Legal question on swapping gone bad

From: John Lawson <jpl15_at_panix.com>
Date: Sun Feb 1 21:28:17 2004

On Sun, 1 Feb 2004, Teo Zenios wrote:

> I know a few people that got burned sending equipment to somebody and
> never receiving their money or swap items in return (not from this
> list). Anyway what can you do legally about something like this? The
> people are from different states and a few that got burnt were minors.


  Depending on the state, and the mode of how the 'deal' was arranged...
you can go to the USPS, the District Attorney in the state the 'thief'
lives in, and/or the police/sheriff/law enforcement there.

  In the case of minors arranging deals - that is problematic, since most
states have a "verbal contract" law, and of course this excludes persons
incapable of entering into same.

  Now - take this for what it's worth. I've done an awful lot of online
buying and selling, and have seen these cases many times. It's not a
particularly good success rate, *especially* if the person on the other
end is a rip-off artist or professional con. Sometimes, when folks are
just slow, procrastinators, or get into bad situations - things can be
worked out with a bit of firm 'prodding'...

 The only two times I have gotten 'bad' deals were on this List, BTW - one
(long-ago) poster got me for $100 and disappeared, end of story. The other
time, the individual had to be repeatedly threatened with legal action to
get him to ship me my Stuff. In the first case, the individual apparently
knew he was going to 'disappear' in advance, and got to several of us. In
the latter case, the person had a business failure that caused them a lot
of terrible headaches, and I was not on the "A" list during that time... I
did finally get those items, though... happy ending.


Generally 'feces occurs' once in a while. I"ve been luckier than some, I
guess. I hope this helps.


 Cheers

John
Received on Sun Feb 01 2004 - 21:28:17 GMT