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!!
