is legit. We make the best effort to delete or post notifications on ads that may not be legit. Since 2002, this is the first time I've been made aware of any disputes between a buyer and seller on this site.

Any further discussions between the buyer and seller in the conversation above needs to move off the forum.
 
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