Battleangel

Is it just me or has this world become a hell of a lot colder and calculating recently? In all my days of buying and selling used computer products on the Net I have never come across something like this:

A month ago I answered a personal ad on Blocket.se for a used Hauppauge tv card. According to the information in the ad itself and the information gathered through conversation with the seller I learned that the card was a model 618 or a european version of the WinTV-FM. I.e. the card had both NICAM stereo and FM radio. The ad also contained a reference to the current price for a NEW WinTV-FM. Together with the reassurance I got from the seller there really was no doubt as for the indentity of the card.
Very well. So far so good. In order to avoid unnecessary shipping costs, the card was paid for in advance. Nothing out of the ordinary really. I’ve done it dozens of times and normally the risks are minimal since both the buyer and seller are well aware of the fact that they have committed to a binding agreement and that the transfer as well as the seller’s account number can be traced. Not easily so, but it is far from anonymous. The brilliant idea here, on the part of the seller, was to use the account and email of a friend to conduct the sale. A smoke screen? More about this later …
A week or two passed by and when no package had arrived I queried the seller. He claimed it had been returned to him because he had misspelt the address. Fine. Such things happen I suppose. After another two weeks the package finally arrived. He claimed to have a reason for this delay as well, but it is of no concern really. The point is that the package ended up in my mailbox with no real return address .. instead he had used the old trick with the “reverse return address”. I.e. putting my address as a return address so that he didn’t have to use any stamps. Sneaky. The bag itself contained only the tv card wrapped in an old newspaper. That alone is enough to make anyone suspicious.

Now for the real problem. The product that was sent to me was NOT the product that had been advertised for. The was no FM Radio input for instance hence no radio. And upon installing and running the software it was pretty soon obvious that the card also lacked stereo. So instead of a WinTV-FM I was sent a WinTV-GO. That means I ended up paying like 20% more for a USED Go-card than what the NEW product is listed for. In short it was a case of fraud.
Upon contacting the email and owner of the account (let us call him X) all of a sudden refers to his friend, the person who had in fact been the real seller (let us call him Y). Only Y is on vacation abroad. X obviously takes me for a fool and starts to give out advice on how to get stereo sound out of a mono tuner. He also lets me know that he was in fact the original owner of the card, “so I if anyone should know what the card is capable of it is me”. In the next sentence, X insists that the card has got a radio tuner because, and I quote, “I have used it”. Really convincing. In other e-mails he tries different approaches like accusing me of threatening him and re-writing history by lying about the previous e-mail conversation between us (me and Y supposedly).
After commenting on his claim that I threatened him and mentioning the police he responded by threatening ME instead Yeah, the world is full of scumbags.
According to the information given by X, Y is abroad until the end of the week. X claims no responsibility and insists that Y did this deal alone. Ok, fair enough. I will give the matter seven more days to resolve. After that, if Y is still unavailable or refuses to cooperate I will have to go after X. Either way, if we can’t work something out, I will have to report this to the police. I have no choice.
This is where we stand today. Preliminary gathering and securing of evidence has already begun.

To be continued …