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Business Owners, Does This Sound Suspicious?
- Thread starter Squilly
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Oldest - well not quite oldest scam in the world.
Scammer puts money into your bank account. Scammer convinces you to pay some of the money he put into your bank account to him, or to pay goods with them. Six or seven weeks later your bank figures out that the money came from a forged check, scammed bank account, stolen credit card etc. The money that the scammer paid in disappears.
If they put $100,000 into your account, you spent $20,000 on goods delivered to the scammer, took out $80,000 to buy the car you always wanted, and a few weeks later the bank wants their $100,000 back, guess who is solely responsible for the money. You.
I wouldn't be convinced that there are any actual Poles involved in this scam. The scammers first thought to claim they represented Santa Claus at the North Pole, that sounded too suspicious, so they changed it to Poles from Poland.
Tell him to check his host file.....
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Assuming you are not laundering money for terrorists.......
Hope you like Gitmo!
This isn't a scam. The reason they are dealing with a couple of young small business owners instead of a large-scale operation is that the Poles know these two won't be able to steal their idea and run with it themselves. They will always be reliant upon the Polish company so there is little risk to them.
And everyone claiming he will be an accessory for simply offering advice is wrong. By that definition everyone in this thread offering him advice will also be an accessory also.
In the end OP's brother hasn't put in any of his own money so there is nothing to scam.
And everyone claiming he will be an accessory for simply offering advice is wrong. By that definition everyone in this thread offering him advice will also be an accessory also.
In the end OP's brother hasn't put in any of his own money so there is nothing to scam.
Dear Apple,
I'm a licensed reseller in Poland and I'm very upset. There is this 40 store chain here in Poland that has started to sell iPhones and iPads at a tremendous discount to what you allow me to sell mine at. In fact is is 30% below the price I am charged to buy them from you. I called several other resellers here in Poland and they are just as mad and upset as I am. I want to know why you are doing this and I want to renegotiate my contract with you. If this continues I will have to stop selling your products as no one will buy from me when they can just go down the street and buy from one of the outlets of that big 40 chain store. You will be hearing from my lawyers if I don't get some kind of satisfaction and quick.
Of course I'm not really a licensed reseller in Poland but I bet they would be pretty upset if this really is legit. If the OP and his brother are 18 year old twins... have they ever thought of maybe talking this over with Mom & Dad?
I'm a licensed reseller in Poland and I'm very upset. There is this 40 store chain here in Poland that has started to sell iPhones and iPads at a tremendous discount to what you allow me to sell mine at. In fact is is 30% below the price I am charged to buy them from you. I called several other resellers here in Poland and they are just as mad and upset as I am. I want to know why you are doing this and I want to renegotiate my contract with you. If this continues I will have to stop selling your products as no one will buy from me when they can just go down the street and buy from one of the outlets of that big 40 chain store. You will be hearing from my lawyers if I don't get some kind of satisfaction and quick.
Of course I'm not really a licensed reseller in Poland but I bet they would be pretty upset if this really is legit. If the OP and his brother are 18 year old twins... have they ever thought of maybe talking this over with Mom & Dad?
You need to read the thread.
Alternatively, you might want to consider investing in the same idea. Best of luck.
-t
If prison time is in the cards the good news is that the FCC just ordered the rates slashed for collect prison phone calls.
What's going to happen is the OP's brother is going to dismiss 16 pages of people telling him not to do it, read this one post, which, frankly, is terrible advice and go through with it.
What terrible advice. Just because they both haven't put in their own money doesn't mean that it isn't a scam. They could be using the brother as the fall guy (ie. his identity).
No there not, in general they are very much in line with the US once you add sales tax. Eastern Europe is a different situation all together where they are more expensive for a variety of reasons.
Oh your brother or whomever it was is being conned.
I still don't buy it. Could be the same in saying Apple offered $1 Billion for an app on the App Store. It rarely happens but it happens. Then everyone saying "no, this isn't Apple, it's a fake". Then someone else gets bought for $1 Billion and the original company loses out on a deal of a lifetime.
It must be "true" since we've now heard nothing more. From eager to lazy.
Never mind that I I still think this whole thing went rather fast from "does this sound bad" to "there's 6 pallets being held" .. I've never seen freight move that fast, considering the "source" is in Los Angeles, and other than having a pseudo Apple store/site, with added creepy music, but otherwise has to order Apple stuff through a myriad of channels or resort to buying just like you and I.
For 6 pallets worth of stuff, to get put together from gray market sources, shipped to three different addresses, in three different states, and UPS is "holding" them all? Why would UPS hold anything, if it's to be delivered. IF UPS has them, why the three states and three addresses? UPS could have just kept them. UPS does freight forwarding operations. They didn't need to be delivered and picked up again. It all could have got straight to UPS, at one location.
Even the gray market 'dealer' knows this. If I were closer to downtown L.A., I'd have to go drop by that store front with this thread, just to see if they laugh, too.
You can absolutely bet, that if there are indeed 6 pallets of stuff from these people, being sent all over the place, that they have themselves indeed been paid in full. I simply do not see anyone with something tangible to loose, putting out that kind of loot.
Never mind that I I still think this whole thing went rather fast from "does this sound bad" to "there's 6 pallets being held" .. I've never seen freight move that fast, considering the "source" is in Los Angeles, and other than having a pseudo Apple store/site, with added creepy music, but otherwise has to order Apple stuff through a myriad of channels or resort to buying just like you and I.
For 6 pallets worth of stuff, to get put together from gray market sources, shipped to three different addresses, in three different states, and UPS is "holding" them all? Why would UPS hold anything, if it's to be delivered. IF UPS has them, why the three states and three addresses? UPS could have just kept them. UPS does freight forwarding operations. They didn't need to be delivered and picked up again. It all could have got straight to UPS, at one location.
Even the gray market 'dealer' knows this. If I were closer to downtown L.A., I'd have to go drop by that store front with this thread, just to see if they laugh, too.
You can absolutely bet, that if there are indeed 6 pallets of stuff from these people, being sent all over the place, that they have themselves indeed been paid in full. I simply do not see anyone with something tangible to loose, putting out that kind of loot.
You are wrong and I'm not even sure your analogy works here, especially not in response to the guy you quoted.
By the time you buy, ship, and sell the U.S. Apple product, it will not be far off from what you would have paid had you bought in the home country. Your math, or lack thereof, isn't spectacular.
Also, saying that Apple could buy an app in the app store for a billion dollars doesn't happen often but it does happen is wrong. Tell me one app Apple bought for a billion dollars? I get that just because it doesn't happen often doesn't make it fake but that doesn't correlate to your business scam, not even a little. You aren't the first guy to jump on this and you won't be the last. That is why this works well.
I just wonder why this deal isn't yet done yet.
As Poland is a young member of the European Union I would not trust to do big deals like this. Borders are open to other European countries so the goods can disapear without any trace on the black market. On the other hand there are no unified laws and law enforcement is done country by country with little or no coöperation between countries.
Stated before: only two pallets can be shipped to one address at a time. That's why they're at different locations.
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