posted 08-28-2003 03:34 AM               

Spaceflori Corporation from Renningen, Germany, has tabled a complaint against a French collector for credit card fraud and embezzlement with the French police, company owner Florian Noller said today. Noller hopes that French authorities would clear up a number of deals gone sour that costed US and European collectors several hundred dollars so far.

Noller claims that a certain Stéphane S. had ordered space memorabilia for over $100 under a false name from Spaceflori's website in June. In July, however, the credit card transactions were cancelled by the issuing bank, claiming the credit card had been stolen.

Several other space memorabilia merchants were also victims of credit card chargebacks, namely Lunar Legacies, Countdown Creations and Boggs Spacebooks. Their total combined losses were in the $600 area, Noller explained.

After the chargeback occured, S. promised to make good by sending the amount due by cash payments or International Money Orders. However, none of the registered letter S. claimed to have sent ever arrived, nor did any Western Union payment. Despite his declared intention to pay, S. insists the order had been placed by an "associate" who had abused of his card and his e-mail addresses. S. did not reveal the identity of his "associate" nor return the goods, however. The merchandise was delivered to a phony address in the posh 9ème arrondissement in the French capital, Paris (AAF Space, Rue Auber 12, boite 3, 75009 Paris. E-mail: laurentlefebvre2000@.... )

Investigations undertaken by Noller and fellow collectors revealed that orders and ebay-operations had been undertaken - with different names and false identities - out of this Paris address during 2002 and 2003, with S. or his fiancée intervening each time in the transaction at a certain point.

"In the past, S. just freqently failed to come up with payments for ebay auctions he won. We have dozens of witnesses to report that. With credit card fraud, this has reached an entirely different dimension that requires immediate action we hope French police will take", Noller explained.

*******************************

Further victims please get in touch with me at florian@spaceflori.com

thanks
Florian

posted 08-28-2003 10:45 AM               

Just don't confuse this guy with honest collectors living in Paris (i.e. me), please!

posted 08-28-2003 10:51 AM               

Certainly this is not a national problem but a worldwide. Some people still believe that the Internet and especially ebay are toys to play with and screwing + stealing time of other people is fun....

Anyway since the Space community is a pretty small one compared to others we have the advance of using things like this forum to reach most of the collectors and prevent further damage (though again a lot has been done already) - some folks would be surprised what evidence we collected in the past weeks....

Florian

posted 09-23-2003 09:13 AM               

------------------
Jürgen P Esders
Berlin, Germany http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Astroaddies