Autotrader / www.transporte-internationale.co.uk

Hi, thought you might be interested in this scam that I have been playing out over the weekend.
I responded to an Autotrader advert for a Hyundai Veloster at roughly half UK price.
The email was [email protected] put straight onto the bottom of one of the car pictures, but it also had the details of a Citroen dealer in Stafford. It said contact the email and not the dealer.
I got a message back from [email protected] saying that he had moved to Denmark with his car and then had been given a company car and needed to sell quickly. He sent me some further photos which must have been ripped from another advert.
He obtained a shipping quote from http://www.transporte-internationale.co.uk and gave me their details.
The website exists but has no telephone numbers on it.
I then did a free company check on Transporte Internationale Ltd and they are registered in Birmingham with company number and accounts filed. The directors are linked to another operating company, Chambers & Cook, registered and operating at the same address.
Just looking at this could make you think that it is a legitimate operation.
[email protected] then sent me a HTML invoice on Monday with buyer and seller details on and a Lloyds account number to transfer the money to. The first invoice had the wrong car on it with "buyer" details of someone in Lincolnshire (hope they realise before it's too late, unfortunately I couldn't find a number for him).
I pointed this out to Walt and got the corrected invoice within a few minutes and a phone call apologising for the mistake but they didn't sound very Danish.
I then called the number on the invoice (and listed on the company check website) but got an answer machine.
I then phoned Chambers & Cook in Birmingham to find out if they knew of links to Transporte Internationale (T/I). The first guy I spoke to had not heard of them but I then asked to speak to the Operations director who was listed as a director of Transporte Internationale. He took my call and confirmed that T/I does exist but they only ever issue internal invoices to Chambers & Cook and don't really operate externally.
He confirmed that T/I did not have a website so I sent him a link to the one that had been set up in their name.
I told Walt that I would not release any funds until I had seen the V5 and all other documents that T/I were apparently holding for him. I'm still waiting....
They had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to obtain details of a legitimate shipping company, getting fake details onto a company check website and setting up a professional looking fake website which looks quite convincing.

After speaking to the director I am fairly sure that Chambers & Cook are legitimate and are in no way linked to the scammers.

Hope this helps others to avoid.

Update - looks like the fake website www.transporte-internationale.co.uk has now been successfully taken down

If you look here towards the end of the thread

http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=58509&start=60

You'll see that, after a report from another member, I discovered nearly 50 scam adverts on Autotrader that I flagged up in that thread. Somehow a criminal gang has found a way to post scam ads under the names of legitimate companies. I'll check later to see if the item you mention is one I picked up, or if it leads to more - or if it's another gang working the same scam.

Any more information you can supply would be very interesting and useful, and I don't want or need to know anything about you. The bank accounts they're using are particularly useful, as they need to be shut down. These people have stolen tens of thousands of pounds from victims, though I suspect the total amount could be much much more.

Thanks, yes I had seen some of those but not before nearly delving into this one. I thought this one to be particularly elaborate in having a legitimate companies details involved, albeit unsuspectingly to the real company.

I have sent the account details to Lloyds via their phishing email and if it is real hope they do something with it. I wonder if that is fake as well though and they probably come back to you saying they can't receive the payment and then put you onto Western Union or something like that!

Cheers.

Usually it's either an innocent dupe who has been recruited using one of the massive number of fake sites that another member here is turning up and posting in the Employment Forum, or it's a fraudster who has set up a fraudulent account using fake ID.

Whether it's an innocent dupe or a fraudster, receiving stolen money is a crime.

Make no mistake that this is major organised criminal organisation is operating this fraud. This is particularly interesting as I note that the website was only set up a couple of weeks ago, and the fraudsters have even managed to set up corroborating entries for the company stating that they offer escrow services

http://www.companiesintheuk.co.uk/ltd/transporte-internationale

web: http://www.transporte-internationale.co.uk
Transporte Internationale Limited reduces the risk of online fraud for both buyers and sellers. As a trusted third party, Transporte Internationale Ltd collects, holds and releases funds online..

The significance of this is that any company offering escrow services in the UK has to be authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and registered with HM Revenue & Customs as a Money Services Business.

You're correct in that this is more elaborate than most of this type of fraud.

Escrow services are quite rarely used in the UK and I note that the wording has been copied from a major USA company that is a legitimate provider of escrow services - escrow.com. Most UK people don't even know what escrow is and any company claiming to offer escrow services, particularly in the UK, is grounds for investigation.

As one is closed down, another one appears:

http://www.transporteinternationale.co.uk/

That didn't last long.

Maybe they're try to avoid paying hosting fees. That's the only reason I can think they're going down so quickly. They're setting up self-detonating sites.

As I mentioned, there are some basic flaws in what they're doing. One hypothetical possibility is that the site builder is selling the services and tools to scammers, so he doesn't necessarily care if they work or not. It's been mentioned that this is how the fake employment sites are handled, because some of them are complete duds.

If one set of scammers is scamming another set, it's hard to complain. Even in a fraudulent enterprise you're looking to generate predictable and regular income in a way that can be maximised, which can't be done with scam ads. Producing the tools and selling them to gullible scammers is a business plan.

The tools and tactics are good but are usually defective, which you wouldn't do if they were being produced for your own benefit. They only have to look good. There will still be victims and there are many lone scammers doing their own thing, and I'm tracking them where I spot them, as I'll be interested to know how they plan to get their money.

A scammer may be able to hide his identity, but he can never hide his stupidity, and I can use that to track him.