Blake Smith - User mg217

[Alex Varas]

Hi all,

Yesterday I got a private conversation from mg217 pointing me out one person (Blake Smith from south USA) has one Kodak Chevron for sale (I posted in WTB about it).
I wrote to the email provided and this morning I have gotten reply from Blake with 3 photos of the camera, price shipped to Russia and following the usual routine he wanted to be paid with Zelle or Cash apps. Being an unknown person to me I asked him for references or buyer protection with Zelle / Cash but my self I tried to look for anything from him so the first step was to contact mg217 and when I went to Photrio website I see there is no conversation or username. I mean the usual email with the usual conversation we do here normally but the website have no record of it or the mg217 username.
Bell are ringing badly now as it might be an scam attempt.
Is any moderator to verify if the conversation/user really existed or were deleted?
Have you heard of something like this?
Still awaiting answer from Blake and see how this goes...
All help will be appreciated.

Thank you,
Alex

 

[Sean]

Hi all,

Yesterday I got a private conversation from mg217 pointing me out one person (Blake Smith from south USA) has one Kodak Chevron for sale (I posted in WTB about it).
I wrote to the email provided and this morning I have gotten reply from Blake with 3 photos of the camera, price shipped to Russia and following the usual routine he wanted to be paid with Zelle or Cash apps. Being an unknown person to me I asked him for references or buyer protection with Zelle / Cash but my self I tried to look for anything from him so the first step was to contact mg217 and when I went to Photrio website I see there is no conversation or username. I mean the usual email with the usual conversation we do here normally but the website have no record of it or the mg217 username.
Bell are ringing badly now as it might be an scam attempt.
Is any moderator to verify if the conversation/user really existed or were deleted?
Have you heard of something like this?
Still awaiting answer from Blake and see how this goes...
All help will be appreciated.

Thank you,
Alex

This user mg217 does exist but we don't have access to private messages. The account mg217 was created today so tthis does sound fishy, enough for me to block this account for now. I would avoid this sale until you have some very solid details..

 

[Alex Varas]

Well... I did a search of the pictures I got from the seller and I found this post:
https://www.photo.net/discuss/threads/kodak-chevron.5510436/

Exactly the same photos... Seller claimed in his email he was the original owner so I think that’s all said.

Thank you all,
Alex

 

[calebarchie]

You have been scammed, there has been a bot going around various forums with this same message:

"I can help you out with a lead. Please contact Blake on regarding your request. He is located in Texas, and the last time i talked to him, he had [Items/title] for sale. I purchased items from him in the past and they arrived in TOP condition."

I received 3 messages from the same user mg217, just look at join dates - I thought Photrio had better protection against this junk guess not.

 

[Alex Varas]

I think I haven’t been scammed, no money went out from my pocket.

Yes, same messages from my side.

 

[cjbecker]

Mg217 sent me the same message also. Just fyi

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

I banned that user yesterday, based on a report of a private message. If you receive a private message that seems sketchy, please use the "report conversation" button just like the "report this post" button to notify the moderators. We don't necessarily have access to PMs, but if you report it, it sends us the content of the PM, and Sean or I can ban the user with a tool that should remove their content from the site.