Well, the whole thing started out when I was searching through MSN Group hopping to meet people who share the same interest as me - collecting banknotes. After a few searches and I found this one - For the papermoney lovers! which I thought might be good, so I joined up.
Few days later the group owner, who by the name Mike granted me the membership for the group and started to have some information exchanged. Immediate after he found out that I am collecting from Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaya & Malaysia, he offered to trade me 2 pieces of New Zealand specimens note in return for 2 pieces of my Singapore notes with some top-up cash (yes, he want me to send cash through registered mail and not through online electronic transfer. I suspect that he does not want a single traceable details of this trade.).
Pardon me, as I am not very knowledgeable in New Zealand notes, especially Specimens, thus I asked in a few of the forum and searched the archive list of some of the auction houses for more details. Yes, I did manage to find some specimen set sold, but none of them are of the same to the specimen notes offered to me.
After crawling the net for almost a week and not manage to find the proof that confirm the 2 pieces specimen notes offered to me is genuine, I wrote an email to stop the trade. Haha, guess what! he surely act fast enough to turn around and offer me a piece of 1940 Malaya 10c with serial number A000001.
With his second offer attempt, it has turned out to be almost certain that the whole trade is a scam and I have checked with one of my collector friend who is very knowledgeable in Malaya notes and found out that a very experience dealer in Singapore is actually holding a whole set of A000001 Malaya notes, which includes the 10c pieces offered to me. Well, the group owner - Mike, simply take the note image from the dealer website, throw it into Photoshop and do a bit of color massaging and cropping and here you go, an image ready to be shown to other innocent banknotes collector for trade again!
Well, in order not to wrong blaming Mike and wanted to test him one more round, I asked him to proceed with the trade and send me the Malaya 10c and he has confirmed of doing, posting the parcel through one of the post office in his village. However, he did not provide me any proof of sending but in turn asked me to send out my Singapore notes and cash in registered mail. I wrote him an email the next day he claim to have “posted” the parcel demanding a good explanation on such scam but he decline on all the facts and mentioned that he will stop the postman from sending his parcel. Haha, what a joke, this is the first time I have heard someone who is able to stop a parcel after posted it! Or might be he is the “owner” of the post office?
Please do take note and pass around this piece of information. Internet is a safe place to do trading as long as you know how to protect yourself; it can be a dangerous place as well. Do take care and bye for now.
Tags: Arges, banknotes, bucharest, exchange, Michael Persiinaru, mike, mikebucharest, papermoney lover, Ratesti, Romania, scam
