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I got scammed :/

well i guess this is a dead end.

talked to a police man, he wrote what happened and gave me an incident report. not sure what else he could do cause it wasn't as if the guy held me at gun point.

called the apple store to try to get them to flag the serial number but than they referred me to 1800 apl care. when i called 1800 apl care and said "stolen" in the machine prompt they said if you lost or found a macbook please contact your local authorities, we cannot flag laptops.

😕
 
dbwrobel said:
Hey, sorry to hear about what happened, it really sucks 🙁

By any chance, have you tried removing the hard drive and running data recovery on it? If he didn't zero the drive before he formatted it then its likely a lot of information could potentially exist on it if he was using it before he scammed you (ie. photos, text, etc, anything for that matter if you are looking to find out who this individual is and aid the cops in finding him). Simply formatting the drive doesn't technically 'delete'. Just don't fill up the hard drive whatever you do or then you might over-write anything if its still there.
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hey dbwrobel! thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately i couldnt 🙁 when I got home, the first thing i did was try out the comp. when it wouldnt work, i got extremely pissed (accumulation of everything) so i made a genius bar appointment. By the time I went to the store, the system wouldn't even boot into the OS anymore.

I wish i took your advice earlier though :/

the genius told me who the computer was registered to before. he didn't tell me an address, just a name. fortunately the name brought up only one hit, so i facebooked that person. not sure if that person got the laptop stolen or maybe its his mother, but either way, emailed her just to be sure.
 
Post an ad on craigslist in the same area stating that you want a macbook air and list the same specs that you had. Put a google voice number and see if the scammer calls you to try and sell you the one that he just took. Sound different on the phone, setup a different meeting place, hope that the actual scammer shows up, and then steal it back!

Also, if our scammer is a mac enthusiast, how do we know he isn't here reading the forum and laughing to himself?
 
ipodlover77 said:
hey dbwrobel! thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately i couldnt 🙁 when I got home, the first thing i did was try out the comp. when it wouldnt work, i got extremely pissed (accumulation of everything) so i made a genius bar appointment. By the time I went to the store, the system wouldn't even boot into the OS anymore.

I wish i took your advice earlier though :/

the genius told me who the computer was registered to before. he didn't tell me an address, just a name. fortunately the name brought up only one hit, so i facebooked that person. not sure if that person got the laptop stolen or maybe its his mother, but either way, emailed her just to be sure.
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Go back to the genius bar and ask for a receipt from your appointment. The name, address, etc of the person to whom the computer is registered will be on the top of the paper. This is why I'm religious about un-registering my gear before I sell them.
 
jenzjen said:
Go back to the genius bar and ask for a receipt from your appointment. The name, address, etc of the person to whom the computer is registered will be on the top of the paper. This is why I'm religious about un-registering my gear before I sell them.
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tried it. i asked if i could get the persons address and stuff but the genius said that he already erased who it belonged too. the only thing he was able to recall was the name of the person.

this was a very expensive lesson indeed. haha.
 
ipodlover77 said:
hey dbwrobel! thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately i couldnt 🙁 when I got home, the first thing i did was try out the comp. when it wouldnt work, i got extremely pissed (accumulation of everything) so i made a genius bar appointment. By the time I went to the store, the system wouldn't even boot into the OS anymore.

I wish i took your advice earlier though :/

the genius told me who the computer was registered to before. he didn't tell me an address, just a name. fortunately the name brought up only one hit, so i facebooked that person. not sure if that person got the laptop stolen or maybe its his mother, but either way, emailed her just to be sure.
Click to expand...

Ahh thats not good; so the drive has died or you just can't boot into the os? You can could buy an enclosure for it and plug it up to another machine and run the recovery that way; I lost my entire itunes library as well as pictures because my friend 'accidently' clicked to use the drive for time machine when he plugged it into his computer....after running data recovery on it almost a year later I recovered my entire collection, pictures, and stuff I didn't even remember putting on there...again, as long as the drive spins up and can read/write you have a shot, you don't need to be able to boot up anything.
 
ipodlover77 said:
well i guess this is a dead end.

talked to a police man, he wrote what happened and gave me an incident report. not sure what else he could do cause it wasn't as if the guy held me at gun point.

called the apple store to try to get them to flag the serial number but than they referred me to 1800 apl care. when i called 1800 apl care and said "stolen" in the machine prompt they said if you lost or found a macbook please contact your local authorities, we cannot flag laptops.

😕
Click to expand...

Too bad about Apple's policy. You did your best. It is now on record. That's better than nothing. They cannot flag laptops? Is there a product they can flag, I wonder.
 
fabian9 said:
Did you read the original post? That's exactly what the OP did...
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No, the OP traded and added cash. That's not a cash only transaction. Whenever you're trading with a stranger, odds are that one of you is getting the short end of the stick in some way or another.
 
i doubt this will be of much consolation to the OP but something similar happened with me and a 15" involving $650 that i lost, it's been 3 months of a case so far but the police are on it have been to court, got the address etc of the person who 'sold' the laptop and they are still hopeful i'll get my money back. So there's always hope just keep trying 🙂 best of luck bud, don't wish something like this on anybody
 
ddeadserious said:
No, the OP traded and added cash. That's not a cash only transaction. Whenever you're trading with a stranger, odds are that one of you is getting the short end of the stick in some way or another.
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I see what you mean, but I don't think the terms of the trade make much of a difference here. Even if he had bought the macbook pro for cash, the seller would have done the same scam (i.e. manipulated system profiler information).

Using Craiglist and paying cash only doesn't protect you from scams like this. In fact, I would even go as far as saying that if you pay by credit card you've got an extra layer of protection as you can claim it back through the credit card company. Of course paying by credit card isn't usually possible if you're buying on Craigslist.
 
ipodlover77 said:
some what nervous. not cause i feel i did something wrong, but just nervous about going to the police. this would be my first instance getting involved with the law enforcement. first time jitters haha.
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haha no need to be nervous, the police is there to protect you (you're the victim here!!), and they get paid good tax dollar to do their job.
 
fabian9 said:
haha no need to be nervous, the police is there to protect you (you're the victim here!!), and they get paid good tax dollar to do their job.
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they won't do nothing. The only way they'll get it back is if they get a tip that, that guy scammed 1000s of people or they raid some house and find the mac. I wouldn't really rely on the cops to find it tho
 
PT123 said:
...However if it's any closure to you, as a lawyer I would say the police are powerless to do anything because you both entered into a verbal contract, the item was sold as seen and you paid cash. He didn't do anything untoward like run away with the cash ...
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He misrepresented the computer. It's fraud. Call the police and tell them your story. It will probably not help you, but who knows?
 
Pretty similar experience here.

I had a similar experience a long time ago when trying to get a second MacBook for travel as I didn't want my new one getting tore up. Naturally the seller says it's in perfect condition with an upgraded HDD from the 80GB original to 250GB. Also said it was upgraded to 250GB of memory.

He didn't give me a machine revision code to look up info on it (I use Mactracker a lot when it comes to thinking of buying and selling used hardware to refurbish and sell.

He wanted to trade for my current road machine (back then) which was a Sony SZ series notebook. My Sony was a very expensive PC but also starting to show it's age. It could run Windows Vista Ultimate without a problem despite being a 1.83Ghz Core Duo.

Anyway, I meet up with this guy and the MacBook is TRASHED!!! the case had the crack issue which I know would be fixed by Apple but had other issues with the backlight flickering and the screen bezel separating from the lid.

I fire it up and the battery is shot holding with a runtime of less than an hour (I could see the battery meter dropping while in use. Scratches everywhere and of course, an 80GB hard drive installed and less than 2GB of memory. He wanted cash on top from me on this deal since his mac "was more valuable" (in parts imo), and I told him hell no, my Sony SZ was in perfect condition but I reverted back to XP and all of Sony's shovelware to go with it.

I managed the trade, but missed a few details as I didn't have Mactracker handy, and after getting home. I found out I had the same 1.83 Ghz 32bit Core Duo that ran very hot. The 250GB hard drive was in a wrapper and used (most likely a pull from another machine, but it did work) my final pet peeve was he promised me the latest iLife with it which was a copied disk image on the 80GB drive.

I felt like I got kicked in the head that day but did get it refurbished but it cost me more to fix it up than most and should have just kept my Sony notebook. Oh well. We all learn a hard lesson.


Come to think of it, my latest posting I have up is I want a 27" Intel Core i7 iMac. I offered up for trade more than plenty for the value which is my 13" MBP (upgraded to 8GB of memory and a 750G Western Digital Scorpio Black series 7200 RPM Hard Drive) all under warranty and a 27" Apple LED Cinema Display. I can't count how many stupid offers I've gotten from Nigerian shipping scams to people offering me previous generation 21" Core 2 iMacs... One would think that the hardware I have well over $2000 worth of barely used equipment and getting $800 dollar lowballs for the entire setup.

I decided hell with it, I'm keeping it. I love my 27" ACD. 😱
 
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