Anatomy of a Scam: How I Bought Four Figurines and One Very Expensive Lesson

Not long ago I was scammed on an online marketplace. Me, a lawyer. I wired money up front to someone I had never met, for collectible LEGO figurines I never received. Well, I received some of them: the cheap ones. Below is what I did next, minute by minute, and, more usefully, what you should do before you pay and after someone has taken you for a ride.

I am writing this at my own expense on purpose. A lawyer who advises clients in multi-million disputes fell for an ad selling Lord of the Rings figurines. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone, which is exactly why it is worth taking apart: where I went wrong, what I got right, and why the story ended with the money coming back, something that almost never happens to victims of marketplace fraud.

¶ How it went

The ad showed a set of ten collectible figurines on a display base: a nice photograph, a price slightly below market. Nothing out of the ordinary. I got in touch and haggled a small discount; the seller was friendly and quick to reply. I wired a few thousand crowns up front and received a dispatch confirmation. It looked like hundreds of other second-hand deals I have done in my life.

The parcel arrived a week later with four figurines in it instead of ten, and the cheap ones at that. No display base, most of the accessories missing. Goods worth perhaps half of what I had paid, sent on the evident assumption that I would either swallow it or not bother fighting over a few thousand.

Then it got interesting. When I went through his other traces in detail, it turned out he was running the same set, with the same photograph, in several groups at once, at three different prices. Nobody does that by accident. It is an operation.

¶ Where I went wrong — and how you can avoid it

I made one mistake, and it was the fundamental one: I sent money up front to a stranger without checking anything at all. Everything else followed from that. Here is what I should have done, what I have done ever since, and what I recommend.

Check where else the seller is selling, and for how much. Three ads with three prices and three different descriptions of the same item is a red flag you will spot after two minutes of searching. A genuine seller has one item at one price.

Ask for a detail that cannot be copied: a photo of the goods next to a slip of paper with today's date, or an answer to a question only the real owner could give. Fraudsters work with stolen photographs and often vanish at the first request that takes any effort.

Prefer cash on delivery or a handover in person, and for larger sums, payment on collection. Yes, cash on delivery costs a little more. Think of it as an insurance premium, and like every premium it will feel pointless right up to the moment it isn't.

One point people rarely think of: a bank transfer is your anchor. It sounds backwards, but if you are going to pay up front, pay by bank transfer rather than in anonymous crypto or with a voucher. A bank account belongs to a specific person whom the bank has identified, and when it comes to enforcement that is the most valuable trace you can have.

¶ What I did right: document first, confront second

Now the part almost everybody gets wrong, because it runs against instinct. When you open the parcel and realise you have been had, your first impulse is to write to the seller straight away. Hold off.

Before I sent the seller a single message, I had taken screenshots of all his ads (including the ones in other groups, which he deleted after the confrontation, just as I expected), his profile, our entire exchange, the contents of the parcel, the dispatch details and the payment confirmation. Ten minutes of work. By the time I wrote "this is not what I bought", there was nothing left for him to delete that I did not already have.

The same holds for any conflict, not just one over a marketplace purchase: you document before the first shot is fired.

Rule two: keep the conflict in writing. The seller kept pushing for a phone call. I declined, and not to be rude: a call leaves no trace, and written messages do. Someone who tries to move you from writing to the phone usually knows why. Every sentence he puts in writing is potential evidence, so do not give him the chance to talk without leaving a record.

¶ Petty offence or crime? The line sits at CZK 10,000

Now a little law, because even lawyers get confused here: the threshold changed a few years ago. Under Czech law, fraud is a criminal offence under Section 209 of the Criminal Code where the perpetrator causes damage that is not negligible, and since 1 October 2020 that means CZK 10,000 (it used to be CZK 5,000, and plenty of online guides still get this wrong). Damage below that line is "merely" a petty offence against property, punishable by a fine in administrative proceedings.

One important exception changes the result even below the threshold:

A serial marketplace fraudster who takes three thousand from each of ten people is committing a crime, even though every individual victim is "below the line". That is why your complaint should set out everything that points to serial conduct. In my case, that meant the three ads running at the same time at three prices.

And in civil terms? You always have a claim, whatever the amount. Delivering different, cheaper goods than agreed is defective performance, and if you withdraw from the contract, the seller must return what you paid. The practical problem lies in the economics of enforcement rather than in the law, and I will come to that shortly.

¶ The strongest document is the one you have not sent yet

I drafted a criminal complaint, complete with annexes and a timeline, ready to file. And then I did not file it. Instead I gave the other side a clear, calm, documented choice: return the corresponding part of the money within a short deadline, or the complaint goes where it belongs, together with the whole file.

Why does that work? Because a finished filing is an option, and an option is worth most while it is still alive. Once you send it, your leverage turns into a slow administrative process. Below the criminal threshold the matter will most likely end up in petty-offence proceedings, you will be summoned to give statements, and you will not see the money, because petty-offence proceedings are aimed at a fine for the state. You can claim compensation in them (Section 70 of the Act on Liability for Offences), but you will still have to enforce it yourself. The other side may well suspect as much. But a finished file, with the evidence attached, in the hands of someone who clearly knows what he is doing, is a risk most fraudsters cannot stomach. Their business depends on victims who give up, and I was methodically building a record.

In my case the money came back within twenty-four hours of the deadline being set, exactly the sum I had calculated, to the crown. The statutory provisions had little to do with it. I was visibly prepared to go further, and testing whether I was bluffing had stopped being worth his while.

I have to add an honest caveat to that happy ending: you cannot count on this outcome. It worked because the circumstances lined up. The other side was reachable, was communicating, and had something to lose. Plenty of marketplace fraudsters operate from abroad through nominee accounts, and there the only realistic path is a complaint, the bank, and accepting that you have paid for a lesson.

¶ When to let it go

Which brings me to a conclusion you may not expect from a lawyer: sometimes the right answer is to let it go. Enforcement costs time, attention and nerves, and you pay those costs whether or not anyone invoices them. The rule I recommend: work out how many hours of your life recovering the money will take, price them honestly, and compare that with your real (not theoretical) chances of collecting. For three thousand against an anonymous foreign account, the arithmetic is clear. For five thousand against a traceable person with a bank account in his own name, the sum comes out differently, especially when the documentation takes you half an hour.

There is one thing you should never let go, and that is warning others. Even if you get your money back, even if the case is shelved, a factual warning with evidence, posted in the relevant community, takes ten minutes. It deprives the fraudster of what his whole model depends on: a steady supply of victims who have not been warned. I do not see it as revenge. We all shop in the same place, and somebody has to keep it clean.

¶ One screen, everything that matters

I still have the figurines, incidentally. They sit on a shelf and remind me that in a dispute, humility is the one piece of kit that never wears out. Even a lawyer sometimes has to pay for a lesson. The least you can do is keep the receipt and show it around.

If you are curious about what happens when a criminal complaint actually is filed, I have described it in Criminal complaint: what happens when someone files one against you. Whether pursuing a claim is worth it at all is the subject of Not every battle is worth fighting, and the cost of waiting, of Limitation: the silent claim killer.