There was this one time when I was naive, 18, and borrowed 700 quid from my dad to get a new laptop on eBay. Sent the guy the cheque, laptop nowhere to be seen. Its a very sore story.

Anyway, I did some detective work of my own. I handed the police a document which detailed the transaction, a photocopy of the cheque from the bank, every piece of communication by email and phone, phone numbers, address of his house, his girlfriends house, where he worked. What more exactly do you want? They took a statement and said they would look into it. Everytime I called, there was a new excuse.

Do I have my money back? No.

We're talking a good 3-4 years ago. This bigtime stressed me out when I was at uni, and this made a lot of my work at the time very crap (yeah, not to mention the fact I didn't have a computer).

By this time, the guy has changed his phone, been fired from his job (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxford), left his girl (Cromwell Close, Chelmsford, Essex), moved into a new place (Church Hill Road, Oxford), and then left there without paying any bills. Apparantly, he (maybe?) now lives in Charlton Park, Wantage, Oxford but I am not sure. Its getting a little hard to pick up the trail.

Not only does he have my money, he also has money from another eBayer who I now talk to occasionally on MSN Messenger. I have reason to believe there are others.

I am still going to hunt him down like a dog. Anyway, this is long and rambling but the morel of the story is...

Dealing with the Police is supposed to be the correct way. But they are very often a complete waste of time.

(edit) By the way; if any of you guys ever come across a Gary (aka Garrie) Scholz who may have lived/worked in Oxford and Essex, particularly Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in 2002 I would love to hear from you.