Yes, we all know this already: put up an ad on Marketplace and you will get a horde of „potential buyers” who are ready to buy your gadget and send a courier to pick it up, but this is nothing else than a phishing attempt that will leave you with a stripped bank account.

Beware: there’s a new scam in Facebook’s audio and hifi groups to rip you off.

All this happened in the Vinyl Turntable Owners group on July 12. Mark O asked a question about a Gold Note Valore 425 turntable. He wanted to buy one second hand, and needed some opinions. Mark made it clear he lived in Canada.

These were three responses he got. All three invited him to send them private messages as these Facebook users owned this exact model “in good condition” and they were ready “to part with" them and they were “not asking much.”

This already looked suspicious to me as the Gold Note turntables are just not mass market items. How come there are three owners in one group ready to sell their turntables?

To see whether it was a scam, out of the three “owners” I chose “Harry Cologne,” and I sent him a message. I did not say it was about a Gold Note turntable. The first thing he wanted to know where I was located.

The first tell-tale sign was that he did not know what turntable I was hinting at - he probably cast his bait in a hundred other groups and was unable to track back. He cleverly wrote he had "different models."

At this point I made a trick and gave two turntable models that actually do not exist. The imaginery Da Silva brand is completely made up (after my girlfriend’s name Szilvia) and Audio-Technica never had an LP180 model.

This was not a problem for “Harry,” he stated with confidence that he had one. Given that these are completely made-up model names, from this point it was clear that this was a scam.

But hey, let the good times roll.

He said he was based in “Pest, Buda.” This doesn’t make sense. Budapest is the capital city of Hungary. In 1873 the two towns on the left and right banks of the river Danube, Buda and Pest united. Since then the town has been called Budapest. Buda and Pest do not exist any more as separate entities. You don't have to know history, but you would probably know the name of your hometown. I wonder what kind of historic map Harry found.

After some co-ordination about how to pick up the (imaginary) turntable (but without getting to an exact address), he came out with the very essence of his game:

“I want you to make some part payment.”

That was the end of the game on my side. We had not clarified what turntable model we had been talking about, no exact price had been negotiated, but he wanted me to transfer money to him.

I have seen this type of scam in other hifi groups since then. These cheaters abuse the natural trust between members of a community who share the same hobby.

I have reported "Harry," of course, but there is no ground for any other legal action. All we can do is to act with extra caution. I thought that the analogue audio community was too small and closed for scammers trying to penetrate, but I was wrong. Be cautious to contact people who offer a specific item that you are looking to buy. Especially if it turns out that they live close to your place, and have no idea about the product they are "selling."

Analógia is a blog for the analogue audio community in Hungary. It is related to a hifi retailer specializing in analogue audio. There is also a Facebook group behind it with 12,000+ members, called Turntables and their Owners.