There is simply everything on trading platforms – including fraudulent offers. They include the alleged silver bars from a Zurich seller.
The police warns of criminals who are up to mischief on classified ad portals.
Hannes Müller (name changed) sells cheap deceptions. For months he placed advertisements on the classifieds portals Tutti and Ricardo, in which he allegedly offered real silver bars for sale. In one of the advertisements he writes: «A dream to collect. It is better to invest in precious metals. Crisis-proof.»
In another advertisement published in mid-January 2021, the 33-year-old from Zurich lets interested parties know: “20 new silver bars Northwest Territorial Mint new & shrink-wrapped”. He encloses photos showing the bars – in transparent foil, with the imprint “999 Fine Silver” and the name of a precious metal processor from the USA. The price: a matter of negotiation. He has around a hundred bars in stock, entices Müller.
The only problem is: the bars contain no silver. Rather, it is a copper-nickel-zinc alloy. Müller had bought the metal blocks a few months earlier from cheap Chinese suppliers on the Aliexpress trading platform, according to a penalty order from the Zurich public prosecutor’s office.
Increased fraud reports received by the police
Classifieds portals such as Tutti, Ricardo or Marketplace are popular with Swiss bargain hunters. This makes the trading platforms increasingly the target of scammers and cheaters like Müller. But criminal gangs also romp about on the platforms.
Their tricks are diverse – from simple to sophisticated. The first category includes the classic: Fraudsters offer popular mobile phone models, headphones or branded bags at ridiculous prices and require interested parties to pay in advance. The product is never shipped, the alleged dealer no longer gets in touch.
Another scam has recently been observed more and more often. Criminals claim to be interested in the goods on offer – and claim to be paying via a Tutti payment service. However, this service does not exist. The goal of the fraudulent confusion: The perpetrators want to elicit credit card information from their victims with well-falsified websites.
With the number of methods, the reports of cheated customers also increase – so much so that the police in the canton of Aargau warned of the scams of the criminals in a special message.
“As useful and practical as the digital marketplaces are, they are unfortunately increasingly being misused by fraudsters,” says the letter from the Aargau cantonal police. An increase has been observed for some time, says spokesman Bernhard Graser. But since the beginning of the year, dozens of criminal complaints have been filed in this area. “In most cases, customers paid for goods that were not delivered.” In some cases, however, more sophisticated scams were used.
It is mainly expensive branded goods and electronic devices that are offered by the scammers at tempting prices. “Prices that are too good to be true,” says Graser.
3200 fraudulent ads on Tutti every month
How do the trading platforms protect their users from such scammers? Upon request, Tutti writes that automated systems are used that should detect certain fraudulent tactics at an early stage. In addition, a security team would manually comb through and review ads before and after publication. If the employees find a suspicious advertisement, they delete it.
Tutti emphasizes that fraudulent ads are an exception. The company writes: “With 0.16 percent of all advertisements placed, the offers removed from the platform are clearly rare cases.” That means: With more than 2 million ads that are published on Tutti every month, around 3200 are fake ads.
Tutti’s security team is currently working on the scam with the alleged payment and delivery service. “This fraud has been occurring for several months with varying degrees of intensity,” writes a company spokeswoman. Since the victims are usually written to via Whatsapp, “unfortunately there is not much that can be done to prevent these attempts at fraud”.
The second major Swiss trading platform – Ricardo – is not spared from scams either. The protective measures here are similar to those at Tutti. Hundreds of user accounts are blocked every day; However, this could also be due to an unpaid bill, it says on request. If Ricardo discovers a fraudulent advertisement, the company intervenes. However, it only reports “in very isolated cases”.
Ricardo also states that the cases of fraud are in a very low per thousand range – measured by around 7 million items sold that changed hands on the platform last year. The provider has not observed an increase in cases of fraud, as determined by the Aargau cantonal police.
«Anonymous & bug-proof calls»
While many scammers disappear into the anonymity of the internet, Hannes Müller is caught. It was found by chance by investigators. In addition to the fake silver bars, they encounter other violations of the law. Müller also traded with unregistered SIM cards on the classifieds portals. These are popular with criminals because they allow anonymous communication.
Within a few months, the 33-year-old sold at least eighty unregistered or incorrectly registered SIM cards without recording the buyer’s personal details. Yet he knew exactly what he was doing. In order to advertise the offers, he posted pictures on the Internet showing SIM cards decorated with hundred-dollar bills. The Zurich resident also offered T-shirts with the imprint: “Anonymous & bug-proof calling”.
In February 2021 it will be over, Müller will be arrested. He was detained for two days before being released. At the end of the year, he finally accepted a penalty order from the Zurich public prosecutor’s office.
The so-called Precious Metals Control Act, which has existed in Switzerland since 1933, is his undoing. In it, the federal government not only regulated what counts as precious metals – namely gold, silver, platinum and palladium – but also how high the fineness must be and how the precious metal goods must be described. According to this law, it is forbidden to offer goods for sale as precious metal goods that do not have the prescribed fineness.
But that is exactly what Müller did. In the penalty order, the public prosecutor states: “Due to the misleading and untruthful description of the objects of sale, the accused had to expect that the buyers would be deceived about the product properties.” Müller had to assume that the metal sold was not real silver, despite the corresponding imprint. After all, he bought the bars on the Chinese trading platform Aliexpress at a price ten times lower.
All the more expensive does Müller have to pay for his deceptions: the public prosecutor has imposed an unconditional fine of 160 daily rates of 50 francs on the 33-year-old. In addition, Müller has to bear the costs of the procedure in the amount of 4350 francs.
How to protect yourself against fraud
scf. You can arm yourself against fraud on trading platforms with these measures:
- Rule number one: If an offer is too good to be true, it is often a fake. Such advertisements are found above all for luxury products, electronic items and rare products or products affected by supply bottlenecks.
- Use a secure and unique password, because: Many fraudsters try to hijack and misuse existing accounts.
- In the case of expensive items in particular, it makes sense to meet in person to hand them over. You can check the quality of the offer – and pay directly in cash.
- Caution is also required if the advance payment is to be made to a bank account with different user data or even abroad.
- As a seller, do not publish your cell phone number in the ad. Scammers often try to contact their victims via Whatsapp. Particular care should be taken with telephone numbers with area codes that are rarely used in this country. These include +45, +46, +47 (Scandinavia), +44 (England), +40 (Romania), +7 (Russia) or +380 (Ukraine).