Predators lurking in the online small ads: From conmen to sex attackers, how criminals are stalking free internet sites for next victims

Kevin Thomas from restatyn was conned out of £5,000 by a bogus Audi seller

With a series of photos of the car’s glossy black exterior and leather interior, full service history and a specification list promising all manner of gadgetry, the online advertisement was enticing.
It was, boasted the seller, a ‘stunning’ example of a 2006 Audi A6 — on sale for the bargain price of £4,590.
At his home in Prestatyn, North Wales, Kevin Thomas was thrilled that on his very first foray onto the online marketplace Gumtree, he’d found just the car he was looking for.
‘I’d always wanted an Audi, a good, reliable, safe car, for when my wife Sarah and I started a family,’ says Kevin. ‘A friend of mine had just bought one on the internet, so I decided to have a look, too.’
Today, if the 32-year-old steel erector sounds bitter, it is with good reason.
For the advert turned out to be nothing more than an elaborate fraud. It has left Kevin and Sarah, who are expecting their first child in March, thousands of pounds out of pocket — and with no car to show for it.
‘It took me a long while to get that money together, and to lose it felt like I’d been stabbed in the stomach,’ says Kevin.
If there is any solace for Kevin, who until the summer knew little of the extent of the dangers lurking on sites like Gumtree, it is that he is not alone.
For as the Mail revealed last week, police receive 250 crime and fraud allegations a week connected to the online ‘small ads’ service.
According to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, 997 reports of fraud and cyber-crime in October had a link to Gumtree — equivalent to some 32 a day — while eBay was cited as a link in 1,483 fraud cases, or almost 50 a day.
But there is one crucial difference between the two sites. Customers on eBay are guaranteed to get their goods or money back when there is a fraud. There is no such protection for Gumtree users.
Founded in 2000, Gumtree was originally designed to help Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans based in the UK to find jobs and homes. It proved such a success that in 2005 it was sold to eBay for an undisclosed — though presumably sizeable — figure.
Today, Gumtree attracts 9 million visitors each month and more than 150 million adverts have been posted. The adverts are many and varied. Shortly before Christmas, for instance, it emerged that a 20-year-old woman from Bradford had offered to sell her infant son on Gumtree for £150,000.
Police and social services were alerted after scores of people saw the ad. Officers traced the woman and took the child and his two-year-old brother into care.
The ‘sale’ of a baby is, it seems, the rather extreme tip of a criminal iceberg.
A Mail investigation this week uncovered evidence of scams involving adverts for everything from flats to rent to cars, insurance policies and concert tickets.

Kevin Thomas’s experience unfolded in June 2013 when he spotted the Audi advertised for sale. He called the phone number listed, but got a text message reply telling him it was a work phone number and the seller could not use it for personal calls, so could they correspond by email.
‘I got an email from someone called Carla, in Scotland, and she told me she now had a company car and no longer needed the Audi,’ recalls Kevin. 
‘I replied saying I was very interested. I’d done a check of the car’s history using an online service that requires only the registration number, and it all came back fine, so I was extremely happy.’
Agreement reached, the seller told Kevin she would send him a website link that would enable him to complete the transaction on eBay. Knowing that eBay provided a more secure service than Gumtree, Kevin was happy to proceed.
‘I clicked on the attachment and everything looked legitimate,’ says Kevin.
He duly made a bank transfer of the total sum, on the understanding that eBay would hold the money until he had received the vehicle, which the seller had said she would have delivered to him via a work contact.

Kevin Thomas’s experience unfolded in June 2013 when he spotted the Audi advertised for sale. He called the phone number listed, but got a text message reply telling him it was a work phone number and the seller could not use it for personal calls, so could they correspond by email.
‘I got an email from someone called Carla, in Scotland, and she told me she now had a company car and no longer needed the Audi,’ recalls Kevin. 
‘I replied saying I was very interested. I’d done a check of the car’s history using an online service that requires only the registration number, and it all came back fine, so I was extremely happy.’
Agreement reached, the seller told Kevin she would send him a website link that would enable him to complete the transaction on eBay. Knowing that eBay provided a more secure service than Gumtree, Kevin was happy to proceed.
‘I clicked on the attachment and everything looked legitimate,’ says Kevin.
He duly made a bank transfer of the total sum, on the understanding that eBay would hold the money until he had received the vehicle, which the seller had said she would have delivered to him via a work contact.

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