If buyers are sometimes victims of scams on Leboncoin, merchants can also be targeted by criminals. Recently, PS5 and iPhone sellers were attacked and robbed by armed individuals.
Do you want to resell an iPhone or PS5? Your first instinct is often to go to Leboncoin to compare your product to those already on the market. Once you have chosen the sale price and posted your ad, you receive many messages from potential buyers. This is a step that can unfortunately prove delicate. Between people who want to negotiate the price down, those who don’t really know what they want, genuinely interested buyers and scammers, it’s not always easy to disentangle fact from fiction. Because, yes, sellers are also regularly targeted by scams on the famous classified ads platform. Especially since luxury arouses lust. Recently, people selling iPhones or PS5s have also been attacked by criminals.
Leboncoin scam: PS5 and iPhone sellers targeted by thieves
Indeed, sellers present in the Paris region, and more precisely in Yvelines, have been targeted by criminals. After being contacted by a potential buyer, the victims showed up at the meeting point, which was often the parking lot of a supermarket. Unfortunately, the sellers did not meet one buyer, but three individuals who arrived in an SUV. Equipped with a knife, the thugs threatened the sellers and left with the desired products. But that’s not all ! In some cases, sellers were forced to withdraw money from an ATM. Fortunately, some victims filed complaints and the authorities were able to establish a link with other similar cases which took place in Montigny-le-Bretonneux, Viroflay, Houdan, La Garenne-Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine). and in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne). In total, more than ten complaints were collected and grouped together in the same investigation.
As revealed by a source at Parisianthe thugs used the same modus operandi to defraud sellers. “The method was the same with a robbery at knifepoint, the profile descriptions were similar, we sometimes had the same model of car, a partial plate indication,” she indicated. The police quickly managed to identify four people, three men and a woman, who were traveling in their vehicle, a Volkswagen T-Cross. Among them, we find two 21-year-old men who were then arrested at their homes. Authorities found four iPhones and four PlayStation 5s that had been stolen and were intended for resale. The culprits were finally tried in immediate appearance and sentenced. “Both were released while awaiting their summons before the sentencing judge who could decide, for example, whether to wear an electronic bracelet,” has explained The Parisian.