Another failed Scam Attempt

This email was received May 15, 2007 from a Sax Player that walked away from the Guardala Scam presented to him by Dave Guardala a year ago. Reprint permission was given so I post this story for all to see the similarities presented between this story and mine, posted at Dave Guardala .net.

The email is reprinted in its entirety with the exceptions made by its author. (All materials posted receive permission to be posted before use. I have many emails and phone conversations that where to be kept confidential and have been. I will refer to these individuals in very loose terms to keep you-all abreast of the facts, but will never divulge any information without proper permissions first. These victims have endured enough already and I would never want to add to the pain or frustration surrounding this event in their lives.)

Dave Guardala Vintage Sax and Vintage Mouthpieces for sale !!

---- START COPY ----

Hello Greg.

Thank you so much for posting your story.

My heart goes out to you and your loss, but I'm also relieved to find
that this was actually a scam.

I too was in contact with Dave Guardala, but didn't go through with it.
However I kept thinking "what if" ever since - hence the relieve. I
hope you understand.

I will try to tell you my story. It's been almost a year so I might
not be able to get all details right, and unfortunately I did not
save any emails or any other documentation.

Here's my story:

A trip to my local sax shop in Copenhagen equipped me with a copy of
a fax they'd received from Dave Guardala.

This was the offer for 5 Selmer vintage saxophones and some 30-40
vintage mouthpieces, all listed in convincing manor. Price 10.000 euros.

My first thought was "this is too good to be true", but I also
thought "hey, I just might check it out".

So I called or emailed Dave Guardala and pretty soon he was on the phone
talking and talking.

Guardala said to me that those 5 saxophones that had been offered on the
fax that I got was now sold. But he had another 4 vintage selmer
saxophones at the price of some 7000 euros or so along with a similar
bunch of mouthpieces.

He explained the story about his wifes friend, the greek family, very
similar to the story you posted. He also informed me that he had left
the music business and only did this to help out his wifes friend and
to make someone like me, a player, very happy. Meaning, he claimed
that he would rather see this instruments with a player, than at a
pawn shop.

He had a way on the phone of always having the upper hand. He talked
and talked a lot, probably to avoid questions. And when I questioned
the "too good to be true" aspect of the offer, he got kinda offended,
saying stuff like "I don't care for spending time doing this" and "I
quit the music business, I'm only trying to help these people out".
He mentioned more than a few times that he didn't care much for tire-
kickers and that he'd rather not I be one of those. I shouldn't be
wasting his time if I was not genuinely interested. I explained to
him that I was very much interested, but only questioned the
transaction method.

Questioning him being who he said he was, Dave Guardala, he kept
answering "remember, YOU called ME, not the other way around". And he
also kept referring to his vast experience with saxophones, a way of
telling me that no one else could describe those saxophones as
correctly as he could.

I tried to get some sort solid evidence from him, like address and
home phone number, but none of that he would pass out. His
explanation was something like: " I don't want every sax player
calling me to work his mouthpiece" or "I quit the music business and 
I don't want my family involved again". He made me feel pushy to get
his info, and being the polite person I am, I didn't ask for it any
more.

I tried to run his cell-phone number through german telephone
information but they don't list cell-phone numbers, so his number
didn't return any info.

The deal was supposed to be through Western Union and to another name
(I forgot which, I'm sorry) than Dave's, and then they would ship the
saxophones. It all had to go very fast, obviously.

Being in Denmark, not very far from Frankfurt where he was, I offered
to get on a plane or into the car and go to Frankfurt, cash in hand
do the transaction and put the horns in the car and go. This was not
acceptable because allegedly the Greek family needed some sort of
export papers on the horns. The transaction needed to be fully paper
trailed. Or at least, so I understood.

Ok, then. I offered to go to Frankfurt with the money and then he and
I could pack the saxophones together, take them to the shipping
office and watch them fly off.

This was not accepted either.

This was when I started to be sure that this was not a truthful
arrangement.

From now on I kept going in the attempt to prove myself wrong in
thinking that this was a scam. I didn't succeed.

Like you I tried to search the internet for stories on Dave Guardala
and had no luck.

Desperate to find someone who would vouch for Dave I started calling
german sax shops. I had been to Berlin and had visited Mike Duchstein
Saxophon-Service so I called him and asked about Dave Guardala. He couldn't
really back up any story, but he had heard something, from the owner 
of another Sax Shop in Hamburg, about Guardala and something not being
right.

So I called him (NADIR IBRAHIMOGLU at PMS Music) and he explained to me that the police
was looking for Dave. He didn't use the word scam, but he explained
the he had been doing some bad things and advised me not to do
business with him.

I took his advice and wrote an email to Dave proposing to go to
Frankfurt with the cash and doing the deal there or no deal at all.

Needless to say I heard no further from Dave Guardala. No reply to that email.

I went on thinking about the "what if" aspect of it all, but with a
strong assumption that the whole thing was a fraud. But not until
reading the story on your web page I completely realized that I
didn't miss an opportunity to get some great horns. I in fact missed
the opportunity to burn all of my savings.

I certainly don't mean to rub your nose in my luck to not play
further along. I feel so bad for you, and believe it, it could have
been me. I'm just very happy that the story is now out there and
searchable for other unlucky ones that Dave might convince.

I hope that you can use my contribution. It's certainly a proof that
Guardala has been telling the same story more than once.

If I can be of any help, please let me know. If you need me to try to
go deeper into aspects of my story I will. I might be able to track
my phone records and find the number that Dave called from or I
called to, or maybe the numbers to the sax shop in Hamburg.

I sure hope someone will make Dave pay for the unhappiness and
financial loss he has caused. If I can help, please let me know.

Feel free to publish this story along with my name. I'm Thomas
Edinger and I live in Copenhagen, Denmark. Please don't post my email
address (for spam reasons). You can however post my website
www.edinger.dk and my myspace myspace.com/thomasedinger if you like,
and people can contact me through there.

Once again, thank you for going public with this story!

yours sincerely,

Thomas Edinger

----- END COPY ----

WOW!

For the World Wide Web, this is just another story that looks much like my story posted on www.DaveGuardala.net. To me, it freaks me out. When I was being scammed, it was so fast and crazy that I don't think I took much of it in. When I read another persons account like this, it reminds me of details I had missed at the time, or just plain forgot.

Thomas did an excellent job of telling his story; reminding me of the failed attempts to get Guardala's home phone or street address, noticing his style of communication on the phone, noting all the similar elements between his story and my posted story, and expressing the interest and doubt involved with this deal that seemed to good to be true.

I so appreciate the email and the ability to post it here. I wish something had kicked in to stop me from jumping in so hard, but I did and that's history now. Your a good man Thomas! Thanks for the contribution!!

 

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