Bad traders

I didn’t take it that PM was going to resell to the original owner...?

the missing link is the party who sold the frame to mr lafuente

This.

Received the frame, claimed he didn't, and is now "buying it back" so he can sell it to the original seller

i think he's giving it back to the original owner. for nowt.

and the frame was advertised at some thing like €950?

so that's kind

so that's kind

lol.

That is all.

Redacted.

If I’d been left to chase a load of money back off eBay/paypal for an item I didn’t receive then implicated in theft of said item there’s no fucking way I’d be shelling out almost a grand to reunite that item with its rightful owner. I’d be have fuckin nothin, in the slightest, to do with that shit.

I want to know what happened when @de5iRe eventually got his refund from PayPal, no way they just went “oops, our bad. Here’s £xxx out the PayPal coffers for you.” Shirley they would have at least made attempts to reclaim their funds from Kobe/Mercato?

i'm pretty sure estuardo lafuente is a real cafe owner in vienna. i found a couple of articles in german about his establishment. he's originally from guatemala.

My thoughts exactly and however this pans out how many forum members would even think about having anything to do with kobe after this saga?

Hyfive was for sure kobe or an associate. For anyone who didn't see his unedited post, it basically tried to put blame on de5iRe.

The evidence provided by kobe doesn't prove it wasn't him who sold the frame in the first place. We don't know what accounts he has and how he communicates.

All I know is, innocent or not, every time he gives us some info there's more questions than answers.

The way I read this.

You sold the frame, it was received.

Buyer claimed they never received (got the frame for free) 1st part of the fraud success

After a cooling off period they then attempted to sell the frame under a pseudonym, you spotted it.

They then pretend to attempt to buy it from their pseudonym, the only solution they could think of to avoid accusations of being scamming cunting scambags. Fraud on this level could be reported to eBay and PayPal , and could close their accounts etc.

i'm not sure that's an accurate reading. estuardo lafuente and kobe are almost certainly different people.

I agree with that. To add to it, none of his other sales name drop Kobe.

estuardo lafuente and kobe are almost certainly different people.

Agreed, I'll redact my statement suggesting otherwise.

I found Estuardo's insta and he has a pic of the Faggin up from April this year.

He was pretty easy to find and doesn't seem to be hiding much.

Kobe/Pista Mercato on the otherhand... definitely got something to hide.

Probably more likely that Kobe sold it to this guy in Vienna having defrauded PayPal, then realised he could get in serious trouble with PayPal and have his name turned to mud on this forum and probably elsewhere, and that avoiding that was worth the 950 Euro.

Probably a bit late to salvage his reputation and if PayPal got wind of it they might be wondering if this is the first time he's done it or whether he's got form.

If he paid 950 euro for the frame I would be surprised and if he was that worried about reputation he could of given proof of purchase or something more solid by now.

This is lynchman levels!

Fair point. I'm sorry for my part.

No no no, lynchman was another saga of LFGSS yore. A fantastic read if you have the time.

Ah ok! Lol. Will check it out.

I wish we could discover how Estuardo bought the frame ie ebay, a forum etc.

The possibility that it wasn't really Kobe that sold it to Estuardo is creeping into my mind and here is why.

Kobe seems to be selling a lot via social media and even the frames he tries to hawk in the wanted ads on here mostly all seem to appear on his social media feeds at some point so it seems like he'd have to be pretty dumb to try and shift a hot frameset, especially one as rare and identifiable as the Faggin, out in the open like that, using his established 'business' name.

Since he is keeping his real identity pretty hidden and is used to using pseudonyms (he comments on the Pistamercato fb using one) it seems like it would be a trivial matter to create another identity to shift on the dodgy gear.

I'm still not ruling out the possibility it was pinched by the DHL delivery person and then sold on using the name of the intended recipient. Seems unlikely, but who knows? Two people do, but I'm not one of them...

Yeah I thought that might be a possibility.

Purchasing the frame back in order to return it to De5iRe still seems suspiciously kind though.

Indeed. That's a factor in my 'seems unlikely' conclusion.

I don't think there ever was a bike.

Or any other people.

has anyone seen the transaction details from estuardo's "purchase" of the frame? if he's legit these would prove he did indeed buy the frame as he claims.