Police Auctions Fraud: How It Works
Police auctions take place as law enforcement officers come across and confiscate various goods regularly. These are items that were stolen or bought with illegally-made money. Therefore, the local departments often organize Police auctions where it sells these items, usually for low prices, with all the proceeds going to a police charity. However, criminals found a way to take advantage of the game and came up with a very ingenious scam, which still happens these days.
They organize fake Police auctions online and then advertise them. They get people's attention in order to pay for non-existent items by making them think they are getting great deals. The crooks even build websites, so they take the scam in the virtual world, where the number of potential victims is infinite. The scam has two variations. In the first one, the victims pay but never receive anything.
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In the other case, questionable individuals claim to organize online auctions for seized items, create good looking sites, and insist that all the objects are of high-end value and rare. They even send the actual products to the buyers who purchase them.
In reality, all these items sent – mostly jewelry, brand name clothes, and other materials easy to ship – are nothing but cheap products made in Asia sold at ridiculous prices to victims who believe they've got amazing unique pieces.
Fake Police Auctions: How To Avoid
Just ignore the ad. Police departments don't typically advertise their auctions globally for the public, but locally. The largest online police auction website is Property Room (see link below), which is ranked 281st on the Internet Retailer's 500 List. Stay away from bogus Police auctions.
The company, founded in 1999 by former police officers and detectives, sells confiscated police goods and approved third party merchant merchandise to the highest winning bidder. You can access PropertyRoom clicking the link below:
Online Police Auctions Fraud: How To Report
Make your family and friends aware of the fake Police auctions by sharing it on social media using the buttons provided. You can also officially report the scammers to the Federal Trade Commission using the link below:
How To Protect Yourself More
If you want to be the first to find out the most notorious selling scams every week, feel free to subscribe to the Scam Detector newsletter here. You'll receive periodical emails and we promise not to spam. Last but not least, use the Comments section below to expose other auction scammers.
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I wish cancer on everyone involved with police auctions scamming maggots kids should get leukemia just deserts mmuuuuts
Total scam. unfortunately I lost money as well. Live and learn, I guess.
How about Property Room.com reviews? Anybody got anything from them? Thank you, appreciate.
i just bought from them. I will let you know how the merchandise is
oh wah, thank you for this. I was just about to buy from http://www.PoliceAuctions.com but I decided to do a little bit of research first. The Internet is full with negative feedback, tons of 1-stars for them. I stopped considering bidding when I saw a bunch of reviews like: "Garbage", "Policeauctions…fraud fraud fraud", "This site is fishy, not a real police auction!!!, “Total scam. Not police seized items. Made in China.”, etc. However, what really got me mad was that one of the reviewers said this: "I had several winning bids and all of a sudden the same peoples username was outbidding me this seems fishy too me. I think it’s the site upping your price. I was upset and did not want to bid anymore. I kept getting outbid than when I logged in they would ask me if I wanted a deal on the item I bid on which was 15.00 than it was at 55.00 when I was out bid than they asked me if I wanted to buy this item for 120.00 this is not a fair auction and I’m glad I found this out before I wasted my hard earned money."
How is PoliceAuctions.com still operating? Nobody from the real police was notified??
I BOUGHT JEWELLERY THEN TOOK IT TO A JEWELLERS, THEY TOLD ME IT WAS NOT WORTH A DOLLAR YET THEY ADVERTISED IT AS WORTH THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS, I PAID 0VER $50,00 OF MY GOOD MONEY!!!!!!!