Caravan sale scam leaves owner and family in shock
‘‘You hear of people doing this sort of thing, but you never expect for it to actually be right in front of you.’’
The first a Nelson couple knew that their caravan had been ‘‘sold’’ was when people turned up at their house to take it away.
John, who didn’t want his last name published, said a family had bought the caravan on Facebook Marketplace from someone claiming to be the owner.
‘‘He met them outside, in front of our house and said to them, ‘I’ve lost the key, so I’ll just break in through the window to show you what’s in there’.’’
The family paid him for the caravan, and he left.
It was only when the family knocked on the couple’s door, asking if they could move their car so the caravan could be towed away, that he realised what had happened.
‘‘They said, ‘We need to move this caravan because we’ve bought it’. And we said, ‘ You can’t, it’s ours’.’’
John said he reacted with ‘‘disbelief’’, and his first thought was, ‘‘Oh my god, these people have been ripped off’’.
The family had driven for an hour to Nelson to look at the caravan and seal the deal, and were ‘‘shocked and furious’’ when they discovered that they had been scammed, he said.
‘‘They in their minds were convinced that they would get [the scammer] and get the money back. I felt really sorry for them.’’
The family had paid the man $1500 cash, which John understood was the savings of their teenage son, who had been working over summer.
The family went to the police station to report the incident, which happened on January 23, John said.
The ‘‘seller’’ had taken photos of the caravan and listed it for sale with the message that he ‘‘must sell today’’, as he was ‘‘leaving town tonight’’.
The couple usually kept the caravan at a storage unit in Riwaka, but had been camping, so it was parked on the road outside their house while they cleaned it. Rattled, they took the caravan straight back to the storage unit after the incident, and bought a tow ball lock and a wheel lock to secure it.
John said that when the family went to police, they were told that four other people had laid complaints against the man – who was using his real name and Facebook profile.
The family members had also taken photos, with the man in them, at the time they handed over the cash for the caravan, he said.
‘‘Then two nights ago ... he did the exact same thing to a horse float, and this poor lady was on Facebook going, ‘Has anyone seen my horse float?’, and my wife clicked and said . . . ‘It’s just been on-sold by this guy’.’’
John then went to the police station to find out why police hadn’t arrested the man after the incident involving their caravan was reported.
He said he was at a loss to explain why the man was not apprehended sooner, before others were allegedly targeted.
‘‘[Police] knew where he was, they had his phone number, they had his name. I feel like it wouldn’t have been too hard to find him.’’
A police spokesperson told Stuff that in general, police were unable to respond to queries that sought to establish whether specific individuals or organisations were or had been under police investigation. Anyone who made a complaint to police had the right to privacy.
A spokesperson said police were appealing for information about a horse float in Nelson that was sold on Facebook Marketplace under false pretences on January 30. The person who unlawfully sold the float had been charged, but the whereabouts of the float were unknown.
‘‘The purchaser is not in any trouble, but the owner of the float needs it back. The purchaser picked it up from Waimea Rd in Nelson.’’
John said the whole incident has made him and his wife more conscious about security for the caravan. This weekend, he was planning on using it as a spare room for visiting guests, but had decided to leave it in storage, and host family members indoors instead.
The whole scam was ‘‘hard to believe’’, he said.
‘‘You hear of people doing this sort of thing, but you never expect for it to actually be right in front of you.’’