‘Lucy gang’ of eBay scammers jailed for ‘fraud on an industrial scale’

Ringleader, Madalin Popescu
Justin Davenport26 February 2016
WEST END FINAL

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A crime gang suspected of being part of a multi-million-pound eBay scam dubbed the “Lucy network” has been jailed for a total of 18 years.

The gang, described in court as the London cell of a nationwide crime operation, raked in more than £450,000 by offering non-existent cars and motor homes for sale on internet auction sites. Detectives believe they are a part of a larger organised crime gang dubbed the “Lucy network” because the conmen use the girl’s name in emails to potential victims.

Thousands of people across the country fell victim to the fraud in which people were offered cars, motor homes and trailers on sites such as eBay and Gumtree, often for around £200 or £300 less than the going rate.

The auction site pages were linked to fraudulent bank accounts set up by hundreds of Romanians they ferried into the country for a few days on cheap flights. The gang’s ringleader, Madalin Popescu, 34, would collect the “cash mules” from Luton airport and chauffeur them around high street banks across London where a co-conspirator would act as translator to open the accounts.

Police believe the gang of four men and a woman were sometimes opening 10 to 15 bank accounts a day across the capital. They identified 130 victims who lost £450,000 in fake transactions from June 2014 to September 2015.

One retired couple from Bognor Regis in West Sussex used £4,500 of their retirement savings to purchase a camper van online, believing that they were protected by PayPal. When the vehicle did not arrive and they could not contact the “seller”, they realised they had been defrauded.

Victims were lured in by hard-luck stories often from a woman called Lucy saying she had broken up with her boyfriend and had to sell her car quickly. Police say the City of London’s Action Fraud reporting centre has thousands of emails from conmen that include the name Lucy.

Immediately after buyers transferred money into the accounts, the funds were withdrawn and all lines of communication cut, leaving people thousands of pounds out of pocket.

Popescu, of Watford, Roxanna Trusca, 28, Florin Drechichi, 25, Mihai Cercerlaru, 35, and Christian Calistrache, 31, all pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to money launder charge. Popescu was jailed for five years and his co-conspirators, all from north-west London, were jailed for between two years six months and three years eight months.

City of London police say there have been more than 45,000 reports of online auction fraud in the past year, with more than 6,300 reports made by victims in the London area.

Detective Inspector Matt Mountford, the head of the London Regional Fraud Team, said: “This criminal gang committed online auction fraud on an industrial scale and then used fake identities and money mules shipped in from abroad to launder hundreds of thousands of pounds they had stolen from hundreds of innocent people.

“The fact this sophisticated, highly professional fraud has been unravelled and the architects brought to justice is thanks to a forensic investigation by the London Regional Fraud Team, which continues to disrupt organised criminality impacting the London region.”

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