The Trafalgar man wanted an excavator to use on the 40 acres of woods on his property.
He looked at ads online, found the one he wanted for $9,950 and learned how the purported seller in Oregon was offering a bargain on the equipment because her husband had recently died in a car accident. And the bargain looked even better as the shipping would be free, since a previous buyer had backed out after already paying for shipping.
Within days of finding the ad, his money was gone and the equipment was never delivered. In December, he filed a police report.
Enter Johnson County Sheriff’s Office Detective James Bryant.
Bryant worked for weeks following the trail of the construction equipment. After about three weeks of calls, scouring websites, court orders and looking at public records, he was able to get back every cent the man had paid to the scammer.
Victims getting money back after they have been scammed is rare. Bryant estimates that less than 1 in 10 scamming victims will ever see any money they sent to someone looking to scam them.
Once money hits the bank account of a scammer, they immediately withdraw the money and walk away, Bryant said.
“You follow the money and it is not there,” he said.
Bryant is using the case to bring awareness to the fact that scammers exist and to warn people to be alert when they are making purchases, especially online.
If a deal seems too good to be true, it likely is and people purchasing items online should work to touch the product before they buy or to see the seller face-to-face before paying any money, he said.
“My advice is to look people in the eye and talk to them,” he said.
The ordeal began on Nov. 29 when the victim began e-mailing the purported seller of an excavator advertised on a popular website used for selling goods. The victim wired the money on Dec. 3 and communication with the seller began decreasing.
The victim called the phone number listed and the man who answered blocked the number after the victim began asking about the equipment. The resident called police after becoming suspicious, according to the police report Bryant filed on the incident.
Bryant got the case and quickly went to work.
He started by doing a quick search of the internet for the vehicle’s unique identification number. There, he found that an equipment dealer in South Bend had possession of the actual piece of equipment the man was looking to buy. The company in possession of the excavator had the equipment listed for $40,000 and the advertisement they used was cloned by the scammers and posted on multiple websites.
Bryant then discovered that the company that was purportedly hired to move the excavator across the country was not real. The scammers likely hired someone to make a website that looked legitimate. Bryant could not access the website at work because of the fire wall protection, another red flag, he said.
The victim wired the money to a bank account in Oregon. But, the money was withdrawn within four hours of the wire at a physical bank in California, Bryant said.
Bank officials told Bryant that the account was opened a few weeks before the fraud with $100 and seven transactions of just under $10,000 had crossed through the account, prompting bank officials to freeze the account on the suspicion of fraud.
“This scam got seven people,” he said.
The account was frozen with just over $10,000 in it. Bryant worked to gain access to that money for the local victim. Bank employees told Bryant he needed a court order to have access to the contents of the bank account.
Bryant and local officials in the Johnson County Circuit Court, prosecutor’s office and county clerk’s office stayed late on a Friday to push the court order through so the local victim would have the first shot at the money.
The victim has his money back now. But Bryant is still on the case.
He is preparing a packet of information to send to police agencies in California so they may investigate further.
Bryant or the victim may never know what happens to the people who worked to scam the man of the money. But, the local man received his money back, which is a positive outcome for a detective, Bryant said.
“Will someone go to jail, I don’t know, but a man getting back $10,000 is huge,” he said.
