Table of contents

• Advice and action – beware of fraudulent sales notices The nasty tricks with small clicks
• Spelling and grammatical errors in e-mail
• Police give little hope
• Address holders are located somewhere in the world
• Interview with Nils Muller, founder of 1000PS.at

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19th pictures

jkuenstle.de

1/19
Second-hand motorcycle market – tops and flops in 2016.

archive

2/19
Markus Biebricher, Head of Travel, 53 years and not really wise yet. Often looking for new ideals, restless in the field of tension between buying sensible and the dream bike forever and ever.

factstudio.de

3/19
Top: Honda CB 1300 (from 3,000 euros).

r-photography.info

4/19
Flop: Suzuki V-Strom 650 (from 2,200 euros).

mps photo studio

5/19
Thorsten Dentges, advisor editor, 45 years old and 1.87 meters tall. He and his long legs have had great experiences with fun bikes for those who are reason-oriented since the late 1980s.

jkuenstle.de

6/19
Top: Kawasaki Versys 650 (2,200 euros).

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7/19
Flop: Honda Dominator (from 1,300 euros).

bilski-fotografie.de

8/19
Gerhard Eirich, 52-year-old MOTORRAD Classic editor, appreciates the advantages of consistent, honest bikes over bloodless compromises. In his private life he tends to be three-cylinder, two- or four-stroke.

Frank Herzog

9/19
Top: Honda XRV 650 Africa Twin (from 2,500 euros).

r-photography.info

10/19
Flop: Yamaha BT 1100 Bulldog (from 2,200 euros).

mps photo studio

11/19
Klaus Herder, 54-year-old advisor editor, usually drives “what has to go” privately. Both a couple of Harley V-Rods and various two-valve boxers were already part of his “collection of horror”.

jkuenstle.de

12/19
Top: Harley-Davidson V-Rod (from 8,900 euros).

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13/19
Flop: BMW R 80 (from 3,500 euros).

factstudio.de

14/19
With its great V2, the Suzuki SV 1000 N offers a lot of entertainment value for little money. Especially when the weather plays into your cards when searching, as was the case with MOTORRAD Classic man Uli Holzwarth (52).

bilski-fotografie.de

15/19
Top: Suzuki SV 1000 N (from 2,500 euros).

jkuenstle.de

16/19
Flop: Suzuki DR-Z 400 SM (from 3,500 euros).

markus-jahn.com

17/19
Adviser boss Jorg Lohse (47) actually swears by wonderfully crazy gut decisions. But his balance sheet after this turbulent year is: more common sense in the future, please!

markus-jahn.com

18/19
Top: Yamaha FZ1 (from 3,600 euros).

jkuenstle.de

19/19
Flop: Ducati 1199 Panigale (from 10,500 euros).

counselor

Used purchase

Advice and action – beware of fraudulent sales notices

Advice and action – beware of fraudulent sales notices
The nasty tricks with small clicks

The scam is by no means new, but it still works: Internet fraudsters try to rip off used motorcycle buyers with fake advertisements. But sellers aren’t sure either. MOTORRAD lists the most common tricks and how you can protect yourself against them.

Michael Schumann

01/19/2017

Sometimes it’s an elderly lady from southern Italy, sometimes a “Svendsen family” from Denmark, sometimes a couple from Switzerland who advertise a supposedly bargain motorcycle on an online sales exchange: top-notch condition, few kilometers, see the photos Tip it off – and the price is well below market value. In short: an offer that you have to take advantage of. If you try that and get in touch by e-mail (the phone number given in the ad leads nowhere), you will always be served a story like this: The motorcycle either belonged to your recently deceased husband, or you have just moved abroad and have no use for the bike at the moment, or, or, or …

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Spelling and grammatical errors in e-mail

If you believe it, you will soon get another offer, namely delivery by a forwarding agent. Original text including spelling and grammatical errors from an email correspondence with fraudsters: “The forwarding company transports the vehicle to your home address and you have five days to try out the vehicle and check all documents. Transport costs and the other project tasks will be paid by me. If the vehicle is defective or does not match the description, you can return it at my expense. ”The purchase price must be paid into an escrow account, the authenticity of which is to be confirmed by an internet link.

Police give little hope

Does that sound too clumsy to work? One would think in 2017, yes. But MOTORRAD gets regularly
E-mails in which injured parties report on their experiences. For example Helmut B. from R. in Hesse, who in autumn 2016 transferred 2,600 euros to an account in Norway for a BMW C 650 scooter with barely more than 6,000 kilometers. The money is gone, the bank can’t get it back, and Helmut B. is still waiting for the scooter, which is worth three times the price paid. The police, to whom he finally reported the fraud, gave him little hope.

Address holders are located somewhere in the world

But there are also readers who, with the best of intentions, have published serious Internet offers themselves, which were then brazenly hijacked: Harley driver Peter K. from W., for example, who was shocked to discover that the
rare CVO Wide Glide, as soon as he had advertised it, appeared elsewhere on the Internet with the same pictures. But the provider was no longer him, but “user940787” and the price suddenly became a fraction of the sum he was asking. You don’t have to be an IT expert to copy Internet advertisements and use them with different contact details. The addresses from T-Online, Gmail or web.de pretend that the provider comes from German-speaking countries, but the address owner can actually be located anywhere in the world and hide his digital traces by using so-called proxy servers. It would be easy to protect yourself from such criminal machinations by just following a few rules (see interview).

Interview with Nils Muller, founder of 1000PS.at

www.1000PS.de

Nils Muller (39), founder of 1000PS.de.

Nils Muller (39) has 2001 www.1000PS.at and in 2008 the initially purely Austrian internet platform for bikers was expanded to include 1000PS.de, today’s online marketplace of MOTORRAD.

MOTORCYCLE: What is the most common scam that scammers use to rip off bona fide motorcycle buyers? Can you please briefly describe that in key words?

Nils Muller: The classic is still of the kind “Delivering a dream motorcycle at a dream price – please transfer the money in advance.” Of course, a spectacular story is knitted all around. Sometimes it is a Greek dentist who had to quickly return to Greece, but whose motorcycle is still in Germany. This is practically an emergency sale and must be paid for in advance. A shipping company then supposedly takes care of the delivery. Such a fairy tale is also embellished with credible trust accounts, photos and documents of all kinds. Only the end of the story is always the same: the money is gone, the motorcycle is an illusion and the supposed dentist cannot be found.

MOTORCYCLE: Where do the fake advertisements come from? As the operator of the portal, it is not possible to identify and block the authors?

Nils Muller: The fraudsters operate in a very professionally organized manner, work internationally and strike in waves. You don’t just focus on motorcycle ads, you also offer electronics, cars and machines of all kinds. The appropriate platform is selected in the respective countries. If money then flows from a fraud ad, the person who has been betrayed sets off an avalanche. From then on, this portal is very popular with fraudsters and is flooded with new advertisements until the money runs out. Fraud gangs exist in different countries, for example Nigeria, Italy, Spain, India, Serbia and Romania. They have mastered the technical basics, hide their real IP address and use free e-mail addresses as disposable items.

MOTORCYCLE: Are only potential buyers ripped off or even sellers?

Nils Muller: Salespeople are also in the crosshairs of these gangs. The trick goes like this: You send the seller a check in advance. This is issued 1000 to 2000 euros higher than the requested purchase price of the motorcycle. Then the fraudster sends a shipping company to the seller and asks the seller to pay the shipping company in cash – the additional dough had to be written on the check beforehand. The seller actually received this money from his bank to his account. But a few days later the nasty surprise: The check is bursting! With that the money is gone, you have paid the costs for the haulage and you are also rid of the motorcycle.

MOTORCYCLE: And there are really still people who fall for it?!?

Nils Muller: Greed makes you stupid! Unfortunately, there is no more gentle way of describing it. Sometimes even very educated people fall for such tricks. The joy of being able to take advantage of a person’s emergency situation and getting a great bargain in the process makes many rational arguments pale.

MOTORCYCLE: What are you doing as the operator of 1000PS.de against such machinations? In other words: How do you protect the real users??

Nils Muller: The list of measures is long. It can be difficult to find the right balance at times. The so-called SMS verification was very effective. Users had to enter a code sent by SMS to activate their ad. This increased the workload for fraudsters enormously and the number of fraud advertisements fell significantly. But the number of registered advertisements also fell. As a marketplace you are in competition with other marketplaces. If you have to type in an annoying code again at the end of one portal and not on the other, users will migrate. At the moment we are blocking suspicious IP address groups, entire e-mail providers and, of course, advertisements from e-mail addresses that have already been blocked. However, manual control of advertisements is still very effective. So we check the respective advertisement in the case of suspicious-looking e-mail addresses. With the combination of “suspicious address” plus “bargain” we block the advertisement. It should be noted that there are hardly any real bargains. A bargain offer is almost always an attempt at fraud.

MOTORCYCLE: And what are the police doing?

Nils Muller: Basically, she investigates all the ads and tracks leads in every direction. Money? Carrier? IP address? With professional bands, of course, all traces come to nothing. But sometimes spectacular successes are achieved. Just last September, for example, an entire call center with 250 employees was excavated in Calcutta, India, on the initiative of the BKA.

MOTORCYCLE: Is there a kind of hit list of the motorcycle models most popular with fraudsters?

Nils Muller: Unfortunately, no! There is only one constant: that the asking price is well below market value.

MOTORCYCLE: Your personal tip? As a user of 1000PS.de or 1000 PS.at, how can I best protect myself from such scams?

Nils Muller: It’s actually quite simple: never trust checks! And don’t buy a motorcycle from private offers that you haven’t seen and checked yourself. Since every motorcycle seller has access to marketplaces including market prices on the Internet, there are no longer any bargains. There is none
Need to offer motorcycles well below price. Even in an emergency, you can sell to any dealer within a few hours. The offers quick processing and pays cash immediately. So in practice there is no chance of grabbing a bargain from a fool. Whenever you see one like this, you are almost certain to end up being a fool yourself.

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