Things have been going downhill fast for a young Irishman working in a French ski resort after he became the victim of Identity Fraud back home.
Conor Gleeson, (27), from Navan, county Meath, went to sell his laptop last December as he was moving to France to work as a driver and chalet host and narrowly avoided being scammed himself.
Two would be buyers called to his house and agreed to pay €950 for the laptop and showed Conor a screenshot of what appeared to be the payment going through.
However Conor had his suspicions and told them to call back to collect it when the money landed in his account.
What he didn’t realise was the duo had taken photos of his driving licence and old bank card when they were speaking to him and ever since they have perpetrated a string of scams using his ID.
Conor revealed, ‘The scam seems to involve the scammer in question turning up to buy a product, introducing themselves as Conor Gleeson and providing my home address from my licence to the seller as verification.
‘The scammer does a bank transfer through a fraudulent app and leaves with the product. The money never arrives needless to say into the sellers account, with only my details left to contact.
‘Its all been a bit of a mess.’
His angry mother Susan has even had people calling to her door demanding to see her son claiming he had turned them over.
She said, ‘ There was no problem until early January when a friend of Conor’s spotted a post on Facebook with a picture of Conor’s face saying, ‘This scumbag has done me out of a watch’, what happened was the two who had tried to buy the laptop got a watch using Conor’s ID and never paid for it.
‘Conor immediately rang the guy who put the post up and explained the situation and we thught that was the end of it but in fact it was just the beginning of a nightmare few weeks.
‘We were out one night and when we returned a neighbour told us that four guys had called round and when he spoke to them they claimed Conor had scammed a watch from them.
‘I am hoping they read this and understand it wasn’t him.
‘Last Monday I contacted the Gardai here in Navan and a day later cops from Drogheda station rang me to say a woman had alleged Conor had defrauded her and got a mobile phone.
‘It was the same pair of con artists up to their old tricks I mean Conor isn’t even in the country.
‘Look I don’t blame the people who have been conned for being angry, if it happened to me I would be upset too, I just want to put it out there that Conor had nothing to do with it.
‘We have even had two guys from Glasgow call to tell us the same thing happened to them.
‘God knows how many more will turn up at my door but genuinely we are innocent victims of two sharp operators.’
