Ebay scammer/rare demos

This isn't something I'm proud of and there's going to be some stuff I'd rather leave out but that e-bay/rare demo and out takes deal was a load of bull. I spoke with him to great lengths, he couldn't have been nicer. Once the e-bay auction got closed we got to talking, I made him an offer, we agreed on an amount and I sent the money.

Things went sour when he sent me a .rar file with a password (That he had previously had given me) after I sent the money. It contained an .mkv file of The Hot Chick starring Rob Schneider and the password didn't work either. He stopped responding to my emails and blocked me on twitter almost right after that.

He's probably reading this right now as, fun story, "sambora3d" is his name here. So I'm asking for help. I can take my lumps, I was gotten and I'm gunning for a refund but I also got word that he was sending the same samples and tracklistings he was sending me to other people too so its' possible others fell for it.

Since this all went down last week I e-mailed him over and over to the point where he finally responded apologizing, saying he was going to send the money back, it was for old hospital bills and talked about his mental issues. I was cool with him paying me back monthly and we arranged the amount and he was pretty sorry and at one point made he threw in that this was a hacked email account and he feels sorry for the person it belongs to (which I don’t believe as per the research I did on him) while at the same time still apologetic to me and willing to pay me back. As soon as I followed up on what he meant by a hacked account and how I don’t know his name, all of a sudden like magic the original owner got his e-mail access back and wouldn’t you know it HE DOESN’T SPEAK ENGLISH ANYMORE.
I've scoured the internet and learned anything I can about his online presence and the names/addresses he used to communicate with me are the same he used as a Bon Jovi fan (Rookie move) so I'm out for blood. If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear them. Please don't ask me about the price or anything, I'll just say it was a decent amount I'd like back. Here we go:

Name: Daniel Vélez
Email address: claptonstring@msn.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/claptonstring
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/claptonpick

Please spread word about this. Getting my money back would be great but him not ripping others off would be even better.

I don't think he is on my forum but I will certainly check and take appropriate action. At the very least he should be banned forever here.

Agreed.

If you guys are on any other boards could you please pass on the message about this guy?

What a piece of shit. WTF is wrong with people?

I assume you reported him on ebay. Has he been banned yet?

Yep, he's banned from here.

No, his account was closed down, this was done outside of Ebay.

Shit, shame to hear you get stung by this scumbag. Was he the one who happened to start the topic on the CD by any chance?

Really sorry to hear about this rip-off and to realize that I was right with my concerns. A similar story happened to me around 3 years ago, when someone offerend me a similar set.
Back then I did some extensive research in order to find out whether it was fake or not. So for similar future events, here's what I always look for when something "rare" is offered:

- Is there a demo of Cadillac Man offered? That happens most of the time, but it just wasn't recorded. The band was on tour, probably wrote it there, rehearsed it before a show and played it a few times. Due to problems with the movie company in the end they never went into the studio to record one.
- A duet with Alice Cooper on House of Fire. That song was written by Desmond, Jon and Richie and just passed on to Alice after BJ didn't put it on New Jersey (most likely by Desmond). They weren't in the studio together.
- The Ballad of Alice Cooper. In an interview around 1990 Jon said that he had written it for fun shortly before playing it on radio. At that time there wasn't much contact with the band and so a studio version (especially coming from some New Jersey session) is highly unlikey, as well as a duet with Alice on that song.
- Demos for Blaze. Surely there are some earlier versions (like the Blaze of Glory take with Aldo that they rehearsed at his house), but I doubt there are many outtakes. It was written in a short period of time and I vaguely remember Jon saying that he made around 10 songs and they were the album in the end. Also keep in mind that he called most of the musicians into the studio (like Jeff Beck or Elton John) and they laid down the tracks there. There weren't a lot of rehearsals beforehand - ergo not many rare demo outtakes.
- Take #3 or #5 etc of songs that we know. How should these persons know which take a song is coming from? Even IF they leaked if highly doubt that someone like Obie would've provided detailed information (especially since the BJ camp doesn't seem to have them all the time either).
- Pre-versions of known songs with different names which usually stem from another line of the chorus or the verse. We've known demo versions that were later on changed into song for the album - Water Into Wine, Revenge, The Right To Walk Away - none of these lines even appear in the song anymore.
- A 15-20 minute version of Dry County. David and Richie explained how Jon's original scrap of the song was a 3-minute piece and how they, as a band, fought him over and over to extend it up to ten minutes. So it was extended, not cut short.

I really hope you can work out a way to get your money back!

Sent you a PM. If he really reads the forums, you'd rather not have him knowing what you're gonna do next. Tremble in fear!

If your Paypal purchase was funded by a credit card, you could file a fraud claim with the credit card company and they will reimburse you and then open their own investigations. Unless he's particularly clever, I imagine they'll be able to find him without much effort.

All great things in hindsight but some of those things are the exception and not the rule. If someone says "I bought a bunch of rare stuff, early versions" a different titled song isn't THAT weird. That torrent floating around a few years ago had "Bullet" as "The Distance between a bullet and a gun". But it's moot, I never received a list of Bounce early versions from him. Closest I saw was "For a 100 years" as the original Next 100 Years and that's not far fetched by a little bit. One turned into Undivided btw Just being a smartass.

But this isn't about me messing up. I mean it is, I should have known better, I talked to the guy to the point of trusting him as a person and that was my mistake, and please don't use this whole thing as a reason for you to use me as a lesson to us.

I messed up and don't want this guy tricking anyone else.