David Thomas...Anyone heard from him?

when I talked to ebay today I told them about him ripping people off on video game forums, from all the way back to august being the last time I had heard from him. told them if he lists an item for sale on ebay I am going to use BIN, so they can expect that. Said made note of it on my account. Not sure what that will do but it was said.

 

Also i contacted trusty and informed him about David and he remembers him so he is aware of him too.

 

I'm glad to see people are starting to think more rationally, pooling together and contacting the right people to progress. A chat with the Hollywood Police department won't do any harm, certainly. They'll advise where to go next - although I admit the Police aren't always the greatest help.

Keep us posted on your progress.

You don't need to be in Florida to call Florida. The USA has had telephones for over 130 years. You can certainly speak to the Police for advice, rather than ranting on a website - it will do you more good. Even if they say "sorry, we can't help" - at least you did the right thing and tried. They'd probably point you in the right direction, though. If you're considering paying a visit, ask if they'd mind escorting you to keep the peace.

You are able to submit e-mails as evidence in court. Print it out using your e-mail's print button - then it's unaltered. That's proof of a trade. Anything that was paid for, you have the paper trail. Hopefully, you weren't silly enough to send your items untracked. Never ever send goods untracked that you would miss (including the cash value) if they didn't arrive at their destination.

Let me make this clear - I *HAVE* been in court several times. I *HAVE* had to chase people for money. I'm offering you advice based on my personal experiences. If you choose to ignore my advice and continue to just bitch on a website, you'll not get anywhere and this will make you bitter for years to come. Don't just assume you can't do anything - get off your arse and make phone calls to the proper authorities. You're clearly not an expert in law - so call one.

 

I've tried calling the Police department in David's area, They said they cannot file anything from people not under their jurisdiction. They told me I would have to file with MY local police department and then they would have to get in contact with them, not I.
I'm going to be looking further into my options on the matter though, I don't want David to get away with this. I really thought better of him, its very sad..

 

That's the same thing they told me

 

Im sorry about saying someone should just go to his house. I did not mean to go insult him nor threaten him but merely to make sure hes okay etc. I live in New Zealand and we are mostly a fairly peaceful country which don't have the same issues with guns that USA etc has so I didn't expect people would jump immediately to that conclusion. Good luck to those who have been scammed

 

That's a good first step. What do your local Police department say?

[EDIT]

Incidentally, what's the source of you thinking he's active on eBay? I know he's received feedback within the past month, but surely you have up to 90 days to leave feedback? The seller could just be slow leaving feedback. It seems to be a Chinese seller of plush toys at $5.99. I'm not excusing buying things if he owes money, but just saying they are low-value items. It actually doesn't help, as the seller has several of what appears to be the items (the buyer protection system doesn't help identify him) but if you click through to the items (I'm looking at, anyway), you'll see the seller has several and has sold them for months - plus r***r doesn't show up in the purchasers list. Odd.

Anyway, just trying to clarify that in my head - if you have good proof of him purchasing on eBay, great. However, it's possible you're adding 1 and 1 and getting 11.

 

I think eveyone was just going by his 3 recent feedbacks within the last month. They could have been from the max time allowed. The other seller that left him feedback sell low priced junk stuff too. I think the feedback time limit is now 60 days while it used to be 90. Unless they changed it again.

 

so I got a text msg back from someone on his number.

my response to the person was

I plan to check with both his and my local police departments to see what are my options, I honestly just want this whole fiasco to be over and that everyone can get things they are owed back.

I know that when I shipped my chips to him I used a small flat rate box to ship them in, so return shipping should only be like $6-7 max.

I just removed all my PM's that did not have anything to do with David Thomas. I was wondering since I can at least get some responses from I guess it would be his wife. If the people he has open deals with could either PM me the details about what is owed. So when I contact again using the phone number I can try and help get some resolution to this. For example maybe I could have her gather up all the items (like my chips for example) and have them in a location so when he gets out on the 5th maybe I can pay for the shipping to have everything sent to me (Maybe COD) and then mail out the stuff to the people that it is owe to.

I will contact an admin on this and see what they have to say.

 

If he really got into the car accident, he's probably filled up with bills and payments, and some people from this thread are just making the situation worse to him (if the previous facts were real).

Well, supposing that he got into a car accident, the family may not know about what David Thomas works with on the Internet (modchips, custom builds, etc, etc), and that's causing some problems at this topic, too.

This is only my theory of what happened, maybe something else affected David's live and we still don't know anything.

 

Yes I've thought of that myself, if he's really having money issues it wouldn't help him any that my bank has returned a little over 200 of the money I paid to him for the product I'm owed.

Him being in rehab for this long doesn't sound to me like its a physical rehab center that you would go to for being injured. Normally that's done by being sent home with exercise instructions and being told to meet at a medical center for checks and more exercises. It sounds to me like he's being kept somewhere for rehab which makes me think drugs more than car accident.

Either way we have been greatly inconvenienced by this as well and are owed either our product or our money back. He doesn't get our money for nothing whether he's broke and in a tough situation or not. He's made deals with us that need completion. I'll gladly reverse the charge back if and when I receive my products, but for now this is my only course of action and I plan on acting on it before its far too late. Its late enough as it is already.

 

The inconvenience is one thing. Feeling robbed is also a concern. The disturbing part is if he was scamming members here and abroad, we have all put trust in someone and subsequently been let down. Trusted members who turn scammers always shake us to the core. I seriously hope I am wrong with all of this and David is laid up somewhere for whatever the issue may be, still with good intentions. I hope.

 

Very true. We can speculate all day about his situation but none of us know the truth. Bottom line is the guy has has alot of people's property and money since the summer. We just want our stuff back.

 

The only admin is Kevin.

I would say make a concise (short) list of who is owed what, from when. Make it in an easy-to-read format. Something like:

[table="width: 600"]
[tr]
[td]User[/td]
[td]Amount / item(s) sent[/td]
[td]Date[/td]
[td]Amount / item(s) owed[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]User 1[/td]
[td]$20[/td]
[td]8/1/14[/td]
[td]2x Xbox modchips[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]User 2[/td]
[td]$30 + Xbox to mod[/td]
[td]7/25/14[/td]
[td]1x Xbox modchip[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td][/td]
[td][/td]
[td][/td]
[td]fitting service for modchip[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td][/td]
[td][/td]
[td][/td]
[td]Xbox[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]User 3[/td]
[td]$500[/td]
[td]8/3/14[/td]
[td]3x Xbox[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td][/td]
[td][/td]
[td][/td]
[td]N.B. bank processing $200 refund[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

Upload this somewhere you can allow public viewing - Google Docs, Dropbox, Pastebin etc. Preferably somewhere that'll give you an easy link.

Text the number. KEEP IT FRIENDLY.

Something like:

I've made a list of who is owed what on ASSEMbler forums. You can find it online here: [link]. I hope David is recovering well & look forward to hearing back soon.

You could even say something along the lines of - I know his situation may have left him in financial difficulty, but he has our items totalling $x which we would like back. We are even willing to cover cost of postage if it speeds things up.

 

great idea retro, I will do that as a public document, and once it has all the information needed on who is owed what I will text it to them.

 

Thanks wizard, i sent you my list of what he has of mine. Let me know if you need more info.

 

will do

 

I'm so glad I found this thread! I actually created an account just to let you guys know. David Thomas is a total scam artist. He ripped off a number of people on Xbox-Scene in 2008/2009 and at that time used the name "Dave Thomas". I found this out because he ripped both me and my friend off on the Neo Geo forums in 2011.

We both sent him our AES consoles at the same time to have them modded as region free. He requested we send the PayPal funds as "Friends/Family" which isn't too unusual as many people on gaming sites request the money that way to avoid fees. Well, we kept getting told he had family issues and that they would be shipped in a few days, eventually though, he just quit responding. He likes to go on gaming sites, establish a reputation, and then start ripping people off slowly because people will find it hard to believe until he rips off enough people. Then, he finds another site to infect.

My friend and I met someone on the Xbox Scene forums who sent him 3 Xboxes. The first one he returned. Then, when he sent his friends' two Xboxes at once, he never heard from him again. He claimed others had been ripped off too, but, at that point, original Xboxes were already getting so cheap they didn't pursue anything. Well, our AES consoles were pretty expensive so we went all out!

At the time, he was living in Tallahassee, Florida and we lived in California, so the crimes were committed across state lines. We filed police reports and even visited our local FBI office 3 times! The FBI had us fill out IC3 complaints which are online fraud "reports" (http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx) go to the link here to file yours! The sad thing is though, we just kept going in circles. The FBI said go to the police, the police said go to the FBI.

We eventually were told by someone willing to give us a straight answer that there really is nothing they could do for 2 reasons. Anytime you do any sort of e-commerce, that is considered a "business transaction" as such the police and FBI can't do anything because its a "business deal" gone bad. They can't get involved in a dispute like this, you have to go to small claims court which is useless. Even after paying a lawyer more than your item is worth, you still need to hire a collection agency. The other reason why they couldn't help us was because both the FBI and Police put a very low priority on this kind of stuff. The "scam artist" really has to rip off enough people, they told me, if the guy was bilking people out something at least 5 figures and doing it to say 10 people then they would get involved. Its just too small time otherwise, they call it a "threshold".

He told us our reports go in a "file cabinet" and once old David's folder gets fat enough, then they will look into him, but, that it is VERY UNLIKELY. Again, we appreciated his honesty, because he basically told us this guy is just too small time, all you can really do is warn people because he'll probably never hit that threshold. Its the sad truth, but, there are apparently thousands of "David Thomases" out there ripping off people for all sorts of things over the internet.

I hope I have been of help and not too much of a downer. Please understand, I mean well, its just that, this is what I sadly found out when I was robbed by this same person.

 

Do you have a link to any similar threads to this one on other forums?

I don't know whether it's worth people pooling in again from back then who already tried to get their money/items back, or if that would just confuse matters. It's worth conversing but making sure you note you were involved in a previous conversation with the authorities. Do you have a crime reference number or something like that? I'm sure that would prove useful. If there's a file in an FBI cabinet somewhere, there must be a reference to it.

AES systems aren't cheap. Any idea what the total losses were on those forums?

 

He's pattern is very weird though, some people have bought from him and had no issues, and other times he completely scams people? Quite two faced if everything is true, although it'd make no sense for people to make up stories.