roof repair -fake cheque

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Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 5:46 am

My Girlfriends father paid some guys a large some of money to do some roof repairs about 6-8 months ago. I knew it was a scam and it was checked out and of course nothing was done on the roof. Paid cash etc and lost his money.

He has dementia and can be a handfull his wife tried to stop him.

Yesterday two blokes turn up with a cheque from "the insurance company", drove him to the bank and he withdrew $3k and gave it too them.

LEO are looking into it and have asked the bank for cctv footage.
The local newspaper will be running a story this or next week. I hope they educate the masses and don't just lambaste him.
Rolling Eyes

419Eater is my life Joined: 11 Apr 2005 Posts: 365

Nice heads up.....

With all the damage we had from Hurricanes Gustav and Ike it will be a matter of time before that kind of scam hits here. Sorry about your g/f's family tho.

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 5:41 pm

oh crikey sounds like he got hit by Travelers, not once but twice.

They target the elderly.

I've not had personal contact with them (that I know of!!).

Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 11:45 pm

Heres the newspaper article. It shows how organised these people are.
All four guys had english accents. I wonder if scamming is easier than fruit picking for backpackers. Wink

www.forstersound.com/kiosk/roof2.jpg

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 2:27 am

here is an article about how they operate in the US. Probably not connected with the Aussie guys, yet using the same traditional con.

http://fraudtech.bizland.com/travelers.htm

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 8:12 am

Thanks I passed that on.

It seems there is many more scammers than real people

Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 4:56 pm

in the US in 2002 the Travelers hit the news big time with a video of a woman beating her daughter in a parking lot -

http://www.rickross.com/reference/irish_travelers/irish_travelers1.html

here is one article, 100s turn up if you search "madelyne Toogood"

Law and Order SVU even did a fictionalized episode about Travelers in the north east. I don't really think there is a Traveler community up there, but they used the premise for the show.