Dodgy sellers are scamming Adelaide furniture buyers on Facebook Marketplace before ghosting them, with an Adelaide Hills victim warning potential buyers.
The Advertiser on Monday visited a home address provided by a seller, to find no furniture for sale and was told several people had arrived to collect items in recent months.
An Adelaide man, who asked to be identified as Andrew for safety reasons, said he was scammed in May after responding to an ad for a mid-century modern dresser priced at $250.
“I thought I’d better buy this before anyone else does,” he said.
Andrew said the seller had a seemingly legitimate reason for disposing of the piece – it belonged to her father who was moving into an aged-care home – and asked if he could pick it up at the weekend.
Then the seller asked him to put down a deposit to hold the item before disappearing.
Andrew deposited $150 into an account the seller said belonged to her partner before realising he’d fallen for the scam.
“Their business case is the deposit,” he said. “They take you through a script and eventually once all the details are agreed on, they ask for a deposit.”
He said afterwards, the interaction petered off before ceasing all together. The seller’s account disappeared shortly after.
“I was quite shocked and disappointed,” he said.
“It was quite clever in a way, (they weren’t) asking for a lot … I thought I was quite savvy about these things.”
“It’s a really perfect niche because people who want mid-century furniture have a bit of money … sitting in their account. It’s always a really good bargain and the pictures are always beautiful.”
Andrew said hereported the scam to SAPOL’s Cyber Issues Reporting System, Scamwatch and his bankbut was unaware if they had taken action.
In a letter, the bank told Andrew it was unable to recover the funds because they were no longer in the bank account they attempted to recall them from and could not reimburse him.
The same mid-century dresser was advertised for sale on Facebook Marketplace by a different profile — with the same backstory of her father moving into aged care — at the time of writing.
Andrew said he since falling victim to the scam, he has identified at least half a dozen allegedly fraudulent accounts selling mid-century furniture.
“Once I started looking at these things regularly, I put a few pictures through (Google image search) and they’ll often pop up on some lifestyle site in America or some Pinterest board,” he said.
“The profile pics are often fake as well.”
One account identified by Andrew had been selling a vintage mid-century sideboard using what appears to be a stolen profile photo, which The Advertiser traced to a 2015 post from a US-based woman with a different name.
When The Advertiser inquired about the sideboard, a reporter was told they could pick up the item from a western suburbs address the following day before being asked to deposit money.
However, when The Advertiser visited the property, a resident said at least three people have come knocking between last November and this April asking to pick up a furniture, including a couch and a table, advertised on marketplace – none of which she or her housemates had been selling.
Andrew believes authorities in Australia are not set up to assist individuals who lose money to such “commonplace low-level scams” but said potential buyers could safeguard themselves by arranging in-person meetings or at least a phone conversation before handing over money.
“These kind of real-world interactions make it very hard for scammers to commodify these transactions,” he said.
A National Anti-Scam Centre spokesperson said Scamwatch reports are used to assist the centre to stay ahead of scam trends, disrupt scams by sharing intelligence, and warn consumers and business and advised victims seeking a police investigation to make a report to police via ReportCyber.
SAPOL was contaced for comment.