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SCAM - Different name, same procedure as other scams Alco Safe Transactions and eViza Safe Transactions
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Thank you for this web site! If I had not found your reviews, I never would have known this company was a scam. I narrowly avoided throwing away $5300 on a handicapped van for my mother.
The van was advertised on Craigslist, a 2005 Dodge Caravan SE with rear mounted power wheelchair ramp. Here is the link for the ad: http://cnj.craigslist.org/cto/3414087001.html The ad indicated the van was in Trenton, NJ, less than an hour away from where I live. On responding to the Craigslist email, I received a reply stating that the van owner was out of town seeing to her sister who had sustained a head injury and the transaction was being handled by AST which I had probably heard of. The procedure was to send money to a "trust" account where it would be held until the van was shipped to me and I had 10 days to inspect it before the money would be released.
This seemed unnecessarily cumbersome and risky to me, because I would be sending a large amount of money and then waiting for something that may or may not arrive. So, I asked a series of questions, including for a VIN for the van so I could order a Carfax report and whether it had been in any accidents.
I registered and did some more research while waiting for the invoice to arrive. I found one scam report but no reviews for this company. The Carfax report indicated that there had been an accident report for the van despite the seller's assurances to the contrary. When the invoice arrived, it indicated I should send the money by bank transfer to a BB&T bank in Suwanee, GA, USA. It also said I should email a scanned copy of the bank transfer receipt. This made me more suspicious, so I researched further.
The invoice indicated the seller was Leslie Plattner at an address in Oxford, Connecticut. A search for Leslie Plattner turned up people in Arizona and Utah and nowhere else in the US. A search for public records on the address given showed a different owner. A call to the bank yielded no information at all.
I emailed the seller asking for more concrete contact information and received none, just explanations and excuses. I decided to check further. I found the reviews on this site for 2 other companies: ALCO SAFE TRANSACTIONS and EVIZA SAFE TRANSACTIONS.
THESE TWO BUSINESSES DISPLAY THE EXACT SAME LOGO AND USE THE SAME ADDRESS AS ADDECO SAFE TRANSACTIONS. PLEASE SEE THE REVIEW FOR ALCO SAFE TRANSACTIONS BY PHILLIP S. ON THIS WEB SITE.
I checked his research and came up with the same Public Storage location for the company address and the same ripped off pictures from the Postal Connections web page on the site for Addeco Safe Transactions as were used for Alco Safe Transactions. The Postal Connections web site had posted a warning about their pictures being ripped off.
The details of the contacts and transaction were exactly the same, including the story of being out of town to take care of the sister in the hospital. The only differences were the location of the item and the use of a domestic rather than a foreign bank.
Please do not send these people money. They are obviously scammers. Look for the logo that looks like a tilted green stylized E and B smashed together to resemble a four leaf clover in a solid blue circle with 10 large hash marks separated by smaller hash marks around the border of the blue circle and a silver/grey wide border around the blue circle. Also look for this address: 1437 West 190th Street Gardena, CA 90248. If you see them, you know you are in trouble.
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