As many of you may know, I had a pretty high profile auction ending last Sun for the $5 LV Gun Club chip, and Mike Christiensen had a similar auction ending on Tues night for the $25 chip. Both chips were purchased by a new legitimate chip collector, and afterward I helped him find the club site and membership info, get reference books, and answer general questions he had about buying nicer chips.

However, less than 2 days after the ending, 3 of my 4 highest underbidders were approached by a scammer via the ebay mailing system purporting to be the buyer of this chip, offering to sell it because of "financial problems".

One of my bidders, Barry Cox (bearcox on ebay) and I colluded to see what we could get out of this scammer thru Barry's emails. Thru a series of numerous emails, the scammer sidestepped requests for different pictures and lied to Barry about his real ebay ID, and would not explain how he bought Mike's chip after offering mine because of finances. Also could not explain how my chip got there less than a day after the auction outside of the US.

However, we were able to get the following:

Real name and address: (per him for a WUMO)

John Garnon
72 Queensborgough Terrace,
W2 3SH,London,UK

Email Address: ioretwert@yahoo.com

... which ended up being a transparent link that actually went to:jasonrollings@yahoo.com

Name on Email: Adrian Thomas

I just wanted to alert all the club members/CB posters to this scam. It may or may not be just related to chipping, as crooks like this sometimes just target high ticket ebay items, but wanted to make sure everyone out here was aware of this. I have already privately alerted the underbidders on both mine and Mike's auctions of the Gun Club chips ........

This is similar to the Flamingo chip scam last fall where a scammer tried to list the $2,500 chip 3 different times that Mike bought on ebay with the same picture, only this one is off-ebay and is emails ....

Thanks and hope this helps contribute something to the club and the Board ........ Banjo