cubase fraud on Gumtree

Take care out there… Currently there is a fraudster on Gumtree offering CUBASE 7 at a stupidly low price. I fell for it and am out £140.
We had a few exchanges of email and I asked the right questions about CB. He assured me it was because he was upgrading to PROTOOLS. He seemed genuine but clearly he is not. He claims to be in KENT. Gumtree deleted his ad after I reported it but he just keeps re advertising and the price is going up. Currently its £170.
Report it to Gumtree.
Dino, poorer

so did you get a copy (crack) of cubase or did he just take your money ?

Report it to police and see if there is any criminal damage compensation you can claim. Pain and takes years but one never knows.

I won’t even buy software on ebay at any cost (unless it’s UAD).

How did you pay? If it was with a CC or PayPal, you can recoup your money.

Yes - you can open a dispute with Paypal within 45 days.

Thanks everyone for your support. Unfortunately I transferred Monet to the ba@@@@rds account. Guess what? No more contact. That’ll teach me to be so gullible. As I said he seemed to know the software and spoke about Protools etc so he seemed genuine.
The police don’t think I’ll get anywhere but you never know he way be an idiot as well as a thief.
So now I need to sell my granny etc to buy my copy.
Dino

hate to say it , lesson learned as gumtree do warn you not to do transactions unless it’s face to face .
Sorry to hear it but it just reinforces that you have to be extra careful about fraudulent activity and that im affraid is why Crapbay always comes up trumps as they have this covered

I am truly sorry to hear about your encounter. Getting ripped off is such a drag. I once lent a guy twenty-five thousand dollars against a piece of agricultural land in Alberta which turned out to be a ranch version of a toxic waste dump… It was adjacent to a natural gas collection/tanking farm and could only be used as a prop in a Mad Max movie. I eventually recovered the dough but since that time I have kept his business card on the fridge to remind me every day that a) I am an idiot and b) the riskiest deal I ever want to undertake is deciding whether to upgrade to a new version of Cubase.

I can understand this completely, and it is a smart & safe policy.

But I just want to mention that I did buy my full version copy of Cubase 6.5 on ebay this summer, as well as a number of us who’ve jumped ship from Cake’s Sonar.

I too was leery of it, so I just did my homework first. :nerd:

I contacted a buyer who bought from the same guy just a few days before, and asked if it was legit, and also asked if Steinberg recognized the serial number & authorized it.

I also saw that a number of other people were buying the same item, increasingly from 2 a day up to about 4-5 a day.

So I took a chance on it, and it was all good.

I did pay through Paypal though, as always, to be safe. :wink:

Send the information Steinberg’s way. Even if you won’t see a cent of that money, he may get prosecuted at least. Who knows, maybe Steinberg will throw you a carrot for helping to remove these kinds of elements.

Agreed. I’d want to know about it.

I really feel for you, and hope you see something back from the money you lost…

That said -and I don want to sound harsh- did that stupidly low price really did not ring an alarm bell? I mean - If an price is “too good to be true”, it is most times just that - “too good to be true”. If somone offers something for such a low price, I would get very suspicious. I such cases I rather do a face-to-face transaction and demand to see everything in working order and also the transaction notes+dongle+serial number sheet (and if second handed - the “transfer software” proof from Steinberg).

As said - I really hope you see something of that money back, but I am afraid chances are not that high, sadly enough…

To be fair, I’ve bought some iLok licenses (DV Toolkit, stuff like that) in the past off eBay but I always check the reputation of the seller and do a bit of sleuthing around first. And there is some protection with PayPal there at least. But it wasn’t insanely cheap either. That’s usually your first clue it’s a scam.