Thanks John,

Your post has helped a number of people already. When prices look to good to be true then its probably best to avoid them.

Cheers

Dave Dundas

Hi All,

I did promise John Babic that I would provide more detail about this particular situation in the hope it will prevent something bad from happening and alert people in general. In this case fortunately nothing bad did happen. Partly because the scammer was the second respondent.

I had been assisting Jade Frazer to find a Lenzi Benchrest which she wanted to own. Importing a new one individually is stupid expensive and probably a long delay. So I suggested to her an advert (wanted ad) on this website may find something. Who knows? People change their situation all the time, get out of shooting sports or move to other forms.
So I provided her with a 'stock photo' of a Lenzi rest from my old files for her to add. This was only meant to show an actual Lenzi Benchrest so there is no misunderstanding about it. For Jade any colour would have done. That photo happened to be a Blue/Silver one.

No one else would have known but me, that this particular colour combination was not all that common compared to others. What we received and sold at BRT were whatever combo Alberto could supply. Because ordering specific combos delayed orders by years. The funny thing was this scammer supplied Jade with "his" photos of that exact same colour combo. Maybe he possibly thought there was only one combo? But he would have almost certainly done a reverse photo search on the web for the same combo, yet shown or displayed other ways. That's the photos he attached. Whilst it could have been genuine, that was already was suspicious.

So what happened? Eventually someone did come to Jade about a front rest and a rear bag they wanted to sell. She asked me about it and turns out I know the guy personally and knew of course that he had purchased his from BRT a couple of years back. He was also local to Brisbane area. So they got together and worked out a deal and all is good.

But after that, like two days after that, Jade received another email. This second person said they had one for sale. Sort of indicated they were a business by saying all orders are posted from their business within next day and all tracking provided. The price asked was $3000 including all postage and insurance. From WA.

Hmmm. When it sounds too good to be true....... well, you know the rest of it. Much cheaper than the going rate too.
His email address was shown as <benchrestequipmentAU@gmail.com>
Seemed odd to me. I could find any info about it. Therefore just for shits and giggles I suggested to Jade to respond and ask for his contact phone number and I will give him a call and ..... ask some real questions. Because there were other people locally who would also be happy to buy a Lenzi if one came up.

The response from that email was reiterating what was said before. He suggested acting quickly and provided his banking account details. Plus said if I provided him my phone number he would call me. 

So what I did was screenshot his whole email and then put that into an AI program on my phone and asked the question of it. "Is this real or suspect". I used Gemini as I have that app on my phone. The response in about 2 seconds flat is very detailed.

The Summary of that was;
100% Scam.
Bank Account details were shonky (The Biggest Red Flag). Also BSB is actually a Wise account, "neo banks" from overseas. The Pay ID is sus too.
The "Call Me" tactic is common. They will call you with a VoIP number (usually from overseas without you knowing)
The sense of Urgency is a classic pressure tactic
Email inconsistency. We didn't even pick this up, but a couple of places the email address had an extra "s" in there.
Also saying they are from Western Australia is another common tactic hoping that you won't know anyone over there to verify.
Also the photo supplied happened to be the exact same colour combination as the "stock photo" which I supplied for the ad as mentioned above. 

Anyway, the recommendation here is ...... if any doubt....use your head. There are lots and lots of very detailed and real looking scams these days. Anything to separate your money to them and no be found ever again.
This Benchrest shooting community is fairly tight knit group. So someone selling or buying will usually be known. If you are buying and do not know, maybe do some asking. At least flick a pm message to either John or Michael who own this website. If they don't personally know that person or product they will probably come asking one of many of us in the group whom they expect could know. For example if it was a product like this Lenzi rest (just as one example) they may ask me as we at BRT were the only ones who sold those. If someone is selling a Redback or RB Laminate stock for an example, John or Michael might suggest talking to Phil Jones to confirm. Selling rifles themselves requires some legal stuff of course. So before money is handed over maybe talk with the transferring dealer beforehand. I know in some cases people will not transfer funds until the rifle is at the dealer and transferred onto their books already.

Other than that, using AI apps like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude for example can be a fast very help. Nothing is perfect though.

I hope this helps. Pass on to anyone you know that this info may help.

Stuart Elliott.

ps: there are 5 or 6 screenshots I took of this response from the Gemini app. But I seem to be able to only include one image here. So this is simply the first screenshot of the response as an example.

Thanks Stuart,

The post has saved a friend of mine here in Sydney. A guy on OzFclass was selling some bit and pieces but a AMP annealer and Seb Neo Rest at well below market price. It was a from with a newly created account with only one post to there name. As you say if the price is to good to believe then proceed with caution.

Cheers

Dave Dundas

Fly Shooter