Trans International LTD Company

[dawnriser]

http://www.transinternational-lmtd.co.uk

Extended Info IP Address: 62.233.64.201
IP Location: United Kingdom
Website Status: active
Server Type: Microsoft-IIS/6.0


This is obviously a fake escrow service. After seeing a car in a Toronto classified ad, they offered to ship a $35,000 US BMW to me from Billings, MT for a mere $2000 deposit, $2000 payment upon shipping and then balance of $4000 upon receipt. A quick search of the VIN found the exact same car listed on ebay by a reputable dealer in Arizona with the exact same pictures that had been sent to me through an email.

The seller was using the name Laura Bichara and was using this as the shipping service as she had to move to Scotland unexpectedly and just wanted to get rid of the car. Not even in dream land can you buy a 2003 BMW for $8000 Cnd funds....lol.....

Oddly enough, a confrontation of the facts and a quick phone call to the "company" resulted in no admission of guilt.....rofl.....

I wasn't scammed and I hope no one else will. I still see similar ads posted all over Toronto online classifieds.

[dawnriser]

I forgot to add that the person I was emailing regarding this deal...
laura.bichara@juno.com and the shipping 'company' was very knowledgable regarding taxes and how to import a car from the US to Canada. When facts were initially checked with the Ministry of Transportation, all of the info I was given checked out.

In fact, if it were not for the price being so low, I might have been hooked. The only thing that kept nagging at me was why on earth would someone sell such a valuable vehicle for so little.....then I did a whois and found the website was posted the day after the ad in livedeal.ca and then the VIN number led me to ebay. I can see how someone more trusting could have easily been scammed out of $4000!

[mystikmommy]

I don't know if I should go into the details, but I wanted to say THANK YOU so much for this posting...this time they used a very legit looking (online anyway) company called Trans Cargo, who provided a tracking number and everything. If I had not finally gone with my gut and found your posting, we might have sent them more than we already have. How did you get the VIN of the car you were looking at? That should have been one of the first things we did (the degree of hindsight right now is astounding), but now that I am asking for it, it is not yet forthcoming. I would like to do what you did and inform the dealer at least...any other information you have would be so helpful...thank you!

[peg]

I don't know if I should go into the details, but I wanted to say THANK YOU so much for this posting...this time they used a very legit looking (online anyway) company called Trans Cargo, who provided a tracking number and everything. If I had not finally gone with my gut and found your posting, we might have sent them more than we already have. How did you get the VIN of the car you were looking at? That should have been one of the first things we did (the degree of hindsight right now is astounding), but now that I am asking for it, it is not yet forthcoming. I would like to do what you did and inform the dealer at least...any other information you have would be so helpful...thank you!

I am glad that you didn't lose (too much anyway). Could you please provide the website address that defrauded (or attempted to defraud) you was?

Also, I suspect that there is no dealer (so to speak) to report to. The scammers and delivery/escrow companies are one in the same. If you want to report it anywhere, start with your Local Police. Then the IC3 at http://ic3.gov and of course get your story out here too.

[mystikmommy]

Well, we found the car at http://www.livedeal.com -- and actually, they may be legit and the scammer was using them as well, but maybe not - they did send us a warning email that we did not see until it was too late, telling us that they had suspended this particular email address (a totally different email address from the "seller" - maybe that was to throw us off and think this other seller was legit is my thought - what I'm saying is that this could be part of the whole scam too) and they would not advise dealing with them. I did contact the locals but since we are still in the middle of it (car is supposed to be delivered on Monday, so technically, they have not yet defaulted on the agreement), we can't yet file a report. They did provide the vin just recently and I had it run and found that the car is in CA and is not even the same car - so they somehow got the vin and just posted of photo of a car of that same year model, etc. It is for sale, and I have the owner's information on that, but I am leery of contacting anyone at this point for fear of who all is in on it and who to trust - got a strange phone call too with a credit card consolidation offer who wanted my cc number to secure the fee for consolidation - of course that is not happening, and when I mentioned the scam of which we were just the victims, he started asking lots of questions about it - very strange and I got a bad gut feeling, but if it was them, they now know the gig is up...I feel like we have a huge sign on our heads that make us targets for this stuff - I will be SO much more careful in the future, as I refuse to remain a victim of my own ignorance. Anyway, thanks for your response and I will contact everyone I can on this - I refuse to give up! Thanks!

[peg]

Well, we found the car at http://www.livedeal.com -- and actually, they may be legit and the scammer was using them as well, but maybe not - they did send us a warning email that we did not see until it was too late, telling us that they had suspended this particular email address (a totally different email address from the "seller" - maybe that was to throw us off and think this other seller was legit is my thought - what I'm saying is that this could be part of the whole scam too) and they would not advise dealing with them. I did contact the locals but since we are still in the middle of it (car is supposed to be delivered on Monday, so technically, they have not yet defaulted on the agreement), we can't yet file a report. They did provide the vin just recently and I had it run and found that the car is in CA and is not even the same car - so they somehow got the vin and just posted of photo of a car of that same year model, etc. It is for sale, and I have the owner's information on that, but I am leery of contacting anyone at this point for fear of who all is in on it and who to trust - got a strange phone call too with a credit card consolidation offer who wanted my cc number to secure the fee for consolidation - of course that is not happening, and when I mentioned the scam of which we were just the victims, he started asking lots of questions about it - very strange and I got a bad gut feeling, but if it was them, they now know the gig is up...I feel like we have a huge sign on our heads that make us targets for this stuff - I will be SO much more careful in the future, as I refuse to remain a victim of my own ignorance. Anyway, thanks for your response and I will contact everyone I can on this - I refuse to give up! Thanks!

After reading your post, perhaps you would be wise to also contact the credit bureaus and post a fraud alert on your credit reports. It won't stop you from getting credit. It may slow you down from getting the "Instant" credit, but it will (generally) STOP someone else from getting credit using your name.

Also would be worthwhile to keep a close eye on the credit report to make sure there is no suspicious activity.

[mystikmommy]

I will do that very thing...thank you!