Friday, February 24, 2006
The BIG SCREEN Scam
I was sitting at the kitchen table doing some book work when the phone rang. The student picked up the phone and was talking with someone that represented one of the computers that he had tested. After some discussion, he turned to me and asked, could we buy a 50 inch plasma TV screen. I said I did not think so, I did not want to have any more charges against my credit card. He made another couple of phone calls and then said, Mr. X at XYZ computer company, whose gaming computer came out as the top scorer, wanted to do some publicity work with his PC by showing a picture of a game on a 50 inch screen that would be used as the monitor for the PC. He then told me that he was given the name of a finance company that would finance the screen and no payment had to be made for a year and there would be no interest until that time. He was promised by Mr. X, that if we got the screen, his company would buy it so that I would not have to pay anything. Guess what, again I took him at his word and yup, we got the 50 inch screen and I was indebted to the tune of 5995.00. This was a big 50 inch Panasonic screen. When it arrived, he took the screen, put it up on a large table, right next to this beautiful Farari Red Gaming Computer and took some pictures. . The computer was put away, I think it was sold on eBay using my account, and the screen remained on the table and had become the monitor for his computer until Mr. X bought it. Some time later, not hearing from Mr. X. I wrote him a letter and asked what his intentions were, I never heard a word in reply. The big screen was used as a monitor for playing PC games and stayed in place for several months until a friend of mine from Germany came to visit in August of 2004, almost immediately it disappeared and I was told it was stored away in safe keeping so no one would use it, as after all, it would be going to Mr. X.
It was about 8 AM one morning in September of 2004 that I received a phone call from an irate person that wanted to talk to me, I told him that he was talking to me, and he said no, he had talked to "me" before and that I wasn't the person he talked to. He wanted to know where his big screen was that he had won on a bid on eBay ( by the way, it was not put up to bid on my eBay account, that had been closed). He told me then who he was and I had my student on the phone to do some explaining to him and then to me. I was told that Mr. X wasn't going to buy the 50 inch screen so he sold it to raise the money to pay off the screen with the finance company. Guess what, I then found that he had sold the screen twice, used a fictitious serial number, on eBay, to someone in Seattle. That guy got the screen, paid for it and I never got the money to pay the finance company.
To this day, the finance company is hounding me. Hopefully, my credit counseling agency will make a deal.
It was about 8 AM one morning in September of 2004 that I received a phone call from an irate person that wanted to talk to me, I told him that he was talking to me, and he said no, he had talked to "me" before and that I wasn't the person he talked to. He wanted to know where his big screen was that he had won on a bid on eBay ( by the way, it was not put up to bid on my eBay account, that had been closed). He told me then who he was and I had my student on the phone to do some explaining to him and then to me. I was told that Mr. X wasn't going to buy the 50 inch screen so he sold it to raise the money to pay off the screen with the finance company. Guess what, I then found that he had sold the screen twice, used a fictitious serial number, on eBay, to someone in Seattle. That guy got the screen, paid for it and I never got the money to pay the finance company.
To this day, the finance company is hounding me. Hopefully, my credit counseling agency will make a deal.
# posted by VonKrogh @ 2/24/2006 01:43:00 PM 
