ApolloXVII - SCAMMER - Multiple Victims

I’ve dealt with refunds through PayPal and this is the initial response you get when opening the claim. Now you just have to patiently wait until the date they provided you. Hopefully Victor will not contest this in any way, like several members had said earlier. Best case would be if he ignored the PayPal inquiries altogether as that would greatly speed up the process.
Your story is awful and it really sucks you went through that. I’m happy your persistent efforts and help from your wife resulted in a refund. While I do agree with this quoted piece and share the same urge in caution, a big difference here is, despite you receiving essentially two empty packages, the tracking shows as delivered. That will always complicate it. I’ve seen a good number of threads pop up in here of members claiming they were victims of successful scams on eBay, all stating: they bought something, the fraudulent sellers updated the orders with fake tracking showing delivery local to the buyers, and eBay/PayPal denied the refund requests because the orders all showed as delivered, despite buyers never actually receiving anything. So far, all of the members on this thread have received tracking from Victor that have all completely stopped moving in Romania, where the seller is located. Hopefully the tracking never updates as that should help in expedite the refund as tracking will genuinely show they never received it. And I just want to clarify because text often lacks tone, I’m definitely not arguing with you. I fully agree with your caution 👍

Scammers are a real bummer. I really dislike, as everyone does, anyone getting beat. Not much of a comparison with a 5,000 dollar watch but when I bought my alpanist (seiko) for a few hundred I tried purchasing it through eBay or one of the other online sites I offered the kid like 20 bucks under his offering but he was freaked out by all the fees. Asked if we could do it on the side with PayPal. He was in Florida from China and was a student studying engineering I believe. I can’t even remember how he got me his personal info but every form of communication he had was still Chinese email and I think he had waymo. He did get a US ID and student ID which he sent me pics of which I told him isn’t a smart move. So anyway since it wasn’t a very expensive item I went with it but honestly I half expected to get burned.
I was wrong he was truthful. Got my alpanist still with tags from Japan and box still intact. Probably not much relevance to the topic at hand but sometimes you just never know. I’ve paid some NOOB taxes but have yet to be burned it must be a real crappy feeling and the victim starts feeling guilty for the “too good to be true thing” but I always view the scammer as the scum. So no DSOTM as I am not worthy but my alpanist which I gambled on

As one of the victims, I sympathize with anyone that has been defrauded whether it was from Apollo or something unrelated. With that being said, it would be nice if the comments here were specific to this issue so that we can recieve information from the other victims without sorting through posts that don't pertain to this situation directly.

Was close to buy one, what makes me suspicious was Romania, and absolutely no sellers or buyers review, and sales watches in a day.

When I was planning to buy the Apollo XVII I checked and really find suspicious that no seller or buyer in the last 2 weeks having half dozen of watches sold in the same day nothing , and older for a small watch or band when you are selling your collection makes suspicious , when I sale watches my self most of the time there is 2 messages a happy buyer and a happy seller at least here nothing in the last 6 bargains and how sell watches in a single day ? At least not me 😀))

It saddens me to read this thread. I never buy or sell to anyone from Italy, Eastern Europe, you’re asking for trouble. I hate to generalize, but those are my rules. I hope everyone is refunded appropriately.

It’s been discovered he’s sold the same watch to multiple different buyers, so I would never expect remorse or an apology. This was all planned.

At least he isn’t putting up a fight. PayPal can deal with him after we get refunded.