I got burned buying an iPhone 5 on Craigslist

Well I would notify the police department and inform them of the stolen property. I may suggest either flagging his other items as a scam, or replying to his posting using another phone number or email, for a meeting and have the police there to either have him arrested or present to address the problem. You also need to have a copy of the listing so you can prove that it was falsely represented. The police should be involved because the item in question was over $20 value. If all else fails I would find out as much information about the seller and lawyer up.

brenjmull said:

what can I do now? I read about selling it overseas? I called att and they dont seem to care. I am so mad. When I bought it I took it right to att to have it checked, they put in a sim and it was fine,, an hour later it is blocked,, they say maybe stolen.I bought it for my son for his bday and now I am out 500$..I see that the guy has other things listed for sale on craigslist but the cops dont seem to care either.. They said bring us the phone and we will look into it..
I really dont want to lose my 500$ What would you do???

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Did u contact the seller? Did u meet the seller in person.

osofast240sx said:

Did u contact the seller? Did u meet the seller in person.

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My concern about getting together with the seller now is, if it is a stolen phone, the seller is not likely to meet, and if he does...it might be a really unpleasant (scary?) meeting.

But then i'm a devout coward, perhaps OP is more gutsy than I.

brenjmull said:

yes I contacted him and he said he would give me back my money and asked me not to call the police as he was on probation and would go to jail. I felt sorry for him and he said he would give me back my money tomorrow, well he has not answered any texts or phone calls from me since Sunday. I do not think he is going to follow thru. He said he bought it from some girl. I know he works for market computer shows, and that he is 19. He seemed like a very nice guy. I just know when I take the phone to the cops they are going to stick it on a shelf. They acted annoyed when I called them.. They said bring us the phone and then we will talk.. I am so upset about losing 500$ I asked ATT if they could contact the person that blacklisted it and they said they could but wouldnt.. wth?

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Send me the IMEI and I can have a friend look up the important information. I can't give out the address but I can at least help lead you in the right direction. Don't know if you can PM me since you're a new member or not.. if you can't, go make a few posts in the random section at the bottom of the forum.

That does suck bad but you need to contact the police of the guy above can't help. Be careful.

Sold you a stolen phone and you feel sorry for him. Seriously?

why do people use craigslist?


ive never gone anywhere near it i thought perhaps it was a calculated risk people who wanted to buy second-hand or cheaper products would take.

but for $500 i would have gone straight into the apple site.


its not the first time i read people getting scammed in that site i have the impression its a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Troneas said:

why do people use craigslist?


ive never gone anywhere near it i thought perhaps it was a calculated risk people who wanted to buy second-hand or cheaper products would take.

but for $500 i would have gone straight into the apple site.


its not the first time i read people getting scammed in that site i have the impression its a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

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I sold one of my iPhone 4's last year on CL and the girl gave me fake $100 bills. I was in a rush to get to work and didn't notice until I got to work. I sent her a few text message telling her she'd get caught if I turned her in.. she ignored me. 2 weeks later the secret service, well at least an agent, had me come in and scour through some photos to see if I could identify her. Low and behold, her pic was in there.

She also ported her number around 3 or 4 times to try and 'fake' out the cops and one of the companies was T-Mobile that she put in her boyfriends name. I work at T-Mobile so it wasn't too hard for them to extradite her back to NC and charge her. I got the phone back in brand new condition too. Apparently she scammed 4 or 5 people the same day out of phones and jewelry AND had an 8 month old child too. Great motherly choices.

I vere away from CL for phones and computers now. The Nigerian scammers are annoying but receiving a stolen product really isn't worth the $50 - $100 savings (on stuff I usually buy).

Back a few years ago before all this blocking stuff you were at least safe to buy GSM phones from AT&T or Tmobile on Craigslist. Now you can really never know. Even if the phone is good when you get it, you'll never know if the original owner decides to report it stolen for an insurance claim or on Tmobile it can even be blocked for people who decide to stop paying off their installments months after they have sold the phone to someone else.

CEmajr said:

Back a few years ago before all this blocking stuff you were at least safe to buy GSM phones from AT&T or Tmobile on Craigslist. Now you can really never know. Even if the phone is good when you get it, you'll never know if the original owner decides to report it stolen for an insurance claim or on Tmobile it can even be blocked for people who decide to stop paying off their installments months after they have sold the phone to someone else.

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It generally takes 45 days for the insurance companies / carriers IMEI block to take place. It's quicker when the carrier performs the IMEI block but the insurance companies can take up to the 45 days. We see it all the time at my workplace. Phone works great for a month and then out of no where the phone won't make any calls, texts or even customer care calls.

If people are getting a T-Mobile phone these days, they might as well just go into a store and buy it at invoice price or split the payments up since we don't do contracts. The little extra you spend upfront (or split up) is well worth the headache of dealing with an IMEI blocked handset.

brenjmull said:

yes I contacted him and he said he would give me back my money and asked me not to call the police as he was on probation and would go to jail. I felt sorry for him and he said he would give me back my money tomorrow, well he has not answered any texts or phone calls from me since Sunday. I do not think he is going to follow thru. He said he bought it from some girl. I know he works for market computer shows, and that he is 19. He seemed like a very nice guy. I just know when I take the phone to the cops they are going to stick it on a shelf. They acted annoyed when I called them.. They said bring us the phone and then we will talk.. I am so upset about losing 500$ I asked ATT if they could contact the person that blacklisted it and they said they could but wouldnt.. wth?

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You have to understand... Nobody was hurt. It's a $500 theft. The police will file the necessary paperwork, but I am not sure what else you expect them to do. At the end of the day, this as a minor crime. They aren't going to send detectives out to right this wrong.

Where do you live? If its a large city, or near a large city, I am even less surprised. Do you know what the protocol for shop lifting is around Boston? The cops come out and file a report with a description. If you have pictures, great. They are going to wait until the person gets caught in the act, maybe at the same store, maybe a different one, and then have slightly more evidence than the one time they were actually caught to use against them. That's it!

[story]
Some presumed meth heads pop into the Best Buy my wife manages in a near weekly basis. They steal any high value item they can easily grab. One popular item are beats by dre headphones. They stole an estimates $6k in merchandise before employees started recognizing them. So, they called the police, and by luck, the police were pulling in as the people were leaving (they had seen the girl stash some magic mice in her bag). The cops asked her to see the bag, she was stupid enough to allow it, and it had 11 mice in it. She got taken to jail that day, but likely all the product that was taken before then is gone for good and that store will not be compensated. The police theorize the drug dealers are trading drugs for electronics, so the hope is they get some information as to who is behind the robbery. This was about a month ago, and is all I know.
[/story]

For the record, the guy making me a custom order at pretzel maker the other day acted annoyed that he couldn't just sell me something premade. People act annoyed when they have to do work they don't want to do. A cop's dream job isn't filing a report about a stolen iPhone. So he was tactless. Not dismissing his behavior. But also not annoyed. The number of ridiculous complaints they must deal with daily is, well ridiculous.

I said this about banning imei and I will say it again. I haven't seen evidence that it actually stops or even reduces theft. Until I can be presented with that evidence, I am a pretty strong believer that it is a complete waste of time by the telcos and actually hurts the end user. My phone is gone. Banning it will get me nowhere. Why should a potentially honest person, suc as you, be burned again?

Troneas said:

why do people use craigslist?.

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Soon enough, there's gonna be sum1 replying, I buy stuff all the time from CL just fine!

Even good, "normal" people, when no one is looking... that's the real world.

CL fine as long as you are OK to take the risk. A usd$500 complicated item? only if it's rare and I can turn around and sell it 5x as much, so big risk = big reward, that's the gambling spread.

Feel sorry? Oh brother, I envy you for never have lived in the questionable part of town.

brenjmull said:

what can I do now? I read about selling it overseas? I called att and they dont seem to care. I am so mad. When I bought it I took it right to att to have it checked, they put in a sim and it was fine,, an hour later it is blocked,, they say maybe stolen.I bought it for my son for his bday and now I am out 500$..I see that the guy has other things listed for sale on craigslist but the cops dont seem to care either.. They said bring us the phone and we will look into it..
I really dont want to lose my 500$ What would you do???

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Why didn't Att know it was stolen when they checked it?

I agree it doesn't stop anything. A stolen device costs $0 to the thief and he will still be able to sell it for some cash even if the phone being blocked decreases some of the resale value.

It was more of government pressure for the telcos to block imeis rather than them doing it themselves. It never prevented people from stealing Sprint and Verizon phones in the past and hasn't stopped the theft of AT&T and Tmobile phones.

617aircav said:

Why didn't Att know it was stolen when they checked it?

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Boogsephine said:

It generally takes 45 days for the insurance companies / carriers IMEI block to take place. It's quicker when the carrier performs the IMEI block but the insurance companies can take up to the 45 days.

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This..probably.

Don't buy iPhones on eBay or Craigslist. You can always buy refurbished iPhones for a little less. If you can't afford refurbished then you shouldn't get an iPhone. Hate to sound harsh, but if you can't afford an expensive device don't take short cuts and buy one.

If this kid really is 19 or so, hound him down and demand your money back. If you don't push he won't care or be scared of you. Stand up for yourself and get your money back!!!

Boogsephine said:

This..probably.

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Att should know it was stolen, they do the imei block

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Hankster said:

Don't buy iPhones on eBay or Craigslist. You can always buy refurbished iPhones for a little less. If you can't afford refurbished then you shouldn't get an iPhone. Hate to sound harsh, but if you can't afford an expensive device don't take short cuts and buy one.

If this kid really is 19 or so, hound him down and demand your money back. If you don't push he won't care or be scared of you. Stand up for yourself and get your money back!!!

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If you can't take the risk, don't buy on CL. I buy on CL all the time. I've been burnt once, out of over 30 phone purchases, including about a dozen iPhone 4s's. I accept the risk and observe due diligence. I stay away from the iPhone 5. Nothing beats buying an iPhone 4s for $200 from someone in need of money, and selling it on for a large profit.

brenjmull said:

That is what got me so mad. We went right to the AT&T store and they put in a sim and said it was good to go. I them had them take out the sim as my son would not be getting it for three weeks. So then we went to the AT&T store this weekend to activate it and all was good. Then half an hour later it stopped working. I spent over an hour on the phone with AT&T who said I blocked the phone. I didn't block it. So after a while the person on the phone managed to unblock it. Then about 5 hours later it got blocked again. How crazy. I blew up after all this. Then AT&T felt so bad that they let us do a special upgrade early to get the iPhone for 199$. Now I spent 700 on getting a phone. I am really mad. I want to shake the crap out of that little twerp.

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[QUOTE

If this kid really is 19 or so, hound him down and demand your money back. If you don't push he won't care or be scared of you. Stand up for yourself and get your money back!!!

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That is what I plan to do. I am going to do a reverse phone look up and I know who he works for. I am going to show up at the next computer show and find him. Or show up at his house.[/QUOTE]
Sounds like a great way to end up on the news.

Looon said:

That is what I plan to do. I am going to do a reverse phone look up and I know who he works for. I am going to show up at the next computer show and find him. Or show up at his house.

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Sounds like a great way to end up on the news.[/QUOTE]

What proof do you have that he sold you that particular phone?
The iphone is easily worth $400 on eBay.

617aircav said:

Att should know it was stolen, they do the imei block

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It really depends on when the phone was reported stolen.

Here is a scenario:
I lose my phone today. Guy who finds/stole it sells it tomorrow, to a person who has him meet at the AT&T store. I report it stolen the next day as I have accepted the fact that I won't be getting it back. AT&T had no indication the phone was stolen when they checked it.

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I maintain that the safest way to buy a phone on craigslist is to require box (which should have IMEI printed on it matching the phone itself), cables, earbuds, EVERYTHING intact. I even ask for a receipt. All of this is a reasonable ask. If the person doesn't have it, that's ok. He can sell it to someone else.

lordofthereef said:

It really depends on when the phone was reported stolen.

Here is a scenario:
I lose my phone today. Guy who finds/stole it sells it tomorrow, to a person who has him meet at the AT&T store. I report it stolen the next day as I have accepted the fact that I won't be getting it back. AT&T had no indication the phone was stolen when they checked it.

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I maintain that the safest way to buy a phone on craigslist is to require box (which should have IMEI printed on it matching the phone itself), cables, earbuds, EVERYTHING intact. I even ask for a receipt. All of this is a reasonable ask. If the person doesn't have it, that's ok. He can sell it to someone else.

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Receipt? I don't even have the receipt to the phone I bought last month. I understand your position though. For me CL is a hobby business so I can't demand receipts as 99 percent won't have one.

You felt "sorry" for some on who scammed you? You have lost your money in any case. It will not be recovered if the 19 year old has spent it. The stolen phone goes back to original owner even if you paid for it, this is the law. Your dollar sign after the amount indicates you are not native to the US? Most people would not fall for being fooled the second time around. A fool is soon parted with his money.

brenjmull said:

yes I contacted him and he said he would give me back my money and asked me not to call the police as he was on probation and would go to jail. I felt sorry for him and he said he would give me back my money tomorrow, well he has not answered any texts or phone calls from me since Sunday. I do not think he is going to follow thru. He said he bought it from some girl. I know he works for market computer shows, and that he is 19. He seemed like a very nice guy. I just know when I take the phone to the cops they are going to stick it on a shelf. They acted annoyed when I called them.. They said bring us the phone and then we will talk.. I am so upset about losing 500$ I asked ATT if they could contact the person that blacklisted it and they said they could but wouldnt.. wth?

Click to expand...