Two fleeced in Facebook Marketplace scams

Shane Su­perville

Two peo­ple have been scammed in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents af­ter at­tempt­ing to sell items via Face­book Mar­ket­place.

In the lat­est case, a 22-year-old Point Fortin man told po­lice he was tricked in­to hand­ing over a Sam­sung S24 smart­phone worth $8,600 dur­ing a meet­ing with a buy­er on Park Street, Port of Spain, on Tues­day af­ter­noon.

He said the buy­er gave him an en­ve­lope, which he lat­er dis­cov­ered con­tained just $24 and pieces of pa­per. The buy­er fled the scene, run­ning to­wards Bath Street.

In a sep­a­rate in­ci­dent re­port­ed this week, a 41-year-old Long­denville woman said she was scammed out of a chiller and stand­ing freez­er worth $15,000.

The woman told of­fi­cers she ad­ver­tised the ap­pli­ances for sale in June and was con­tact­ed by a man claim­ing to be a buy­er. On June 28, two men ar­rived at her home, showed what ap­peared to be a screen­shot of a bank trans­fer re­ceipt, then loaded the ap­pli­ances in­to a white Kia van and left.

When the woman vis­it­ed her bank on Wednes­day, she was told no on­line trans­fers had been made to her ac­count. She was un­able to reach the buy­er af­ter­ward.

Po­lice in Port of Spain and Ch­agua­nas are in­ves­ti­gat­ing both re­ports.