Kieran Donnelly

I recently posted on the UK version of Trademe that I was looking to buy a 1st Generation 16gb iPad and that my budget was £200. (Most on site were priced around £270) I wanted to see if it was possible to buy an iPad for less than £200, and see if the people who were selling iPads had come to some sort of unspoken agreement that we’ll keep all our prices high so we all get as much money back as possible. No one seemed to want to price it to sell. 

The ad sat for 2 weeks and I had a couple of genuine replies from local sellers who were offering their iPad, but at £250. (It is possible to barter down £20). On its last day of being active, I received the text message below.

You know and I know that this is a great deal at the time of writing, and so I wanted to learn a little more, as I was very skeptical.

The below picture is a stictched together copy of the txts between me and someone called “Scott”.

I left that to sit overnight, as I couldn’t decide whether this guy was for real or not. After sleeping on it I decided to get in touch with this Denisha person. The next picture details my txts with Denisha and how the story unravels.

As I try to believe the best in people I decided I should give this random stranger one last chance, but a chance that they could have nothing to do with if they weren’t who they said they were. 

I called interactive10 (their supposed workplace) and asked the person who the domain is registered to did Scott or Denisha work for you? He replied absolutely not!! I asked him to put it in writing and I now have an email confirming this. 

These people are obviously locals as their command of english was very good/deceptive in a way that you can’t be if english isn’t your first language. It makes me worry that I live in an area where these types of people exist. It’s a bit of a wake up call and I can now appreciate how deceptive these people could be, particularly in targeting inexperienced computer users (for example a certain portion of the elder generation have a lot of trouble using a computer, and could fall prey to these awful people.

One thing to be aware of is that interactive10.com appear to be a legitimate company, and that there is no proof indicating someone from their offices is acting on behalf of their company. Innocent until proven guilty.

I thought that I should post this in case someone else googles the problem and finds my post, at least I’ve stopped one person from falling victim to these criminals.