A colleague of mine has found out that he just bought a stolen caravan at the weekend.
It was an ebay sale, he paid around £6k cash, forgot to get a receipt. When he got it home, he rang his insurance co to get it covered and they told him it's stolen.
He's seeing the police tonight. We've suggested he get onto is home or car insurance co to see whether they can pursue a claim for him using his legal protection cover. Alternatively if that doesn't work we suggested he try the small claims court. He needs to find out what status the caravan is, ie whether it has been subject to a claim and who owns it (original owner, insurance co).
Can anyone advise on what his chances are or any other avenue's of action. The seller is possibly a trader and runs another company so has some history and isn't likely to disappear, however he may not be a man of means either (the usual, house in wifes name etc).
Thanks
Jonathan
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do a hpi report if its a newish caravan use the chassis no. .has it got one?
how can someone spend £6000 cash and not get a receipt did he think it was cheap at the time?
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Your friend buys a caravan drives it home, does not insure it till after he has towed it home and pays cash with no receipt...
Is he for real? Or is this a windup?
madf
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Unfortunately he is for real. We all listened with our mouths wide open when he recounted the tale this morning.
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He has just bought £6K worth of 'experience' and 'knowledge'. Bad luck. it is an expensive way to learn
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Caravans are registered on CRIS, it's like HPI but different.
He needs to pursue the ebay seller for his money back, but his chances aren't good.
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Fraudsters- US University looking to highlight fraud on the likes of E-bay
Carnegie Mellon University researchers are relying on an old adage to develop anti-fraud software for Internet auction sites: It's not what you know, it's who you know.
At sites like eBay, users warn each other if they have a bad experience with a seller by rating their transactions. But the CMU researchers said savvy fraudsters get around that by conducting transactions with friends or even themselves, using alternate user names to give themselves high satisfaction ratings -- so unsuspecting customers will still try to buy from them.
The CMU software looks for patterns of users who have repeated dealings with one another, and alerts other users that there is a higher probability of having a fraudulent transaction with them.
The researchers analyzed about 1 million transactions involving 66,000 eBay users to develop graphs -- known in statistical circles as bipartite cores -- that identify users interacting with unusual frequency. They plan to publish a paper on their findings early next year and, perhaps, market their software to eBay or otherwise make it available to people who shop online.
Catherine England, an eBay spokeswoman, said the company was not aware of the research and would not comment on it. But England said protecting the company's more than 200 million users from fraud was a top priority.
Online auction fraud -- when a seller doesn't deliver goods or sells a defective product -- accounted for 12 percent of the 431,000 computer fraud complaints received last year by Consumer Sentinel, the Federal Trade Commission's consumer fraud and identity theft database. Auction fraud was the most commonly reported computer-related fraud in the database.
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The best ways to dispose of stolen property are through car boot sales and ebay.
Why are people surprised when they find their purchase to be stolen?
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Of caravans and receipts, where I live someone in a hanglider spotted a compound being broken into and the caravan being towed away. He phoned the police while he followed them from the sky, the police stopped them...... caugh tred handed, open and shut case...... No!! they had a reciept already made out for the same caravan and the police had to let them go!!!!!!!!!!!!.
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Minus the caravan of course!.
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Do not be surprised if matey gets a good grilling by Plod in connection with possible offence of handling stolen property??????
If such interview goes well and cleared then make sure that Plod enters on file that buyer has an interest in ownership of the said living van. There appears to be the thief, the person selling and the buyer all with a claim so it might have to go to Court for decision under Police Property Acts and Mags decide.
Beware of the bloke in a cravat and all that......
dvd
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This happened earlier this year and as far as I remember reading it in my local rag it was simply returned to the owner, no mention of further procedings or gossip in the local community.
The impression given was that because they claimed they had a bill of sale from an anonymous seller they met somewhere the plod could not prove they were stealing it ! ...... I thought at the time that it would make stealing cars a lot easier !.
For your info it was in Felton Northumberland where the caravan was taken.
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