Windsor Locks detectives are investigating a scam that targets online auction bidders while duping others into converting victims’ payments into cryptocurrency.
The investigation has widened to include the FBI and law enforcement in other states, all focused on a rip-off scheme that lures victims with bargains on boats, recreational vehicles and other motorized equipment.
The local victim told police on April 20 that he had answered an ad on Facebook for an excavator. The ad linked to the website of an auction company called TYMAC Repo, police said. On March 28, the man offered $17,970 for the machine and received an email and invoice the next day telling him he had won the bid, according to a search warrant in the case. Following instructions, the victim wired payment to a JP Morgan Chase bank account in El Paso, Texas and was told to expect delivery on April 14.
The machine, however, never arrived and the man told police he was unable to contact the auction company. It turned out that TYMAC Repo was the subject of numerous online posts labeling the company a front for scam artists, police said. Det. Sgt. Jeff Lampson said he found the company’s website inactive and a phone number was routed to voicemail.
Police discovered the same con was pulled in other states. The Better Business Bureau dedicates a page to online auction scams – https://bit.ly/3LUqhuB.
People seeking to buy RVs, boats, tractors, trucks and construction equipment have wired money to TYMAC Repo and other fake auction sites, learning too late that they were fooled. The con artists paste photos of of for-sale items from other websites. Often those original photos come from legitimate sites, where the items were priced much higher.
In a report on the scam in April, Virginia-based TV station CBS 6 highlighted an age-old truism.
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“If it’s undervalued, if it’s under the value by $15,000, it’s too good to be true,” Barry Moore, president of the Better Business Bureau of Central Virginia, was quoted as saying. “It’s a scam, so don’t forget, if they’re selling you nothing and getting $10,000 from you on something you think is worth $50,000, you’re out $10,000. And there’s no getting that back.”
Windsor Locks police obtained a search warrant to track down the holder of the bank account associated with the local scam. Records showed 11 suspicious wire transfers from March 10-31, including the Windsor Locks victim’s payment, police said. Lampson contacted 7 of the 11 people who wired money and found all had been duped.
In a sworn statement to an El Paso detective, the account holder said she had found a job in January on Indeed,.com for commission-based work converting money into Bitcoin, according to a supplement to the Windsor Locks search warrant.
The woman said over $100,000 was wired into her account. She told police “that everything appeared ‘normal’ during her employment and she had no idea she was part of this bigger scam,” the warrant says.
Nothing indicates that the El Paso woman knew she was involved in a rip-off, Lampson wrote in the supplement to the initial search warrant, “nor do I believe she had any knowledge concerning the complexity of this fraud, and became nothing more than an unwitting participant in this scheme.”
Windsor Locks police have shared information with the FBI in Massachusetts, which is investigating a similar scam.
Jesse Leavenworth can be reached at jleavenworth@courant.com