Scammer targets Trade Me flatmate ad

If it was not for a shrewd bank teller, a Hastings man would have been scammed out of $3000 when a simple Trade Me advertisement went wrong recently.

Reagan Timothy, 29, advertised for a flatmate using auction website Trade Me's Flatmate Wanted service earlier this month, and attracted the interest of a woman "from overseas".

Emailing from an account in the name of Vanessa Crossley, she expressed interest in renting a room at his house, made arrangements for furniture delivery and an airport pick-up as well as payment of rent, bond and expenses.

Mr Timothy said instead of the $200 required to secure her room, she deposited $3000 from a New Zealand bank account she said belonged to her father.

"She then gave me a call and asked me to deposit any remaining money via Western Union to a travel agent that would buy her ticket to New Zealand," he said.

"So I went to the ASB bank to do that and the guy said 'it's a scam, they have already asked the bank to reverse their payment.'

"I was about to do it, and if I had I would be missing $3000."

On the advice of the bank, Mr Timothy reported the incident to Napier Police.

"But they can create another one just like that. I just want to make people aware of things happening because some people could get into trouble. I feel lucky because otherwise I would be losing $3000 and things might have got really hard - it's not silly money." Head of Trust and Safety at Trade Me Jon Duffy said Western Union was often used by scammers. "In 99 per cent of the successful cases Western Union is used by the scammer to transfer the funds from the victim offshore."

Mr Duffy said not many scams were successful on Trade Me, as all users were profiled when they signed up.

"We profile memberships and alert on certain factors before memberships are enabled for trading. Where a membership is deemed to be risky, it will not be allowed to activate."

He said in Mr Timothy's case, he should not have put his email address in the listing.

"Scammers will often attempt to lure victims off websites and communicate through email, instant messenger or even text message - this means that website administrators have less opportunity to step in where suspicious behaviour is noted.

"Do not place contact details in listings, in this instance the victim put his email address in the body of the listing.

"This effectively means his email address was visible to anyone on the internet, anywhere in the world. We have subsequently removed the email address from the listing and provided further information to the victim to remind him not to do this."

He said users could avoid becoming targeted by never transferring money overseas as part of a Trade Me transaction, and only communicating over the site.