Sirius Scam

[Skari]

In November I started checking the web to see if there were any used Pigini Sirius accordions available. I came across an add that seemed too good to be true. Here was a relatively new Sirius in excellent condition at an unbelievably low price. The location was Las Vegas, and since I was visiting in Tucson at the time, I sent a response asking if the accordion was still available.



After about a week, I received a reply from a Nuria Subinas apologizing for the delayed response due to caring for a sick family member. And yes, the Sirius was still available and he/she (I was never sure of the gender) was selling it for their brother. Wow, I thought. This could be my big chance at a killer deal. But of course things don't always work out as imagined.

After a few emails trying to find a time to drive to Las Vegas and try out the accordion, it came out that the Sirius was actually in London. Nuria said he/she had to move back to London to take care of their father, who was very ill. Now it sounded like it was the father's accordion, who was a collector. Things were starting to get weird.

The sale could proceed, they said, but it would be necessary to find a proper shipping company that could hold my money in escrow and guarantee delivery. I checked online and found a couple that looked OK, but Nuria wrote back with the "great news" that he/she had found a company recommended by friends of their father. I checked out the company on line and appeared to be legitimate. Nuria said he/she would go there personally the next day and make sure everything was in order and my payment would be protected.

While this was all going on, I did some online sleuthing and found that the identical listing for the Sirius was posted in two free classified websites and could be found in a number of cities across the U.S. In each case the add appeared to be a local listing.

Now that I had found them out, I sent an email with my findings and saying that in order to proceed I would need to do a video call and actually see that they had the accordion in their possession, and that I would select the shipping/escrow company. I never got a reply.

I contacted both free classifieds sites and alerted them to the scam, but I just now googled "Pigini Super Bayan Sirius" and the same listing appeared, again for Las Vegas.

Musical Instruments ads in Las Vegas, NV - Shoppok

Find fresh ads in Musical Instruments in Las Vegas, NV. New listings: Gorgeous Shuman Grand $6 650, Flanger loop station phase shifter cry baby wah delay chorus $100

www.shoppok.com

Escrow scams are actually fairly common, I found out afterwards. But who knows? Maybe I missed out on the deal of a lifetime.

 

[Dingo40]

Sounds like a "Sirius" scam indeed : thanks for sharing!??

 

[Ffingers]

Sounds like a "Sirius" scam indeed : thanks for sharing!??

Very punny, wild dog.

 

[debra]

It's a pity your killer-deal turned out to be a scam. As always, if it sounds too good to be true there is a high chance it isn't true...
And even if the deal had been for real, meaning you could really buy this accordion at this price and actually get it, there was a very high chance it was a stolen instrument. And if then the original owner claimed it back you would lose the instrument because at this price you should have known that it was a fishy deal (a stolen instrument being sold). At least that's how the law works here.

 

[aemit]

The "sick family member" and other stories of self-pityness, sounds familiar :-(

 

[jozz]

Tell them you are sorry but you wired the money to a place 200 km from their home by accident. You are out for the weekend but will cancel the transaction on monday and mail it to the correct location of their choosing, after that video call.

 

[petch]

Thank you for posting this. I found another one of their listings ("PIGINI "Ellegaard special" professional accordion") on both shoppok.com and freeclassifieds.com

I got an identical email to yours

Hi,

Thanks for taking an interest in my PIGINI "Ellegaard special" professional accordion. I still have it if you still want to buy it.

I am sorry I didn't email you quicker, but my father had health problems, and my brother and I had to come home in a hurry and take care of him (I didn't even have time to check my email). Fortunately, he is feeling better now.

I'll wait for your answer if you want to buy it or not.

Warm wishes,
Olivia Ivy Thompson

As you can see the she's now Olivia Thompson, not Nuria Subinas. Unfortunately I wasn't sure what listing this was about (I have been looking at several Piginis online recently) so I've already replied asking for more info on which one this was. No doubt they won't be based in London anymore seeing as I originally replied asking if they'd ship to the UK!

They seem to also have a lot of listings requesting you email dubravka88miljkovic@gmail.com so to anyone googling to check if any of the other items they're selling are a scam - yes!

 

[JerryPH]

Let's take a look at another scam and see how they apply to my 6 main "don't get scammed" rules. Stewart was SUPER nice to inform me of a Gola 454 up for sale on eBay and I contacted the "owner". Compare the results of my rules how they applied to Skari and myself:

Over and above the "too good to be true" factor (which is 99% accurate nowadays)
Hohner Gola 454 for $3050US

Scam hint #1: They offer MORE info than you ask for, mostly irrelevant.
I asked for some info and I got:
"Hello, the accordion came directly from Germany to Mexico. It has been fixed for me. I am technical service. I was in Castelfidardo learning the trade. I can assure you that the instrument is working. We know the cost of an instrument in this range. At a minimum I would accept $5,980".

I never even asked for their "minimum buy price", this is an auction!

Scam hint #2: The item is in a different location than where they are.
Now in this case, they did not say the accordion was in another country, but they did say that they did not have access to the accordion, but woold soon.

Scam hint #3: They suggest an ESCROW company for payment.
They mentioned throwing in shipping costs if I used their suggested payment method.

Scam hint #4": They cannot provide videos or specifically requested pics
I asked for a video of THAT accordion being played and a photo of the serial #... TWICE. This is the one that broke the camel's back. After the first contact, they said they would have a video the next day. Five days later, no pics, no video and NO further responses to my 3 other attempts to contact. I've also twice requested a number from them that I may call so I could speak to them. Also conveniently ignored.

Scam hint #5: Often their grammar is really bad.
See their response in #1.

BONUS hints:
- In the 5 days since I first saw the ad, the eBay price has NOT changed 1 penny
- Of the 23 bids that ONLY happened during the first 4 days, 6 consecutive bids appear to have been done by the same person, WITHIN ONE MINUTE and 3 consecutive bids again by the same person (different from the previous one), appear the following day again within a ONE MINUTE time period and a 4th consecutive bid was tossed in by again that same person roughly 30 minutes later. Lots of "auto bids" where the amount from one person rises via consecutive bids without someone else's bid raising the price. Auto bid apps won't bid that fast until either the last few seconds OR the item price has risen and been bid on by someone else.

My take? Only the biggest of idiots bids against themselves... or they are trying to jack up/manipulate the sale.

Second last bonus point:
If you claim to be a TRAINED IN CASTELFIDARDO accordion tech, why did you not address the few EASY cosmetic repairs on the accordion like wiping down the case, wipe the dust off the chrome side registers and register metal bar straightening out of a lightly bent thumb register change lever?

Final bonus point:
Verbage used in the description: "Old accordion. It was kept for many years but has had its maintenance. Some details for the years..."
Old accordion??? Sure, just like a 1960's Silver Spur Rolls Royce is an "old car".



Edit: Looked this morning... finally some movement (almost!). More of the same BS. Multiple consecutive bids from the same person, and he finally woke up and decided that $60 economy shipping was not cutting it (LOLOL), and upped it to $350.

 

[JerryPH]

I found 3 more scam posts from the same guy that posted the Pigini Ellegaard accordion. He likes to post about Free Bass accordions, pretty much cut and paste his opening statements and the location is the same.

That's one busy scammer!

 

[debra]

Let's take a look at another scam and see how they apply to my 6 main "don't get scammed" rules. Stewart was SUPER nice to inform me of a Gola 454 up for sale on eBay and I contacted the "owner". Compare the results of my rules how they applied to Skari and myself:

...

A very good description of all the clues leading up to knowing 100% for sure an ad is a scam.
I did break one rule when I bought an accordion on the Catawiki auction site: I had to bid against myself several times because 1) I was the only bidder and 2) this site requires you up your bid with certain minimum amounts until you reach the (unlisted) minimum sale price. I ended up with a brand new Bugari 540/ARS/C (listed as used but in fact new) for maybe 1/4 of the list price, and about 1/3 of what any reasonable dealer would sell it for. Also, Catawiki requires all payments to go through them and the seller only gets his/her money after you confirm that what you receive is what was advertised. Much better than Ebay...

 

[NigelB]

Saw a whole bunch of scams on eBay today. A seller with the finest selection of vintage instruments ever seen. All at no reserve lol.

 

[Skari]

I recently sold my Pigini through the forum to someone in Australia. The buyer and I worked really hard at keeping each other comfortable with the sale. It required lots of proactive communication, but all went well. It would would have been simpler without all the scam risk.

 

[AccordionUprising]

I found 3 more scam posts from the same guy that posted the Pigini Ellegaard accordion. He likes to post about Free Bass accordions, pretty much cut and paste his opening statements and the location is the same.

That's one busy scammer!

Oh my, glad you didn’t trust them

Had me nervous since the one I just bought (legitimate I believe) started with a question here about what might have been one of those scams: https://www.accordionists.info/threads/pigini-ellegaard-freebass.8411/

Later down the thread I talked about the harmonéon style I was looking for and member found an individual selling theirs. I’ve pursued it and it should be on the way to me from France now.

The seller just send me videos of them playing it demonstrating the classical accordion piece they learned on it as a child before stopping lessons. It was very sweet. They showed pictures of them packing it up and everything and taking it to the post office, so I’m feeling pretty secure with that. Now I’m just worried about damage in shipping. Hopefully it will be here soon and I can report the good news.

Great to share these stories of support here

 

[Mullanphy]

A little late to the party, but I found a strange "deal" on Facebook marketplace the other day. Dude was trying to sell a toy accordion - one of those plastic kid's toys for $1000.00 USD. Listing said it was antique and "very old". It sure looked old, but the brand name, Schylling, was visible in the photo so I checked it out to discover it came out in 2008. They are going for $10 used on eBay and $25 new on Amazon.

 

[JerryPH]

After a few emails trying to find a time to drive to Las Vegas and try out the accordion, it came out that the Sirius was actually in London. Nuria said he/she had to move back to London to take care of their father, who was very ill. Now it sounded like it was the father's accordion, who was a collector. Things were starting to get weird.

Right there, that was your BIG RED FLAG. At that point just reply with the words, "SCAM, I will be reporting you and this ad to SHOPPOKE.COM immediately." and end all communications, then report the jerk.

"If it's too good to be true, it usually is".

 

[petch]

To add to this, there's a 'Pigini Sirius' that keeps popping up on leboncoin that is using pictures of a Nova. Can't remember the exact details but it was around €8000 and claimed to only be a couple of years old. Bargain of the year or a scam. Since it keeps disappearing and reappearing I'm and it's too good to be true I'm going to go with scam!

 

[debra]

To add to this, there's a 'Pigini Sirius' that keeps popping up on leboncoin that is using pictures of a Nova. Can't remember the exact details but it was around €8000 and claimed to only be a couple of years old. Bargain of the year or a scam. Since it keeps disappearing and reappearing I'm and it's too good to be true I'm going to go with scam!

These are the most problematic scam ads because the price of 8.000 is only unrealistic when this is only pre-owned by an amateur, but when a Pigini Sirius has been played very intensively by a concert player for just 10 years (at 8 to 10 hours a day) it is worn out and not worth more than 8.000... Model and age together are not enough to determine the value of an accordion. "Mileage" is very important too. An accordion can really be "used up" in say 10 years time when played very intensively. Used by an amateur it can last 100 years...