Oh my, the drama continues.
You may have noticed the comment a guest recently posted to my blog. It seems that Shehryar Qamar, or somebody posing as him, has been up to more no good. This time, having been banned from eBay, the scammer has resorted to selling bogus goods directly from the trance addict forum.
Now, a person claiming to be Shehryar Qamar has replied on that same forum attempting to explain the situation, claiming that he is a victim of identity theft at the hands of his ex-fiance. He now wants to make amends... by slowly refunding everybody's money over a period of several months. Of course, I have no way to prove that he is not telling the truth, however the following items are of note:
1) He refuses to talk via phone
2) He is claiming that he will refund the money. Why would he do this if he was in fact a victim?
3) His current IP address (as of last night) matches the IP address from which the scam mails originated
So, the body of evidence currently lends to the conclusion that this Shehryar Qamar is lying. However, there is no certain proof of that, so I cannot state that he is lying - only that he appears to be lying.
Either way, it doesn't impact me much, as he has not offered to refund my money, which is of course the only sane solution to the problem. I spoke with him directly via AIM, and his recommendation was that I sell the item on eBay and that he would cover the difference. I have a better idea - why don't I send the unit to paypal and get a full refund via American Express, letting them take the scammer to court?
My thinking is that Sheryar Qamar was in a tight financial situation. It may have been as the email from him suggested, that he was unemployed, or it could be any number of other things. He started relatively small on the larceny scale - misrepresentation of goods and mail fraud (e.g. the Powerbook), escalated to selling outright fictitious items (multiple Powerbooks and G5s), was banned from eBay, and concocted a new identity as his "fiance" to scam people on the TA forums.
Recently, though, I imagine that all of my combined actions against him have started to take their toll. Hence the "last gasp" emails I recently received - Paypal, Amex, the IFCC, god only knows who else had started to get real close. He looked for a way out, hoping to scam me again with an "installment plan" that I of course didn't want anything to do with. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me...
Then comes another problem for our scammer. Once the people on the TA forums tracked down his real name and googled for more information, they came across my site and learned of the fraud. Now they know exactly who he is. They know his real name, his real address, his real phone number. They call him out, and I relate my story on the forums... trance forums, a community that this guy is seriously involved in. It's probably not good for your rep if you're called out as an internet scammer, so Shehryar Qamar has to do something in response.
So now we get Shehryar Qamar forced to show up on the TA forums using his real account, defending himself against the half dozen accusations that point straight at him.
So that's my current take on the situation. I admittedly could be wrong, but I doubt it - finally the pieces all seem to be falling into place, and hopefully the whole situation is another step closer to being resolved.
Oh, and Shehryar is fully aware of this site now, so he will surely be reading this at some point. If you have any information you'd like to relay to him, feel free to leave it in the comments section of this entry.
Comments
@ Tue Jul 27 14:41:51 -0400 2004
well spoken jeremy.
LouZiffer @ Tue Jul 27 15:01:06 -0400 2004
As someone who has been reading this and talking with you about it every step of the way, I think you're completely in the right, Jeremy.
In my opinion this guy is either lying or is an idiot for trying to pay people back piecemeal for something he says he didn't do. If his ex really posed as him, he'd have no grounds for suing her for money he decided to pay back himself as opposed to calling the authorities about her actions. The police take identity theft much more seriously than they do simple fraud. The only way he could possibly clear his name is by having her arrested and charged, and he's ignoring that option. It's easy to reason out why.
Triluna @ Tue Jul 27 15:20:40 -0400 2004
I lived with a scammer for more than a year, listening to his lies and excuses for why he couldn't pay his bills or keep his promises. So I've gotten to be a little bit of an expert dealing with shady characters. I read over what this guy has written in emails, posts, IM's. As you said, there's no ultimate proof, but it sure does appear that Shehryar Qamar is up to no good.
Best of luck to you in getting your situation resolved. As for me, I'll probably never get my money back.
Dennis Donohue @ Thu Aug 19 12:28:32 -0400 2004
I've also dealt with this person, although the name I was given was "antonella Guerra". I have posted another reply to a different post here, and am hoping that you can reply to me as soon as you read it, ;)
my email is dennis at missiondetroit dot org
cheers,
dense