Yes, the notorious David Jefferson appears to have scammed me. Now I’m not interested in talking trash about someone to get back at him, nor am I interested in people telling me how stupid I was or how they warned me (I know how stupid I was…in hindsight!). I just want others to get a factual story of how such a (very good) confidence man managed to con me.
I’m posting under a pseudonym. Mainly because i’m trying to hang onto the slim chance that he is in fact a very unlucky guy with impossibly poor interpersonal skills and i might one day get my money back. Partly because I’m embarrassed to use my own account.
Here’s what happened: I was taken in by his “by popular demand, one off, just to cover costs, trading room” and I rationalised that a guy with such knowledge and trading skills wouldn’t need to rip me off for £245. I was also swayed by the use of Paypal and their user protection. So I coughed up and paid for the course.
Then he issued a refund and cited paypal as the problem. Great I thought - confidence in his integrity restored! He must be a great guy and I’m onto a winner! At this stage a friend also wanted in, and paid him directly by interbank wire transfer as per his email instructions. The rationale being that the guy must be for real to issue a paypal refund and give out his personal UK bank details. After all, there are rules protecting the innocent user who makes a wire transfer, right?
All was peachy until the first day of the course, when his blog (and any record of the service we’d paid for) disappeared, he actively closed his gmail account, and paypal told me that he didn’t have sufficient funds to honour the refund. At this stage he started ignoring any and all requests for contact. He started answering “i’ll PM you later” to any public requests for contact (to many people, i noted) but never honouring that promise.
It turns out that paypal protection doesn’t exist for intangible services, that there is no protection for the naiive peasant who makes a wire transfer to a con-man, and that David Jefferson is far too coincidently unlucky to be a decent but somewhat socially retarded man. I’m not here to state an opinion of the man for fear one of his high profile fictitious lawyers driving an equally fictitious aston martin sues me for libel. Everything i have stated here is factual. My only solace is that he could have got far more out of me. He is an incredibly good con man.
I keep asking “why does he keep posting on here and persevering after he has the money?”. The best answer i have is that he didn’t get all the money he wanted. Payments made via Paypal before his account was restricted for providing a financial service were cleared into his account, whereas refunds were issued automatically by the system after the account was restricted. So he is still after more cash and trying to separate those who still follow him from those who have already been burned. Hence why he opened his own restricted access forum. I think this because he hasn’t authorised my or my friends accounts on his forum, presumably because we used the same username as here.
Overall, anyone reading this please take note of what has happened to me and my friend. And if i save someone else from wasting £245 on this guy, at least some good has come from my ‘investment’.
Out of interest, is anyone else in the same boat?
I’m not accusing anybody of anything.
