“Think twice be­fore you en­ter in­to any on­line trans­ac­tions. I got burned to learn, please don’t end up like me!”

This was the ad­vice from a 32-year-old man of St Au­gus­tine on Wednes­day night, as he re­vealed be­ing scammed of $40,000 that he paid for a car ad­ver­tised on Face­book Mar­ket­place.

Be­liev­ing this lat­est on­line trans­ac­tion was above board af­ter meet­ing with the sell­er and view­ing the car, the sor­row­ful vic­tim said he had pur­chased ve­hi­cle au­dio equip­ment be­fore via Face­book Mar­ket­place, and it had been suc­cess­ful­ly done, so he had no cause to think this would have been any dif­fer­ent.

“I saw a car on Face­book and I called the per­son. I saw the ve­hi­cle and we de­cid­ed to move ahead with the trans­ac­tion last Thurs­day. I trans­ferred the mon­ey on Fri­day and we agreed to meet up at Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion but no one ever showed up,” he said.

Con­firm­ing he had met the “sell­er” and had in­spect­ed the Y12 Wingroad Wag­on in Mor­vant last Wednes­day, the vic­tim went on, “He gave me all his bank­ing in­for­ma­tion, his name, ad­dress, where he was stor­ing the cars that are for sale.”

Re­veal­ing one of his friends had al­so been in con­tact with the al­leged sell­er as he too had been in­ter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing a car ad­ver­tised for sale, the teary-eyed man said he had told him, “Run far and fast.”

He in­sist­ed, “I ac­cus­tomed buy­ing things on Face­book and nev­er had any­thing like this hap­pen be­fore...I wasn’t ex­pect­ing it.”

The vic­tim’s moth­er who ad­mit­ted shed­ding tears over the mat­ter, said, “He was sick over that. He didn’t go to work for two days.”

Up­set over the trans­ac­tion which was done with­out her knowl­edge, the woman said it was painful as, “It is not a lit­tle bit of mon­ey, it is plen­ty mon­ey.”

“He does work hard for his mon­ey. He does get up ear­ly every day...leave home 6 am and come back around 9 pm.”

She said her son’s trust­ing and giv­ing na­ture had land­ed him in this po­si­tion.

“He could have he last and you ask him for it, he will give you. He does re­al help you. He wouldn’t know some­body needs some­thing and not help them.”

Al­though the vic­tim made a re­port at the St Joseph Po­lice Sta­tion on Sat­ur­day, he rushed to the St Au­gus­tine South Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Free­man Road, St Au­gus­tine, on Wednes­day, af­ter learn­ing that of­fi­cers from the Ex­tor­tion Unit were present in the area.

Dis­mayed af­ter be­ing told noth­ing had been done re­gard­ing the re­port up to Wednes­day, the vic­tim said, “I am hop­ing the po­lice could give me some good news.”

Asked what he would tell oth­er per­sons con­sid­er­ing sim­i­lar on­line trans­ac­tions, he urged, “Don’t do it. Don’t risk it. Don’t do it at all. I burned to learn.”

His mom echoed, “Don’t do it. Don’t ever do that. It is a scam.”

Po­lice are prob­ing the in­ci­dent.