Lousy scammers - they seem to be multiplying!

Thanks for letting everyone know about it.

A guy called Joseph contacted me out of the blue on Instagram and told me to check out his website pinballshore.com i told him that i was searching for ‘project’ pins and my price range was a bit lower than the pins on their website. Then he asked what pins i was searching for and what i was willing to pay, so i said bsd and cftbl but he didnt know what that ment, he thought i was talking about pirates from the caribbean .. the next day he wrote again and told me that he had found what i was looking for and luckily only costed what i was willing to pay
I then told him great! Where are they located, i would like to see what it is that i am buying, and maybe also save the shipping cost. i havent heard from him since..
When things sound to good to be true, they usually are..

Proceed with caution and DO NOT buy from Pinballshore.com

We just had a client come into our store to make a deposit on a pinball machine listed on their web site. They have listed on their web site OUR MAILING ADDRESS, but the e-mail address and phone number are not ours. SCAM.

If anyone has any idea how to turn a web site in for being fraudulent I'd appreciate your assistance.

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Start here - https://www.usa.gov/stop-scams-frauds

Get in touch with their IP too. Let them know illegal activity is going on, on their system.

LTG : )

I love how on their page they have this picture of a pinball machine...wonder how much that model goes for?

also check out this text from their website...

"pinballshore knows that purchasing a Pinball Machines is same as purchasing a T-Shirt, that is why will always be here to provide our support, and answer any concern that customers might have"

ummm...I've seen many descriptions of buying pinball machines, but I've never heard anyone say "it's just like buying a T-shirt".

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We should be thanking them.
After all, who hasn't had issues requiring support following a T-shirt purchase?

Good idea Lloyd. As a followup, here's some information for the OP:

The phone number listed on the site is carried by Enflick/TextNow/Bandwidth - Their abuse address is [email protected]. They also have a webform at https://www.bandwidth.com/legal/report-a-phone-number/

The site in question is hosted by Quadranet (https://www.quadranet.com/) - Their respective abuse address is [email protected]

That phone number is also used on a scam site at allpuppieshome.com (They sell puppies, yay!) and the domain was registered May 17th 2020.

Best of luck, and thanks for keeping everyone informed.

They have a high end restoration Addams for only 4500! Im in!
https://pinballshore.com/product/addams-family-by-bally-high-end-restoration/

The Whois data is (mostly) a dead end, they’re using a third party to hide their information. Scammers almost always do that but lots of legitimate domain owners do too.
https://whois.whoisxmlapi.com/lookup-report/eJ2aAj3D2j

The site is hosted at IPv4 Address: 104.223.95.207
https://whatismyipaddress.com/ip/104.223.95.207
hostnext.net resolves to https://www.hosterpk.com/ same site listed in the Whois data.

The IP isn’t on any of the major block lists.
Hosterpk has a terms and conditions page at https://www.hosterpk.com/terms-archived
and a contact us link and email address at their site. It would probably be fruitless but worth sending an email and asking them to remove pinballshore.com

Compy pointed out quadranet, that’s the upstream provider to hostnext.net

Were you at least able to sell them an actual pinball machine? Or are they committed to buying a game that doesn't exist at a blowout price?

No unfortunately not. He was eyeing up the Fish Tales they had on their site for $3800 that looked to be fully restored. I told him we didn't have one of those ready at the moment and if we did depending upon condition it would be higher than $4k if it has a restored cabinet, and looked as nice as the one in the pics on pinballshore.com

That was the specific title he was looking for as it was for their lake house. I did however take his business card, we have a few Fish Tales in the back and that gave me the motivation today to pull them out and see what they need. So maybe it will relate to a sale here down the road. We'll see.

Just wondering, how do you find that out?

Good information here concerning reporting...

https://support.google.com/websearch/thread/12445382?hl=en

Hopefully, you also explained to him that it's NOT "just like buying a t-shirt"...

“We love Pinball, the mechanicsm, the sounds, the effects, the LED. We want to share our passion to everyone who enjoy in playing mechanical Pinball machines.”

Sounds okay.

Guys, you can right click a photo in Google chrome and search for the image.
They ripped off https://kingarupinball.com/product/addams-family-by-bally/

After seeing the fantastic deals I searched Pinside for "Pinballshores" and tada, here you all are. But you're missing the real value: I currently have ONE MILLION Medieval Madness pins in my cart. For only $4,000,000,000. You suckas missed the boat!

This post saved me! I thought the Addams Family fully restored for $4,500 was too good to be true so after the seller asked me for a "deposit" I decided to do a little more due diligence and search up Pinside. Good work all! Thanks for saving me from being an idiot. I had a feeling that was not a Texan accent!....

With all the reporting about this fraudulent outfit, how do they still have an online presence?
Just scary how much fraud is not removed by the ISP and investigated by the FTC and FBI, or by any attorney general's office whatever state (if they are in the US) they are operating from.

interesting. Thanks for the rightclickimagesearch info - had no idea. Doing that, I found that their 'team' is the same as this team:
https://www.homeleisuredirect.com/company/meet-the-team.html

so maybe they ripped that off, or it's the same group.

I unknowingly bought a counterfeit PS4 controller a few months ago. When it had issues I sent it to Sony for repair and they let me know it wasn't genuine. Then I did a deep dig and the website is known for selling trash. I contacted the VT AG, NV AG, and (if I remember correctly) the FTC or FBI. No feedback or change. The site is still there to this day. Irritating to say the least!

Holy crap I’m glad I seen this about pinball shore being a scam I knew something was off

They're hosted in Pakistan. You can usually get a spammer/scammer website killed (until they move it) by contacting the host explaining a Terms of Service violation.

The host TOS violation email is [email protected]

Their TOS listing is here. I'm sure you can find multiple items to call out being violated by pinballshore.com:

https://www.hosterpk.com/aup

Do a whois on the site to find out who is hosting it, then look up the TOS for that host. There's usually a contact link or email for TOS violations. You can get the host to kick them, killing the site until they re-host, rinse, repeat as much as you want.

I've actually had pretty good success when going to the trouble to point out TOS violations to hosts. It's a hassle, but if the fraud/scam is clear and you have proof, most hosts are pretty cooperative, even overseas.

I was looking at their Whitewater listing the other day and was going to contact them until I looked to see if they were real.

Seems more like pinballoffshore.com.

Glad nobody got taken. Stay safe out there.

I just talked to ‘Roger’ on the phone today. What a scam and f-king scumbag. Not that I got taken at all, just my cool. I asked if the batteries were still in White Water, or nvram i installed...he gave me the weirdest answer, which wasn’t even close to real. I feel like texting that fker back. It’s a real shame that these scam-sites remain online, taking other people’s money. CRAZY.

Man just saved myself a huge headache. So glad I searched pinball shore and found out it is a scam. I had a feeling it was, but glad I checked.