The recent brutal attack on brothers James and Peter Stewart is a reminder to us all of the dangers of buying products online. But for one Shetland couple, it brought back memories of a similar terrifying experience of their own
Michael and Louise Irvine (pictured left) had never bought a car online but in 2013, after spotting an advert in Auto Trader for a white Audi A4 Quattro, they decided to give it a go. After travelling to Bradford, they came back home with not a new car but an experience that has put them off buying through the internet for life.
The recent attack on Aberdeen brothers James and Peter Stewart has similarities to that of Louise and Michael’s experience – but with much more devastating consequences.
The two went to Edinburgh to buy a car after Peter responded to an advert on the Gumtree website, with the brothers heading to the capital with £6,000 in cash. On arrival, they were met by two young men who asked them to come to a nearby flat to wait for the seller and it was then that the brothers were stabbed.
When Michael heard the news, he was shocked
“It’s scary that it’s happening closer to home,” said the 50-year-old, who works for Shetland Catch.
“Hearing about that incident in Edinburgh did bring our experience back but it made me think how lucky we were that we didn’t suffer any serious injuries. It’s all over money, it’s just pure greed. I don’t understand the mentality of people who do things like that.”
Michael said they previously had “no worries at all” about buying a vehicle over the internet. He said they spotted the advert in Auto Trader and it was from a trade dealer so they thought it would be fine.
Wife Louise checked the vehicle’s history on the DVLA’s website and was in constant contact with the seller. When asked to produce a photograph of the front of the car, the sellers produced one within 30 minutes.
“This again led us to believe that it was genuine,” Michael said. “If he was able to just send a photograph that quickly, he must have had the car. So there was nothing to worry about as far as we were concerned.”
The couple paid a £500 deposit to secure the car – which they never got back – and arranged a date to view it in Bradford. When they arrived by train on August 10, 2013, they took a taxi to Park Drive, although the sellers had offered to pick them up from the station. Michael said it was lucky they didn’t accept their offer of a lift.
He said: “They could have taken us to a waste ground or something and it could have been far worse.
“The taxi took us to the address in a very affluent area of Bradford. It had posh houses, security gates and stuff like that. We went to the address but couldn’t see the car that we wanted to buy, so Louise phoned the guy again and he even offered to make us breakfast.
“She thanked him and said we’d had breakfast but two cups of tea would be good. Obviously this was all just part of the lure. It was all sounding good. Then he told us that his wife had gone out to the shops with the car and would be back in 20 minutes, which is probably a delaying tactic.
“They knew we were at that address. It probably gave them time to assemble and get to the area, knowing we were there. They must have had it all planned. It couldn’t have worked out better for them – a couple of mugs coming down from Shetland with cash in a suitcase.”
OPPORTUNISTIC
Michael, who lives in Bixter, said there had never been any mention of the couple bringing any money with them, so what came next was “very random and opportunistic”.
The sellers told the couple they were at the wrong address and told them to go further up the street. When asked what the postcode was for the correct house, they said they did not know it. That was the first sign for Michael that something was not right.
“We went up to the second address and there was still no car there. I think they were doing this to keep us there,” he said.
“I said to my wife ‘Look we need to leave, we need to get out of here, there’s something not right’ but just as we were about to leave the street, that was when the three of them ran out of a driveway wearing balaclavas. One had a gun and one had a stick.
“I looked at them and thought ‘This isn’t real, this is some clowns mucking about’ but then as they got closer and when they started shouting, it became very real. They were shouting, ‘Give me the money or I’ll shoot you’. They went to my wife first and she was screaming at them ‘We don’t have any money’, but I was standing maybe 10ft from my wife with my suitcase between my legs. They came running to me and we heard them load or cock the pistol. We heard the click.
“In our mind it was a real gun – being up close to it and looking down the barrel it looked real and sounded real. I just dropped the case, put my hands in the air and was saying ‘Come on guys’. They snatched the bag and pointed the gun in my face. Then a car came down the road, then a second one, just passersby. They saw the cars and ran off with the suitcase.
“Had these vehicles not been coming up the street and disturbed them, who knows what might have happened. They might have stayed with us longer and taken wallets and phones and got more stuff from us. But they were interrupted.”
It was an incident that shocked both them and their four children and took a long time to get over. Michael said it all felt very “surreal” and couldn’t really believe what had just happened to them. He said it was something that happens on the TV or in movies.
“You don’t think that it will happen to you until it does. It was very scary,” he added.
“My wife suffered from it for a while after. She was very jumpy. She’s ok now and we’ve managed to put it behind us and move on.
“We have to accept that we lost money but material things can be replaced, we were lucky to get away without any harm to ourselves.”
One thing that it has done is put them off buying anything from the internet where they have to go somewhere to view the product. He said while they would still buy a car locally, he would never do it again on the mainland.
He said his advice to anyone considering doing something similar would be to be “very, very wary”.
“You can do lots of checks but even then you don’t know what’s going to happen. We did all the checks we thought we could do and thought we were safe enough, but obviously not. You’ve just got to be extra careful – meet in a public place and not in a secluded street like we did.
“The car we went to buy was actually for sale in Auto Trader. It had been advertised and sold two weeks before we got there. The police traced the car and a fella had bought it from these guys. Obviously they had decided to re-advertise the same vehicle after they had sold it and decided to do this to us.
“The guy who bought the car must be pretty happy that he was the one that actually bought the car and not in our position because it really can happen to anyone.”
In January last year, two of the men involved in the crime against Michael and Louise Irvine were jailed for a total of more than 13 years for robbing them of £5,000. Sajid Hussain was jailed for seven years after a jury convicted him of being involved in the robbery. The 26-year-old was sentenced to a further three years for drug offences.
His co-accused, Shahid Sadik, was jailed for six years and three months after admitting the robbery and gun offences before Hussain went on trial.
Buying vehicles over the internet is something many people from the north and north-east do, as cars can be cheaper the further south you go.
One motorist, who did not want to be named, said he has travelled hundreds of miles to buy cars over the past few years, but always from dealers.
He said: “I always do an internet search for them to see if there are any reviews online, just to get an idea of what sort of reputation they have.
“I went all the way to Kidderminster a few years ago to get a Mk2 Golf GTi, they’re quite hard to find in good condition. I found it on a small specialist’s website. I talked to the dealer two or three times before I travelled down.
“He’d told me he wasn’t actually open on Saturdays but he’d make a point of being around so I could pick the car up. When I got to his place on this deserted industrial estate I felt a bit wary.
“I’d taken the precaution of getting a bankers draft so I hardly had any cash on me; I’d recommend that to anyone. As it turned out, everything was fine, but you do suddenly realise that you are in a strange place, on your own, and potentially quite vulnerable.
“I went down to County Durham shortly before Christmas to pick up a Skoda Octavia vRS.
“Again, I’d talked to the dealer a couple of times and he’d agreed to pick me up from the station at a wee village near his garage. He was late, and that made me a bit edgy, then he showed up and I’m getting into a van with a burly guy I’ve never met before.
“I had no idea if we were going the right way for his garage because I’d never been to the area before. This time, I didn’t even have a banker’s draft, just a debit card and some change in my pocket. Everything was ok, but incidents like the one in Edinburgh do make you think you can’t be too careful.”
There are a number of steps that can be taken to minimise the risks associated with carrying out business on the internet. Here are some tips from Police Scotland:
Familiarise yourself thoroughly with the auction/retail site’s terms and conditions.
Get to know the seller/buyer – if possible, check the auction/retail website for feedback on this person. Find out details, such as a permanent address and landline telephone number. Carry out online checks to verify that information.
Ask questions about the goods. Try to verify that a seller has the items in front of him/her. Consider the payment arrangements requested. Fraudsters will often insist on high-risk payment methods such as cash, cheque, wire transfer or cash transfer systems such as Western Union or Nocheques.
Check out escrow services – especially if the other party insists on using a particular service. These sites are often well presented and appear genuine, but fraudulent sites may have a number of spelling and grammar mistakes.
If you do find yourself a victim of internet auction fraud, report the fraudulent transaction to the internet auction/retail site itself. You should then contact your local police office.