Zeke Scam

[challenger3980]

Hi Again Rob,

    It may prove interesting if nothing else, and maybe make someone sweat a bit, if it is a scam.

                                                                             Thanks,

                                                                             Doug

[Cederstrand]

Doug, a friend of mine found a new/real name connected with the bonnyview address. Also an alternate address. Connection to the ebayer not confirmed yet. Interesting!

Rob   

[challenger3980]

I have several relatives out his/her way and thought they might have some fun investigating this on their own, if so inclined. Feel free to e-mail me the address if anyone finds it.

You're a kind soul, Doug.

Rob

Hi Rob,

    I did find a forum link that went back to the post with the mailing address for Zeke, it is:

    Zeke Watkins,  4356 E. Bonnyview rd,  Redding, CA 96001

That is the address that I sent the package to, so it should be legit.  If you hear anything from your relatives, Please let me know. 10 years ago, I could have checked this out myself, I am a truck driver, back then I drove for  a foodservice co. and went through Redding every week. Now I am with a different company( I sure don't miss the food service delivery business) and now, I usually go to Nampa, ID (near Boise) and Spokane, Wa.  Redding and the Lake Shasta area are very Pretty, we used to vacation on Lake Shasta when I  was a kid. Kinda silly, but I still remember getting burritos at Diggers Bay, I always made sure we got them at least once each year.

                                                                       Doug

[Anonymous]

Jeff- I don't doubt that the thread got zapped but it did not
entirely disappear. I redid the search and still found it mentioned a
couple of times on this forum and many times on Toy Train Operating and
Collecting. I would have thought that once zapped it would all be
gone,I guess I was wrong.

I do agree with others that sooner or later people like Zeke wii get theirs. Bob 

[challenger3980]

Hi Guys,(and Gals too)

     I guess Zeke or whoever it really is must still be reading the forums, I just saw something interesting, the ebay auction for the Porter, had been ended early by the seller, due to a mistake in the listing. Must have realized that the wheel wear would be a give away that the engine was not unrun.

    Also, Zeke's new forum ID is Tubularguy, after he recvd it, he sent me an email through the forum ( which unfortunately doesn't give the true email address  of the sender) Thanking Me and  saying how much he liked it.

                                                                                   Doug

[LD357]

After reading the memorial day posts and some of the original ''zeke'' posts...I also had a flashback to our buddy upchuck.....but given upchucks inability to spell even simple words, and his Mother Goose style fairy tales....this ''zeke'' seems to me to be a completely different troll, ''zekes'' story was more believable and well thought out than anything upchuck could conjure,  so I think we have a different lying here.

  And speaking of upchuck....a poster on the Bachmann forums calling itself ''summertrainz'' is suspiciously like upchuck, same sort of silly questions and stupid posts.

[jeffrey-wimberly]

You won't find the Zeke thread that was on this forum. It got zapped!

[Anonymous]

rt-use the search button-type in zeke and it will bring up the origional post plus this one. Hope this helps. Bob

[Fergmiester]

Quick break to read some posts.

***Matt, would you like some backup on that visit with the Zeke entity?

 

Speaking of telemarketers, I usually ask them strait away for their home phone number. When they say thay can't give that out, I tell them if they are not willing to take calls at their home, then don't bother calling mine. Most of the time I let the answering machine weed them out.  Rob

 

Ooooh I'll have to remember that  one... Thanks!

 

[tomkat-13]

I did not post on the "zeke" story as it seemed to travel to fast and someone that bad off has more on their mind than some train forum! We all have our own problems & I think that putting them out on a forum for a train hobby is not the place. Also as a US NAVY Vet (1972-76) I know how I feel when someone fakes or embellishes service to their Country & I share that feeling with my fellow Vets! As to the selling off of items received because of deceit and playing on someones good intentions is down right chicken----. I think ebay sould be notified by someone with authority to show what these poeple did and to check the other items they have listed to see if they are running this scam all over the whole world wide web! Lets try to stick to RR things and we all need to be more careful with suspicious post......tkat

[ARTHILL]

Aren't we having fun with this one. If Zeke is a scam, it surely worked.

I do commend the large number of good people who took him/her at his/her word and showed generous concern.

[Cederstrand]

Quick break to read some posts.

***Matt, would you like some backup on that visit with the Zeke entity?

 

Speaking of telemarketers, I usually ask them strait away for their home phone number. When they say thay can't give that out, I tell them if they are not willing to take calls at their home, then don't bother calling mine. Most of the time I let the answering machine weed them out.  Rob

 

 

[SteamFreak]

Looking at Zeke's post history, the first one was April 17th. He/she racked up a lot in a coffee shop thread, apparently.

Posts by zeke

[CPRail modeler]

I KNEW that thread was suspicious! I never posted because there was something about this guy that just struck me as odd. At first, I thought this was another (I don't want to start a flame war here but...) UPChuck reincarnation, but as time went by, I dismissed it and got around to some MRRing (had to rip up track to install electrical, what a pain...) and posted more around the forum. I left it alone for approximately 1 or 2 months until THAT Zeke thread appeared. I watched it for a few days and then dismissed that. Then this thread comes...

...the thing is a few months ago, UPChuck was banned and we never heard from him for a long time (which is a good thing). That time was around the time Zeke came online. I see a possible connection here but I can't find it.

BTW I heard something about an Al Mayo coming back online, but I'm not sure...

[loathar]

I've been saying this for years:  When it comes to on-line forums you just can't be sure who is on the other keyboard (with very few exceptions).

Although I did find it odd that the member ID used had been around for a while with a fairly high post count.  It just didn't fit the usual (recently joined) troll-like profile.  Perhaps this was a legitimate ID that was hijacked?  

I was thinking the same thing. I just looked. He joined 3-4 months ago and had 800 posts. I went to the Memorial Day thread to check his posting history but I can't access it. (my computers pretty messed up) Maybe someone else could go there and check and see if he had changed his name anything else suspicious. I didn't see what caused this last thread to get yanked. I don't think that post about the RC car forum would have been enough to do it. There must have been more to it than that. (maybe Bergie knew something we didn't)

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Here's the answer I use. Why should I spend good money buying the paper when I can just walk over to my parents home and read their paper for nothing?

[tstage]

That's a good one, R.T.

Tom 

[R. T. POTEET]

tstage, I did roughly the same thing only I said:

. . . . . because I only read numbers, I never did learn how to read letters.  When I go on a trip and I see a mileage sign I know exactly how fur it is but I never know where I'm headin' to . . . . . I got a laugh out of the girl on the other end before she graciously thanked me for my time and hung up.

[Cheese]

And here I thought I had found a model railroader who was a good personand lived in the same town as me. You guys want me to go see this guy for myself? Bonneyview is a short 10 minute drive from where I live.

Yeah,

You give him a piece of your mind. However, just be sure you can prtect yourself should he be able to defend himself.

You might be in luck though. He might still be recovering from his "heart attack". It was a heart attack allright. His heart was attacked and turned something evil, which is why he scammed people. OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!!

Cheese

[tstage]

For example, any time a telephone sales person calls me any more, I tell them, "Hey listen. I did not originate this call, and you could be anybody. So unless I originate the call, I don't do business over the telephone. Goodbye."

I'm a bit more subtle.  First of all, I've signed up for every "do not call" list I can, and I'm happy to report that it really does filter most of them out.  However, I still get the occasionally nitwit.  So, I just politely say, "Just a minute..." and put the phone on the table.  I check back again about 10 or 15 minutes later to make sure he's gone before I hang up the phone.

One of my favorite stories to tell was from a few years ago, when our local paper called to solicit subscriptions.

The caller told me about the wonderful deal they had for the first 13 weeks for such and such a price.  I said, "No, I'm not interested".  They then told me about all the various and wonderful articles and features contained in each of the sections.  Again, I said, "No, I'm not interested".

Not to be deterred, the caller went on about something else.  When I came back with the third "No, I'm not interested", I got a rather bemused response from the caller.  They inquired, "Sir, why don't you want to get the Plain Dealer?"

Let me quickly interject here that I love a good, clean joke and/or laugh.  However, I also make it my purpose to be truthful when asked a question by someone.  When I was posed this question by the caller, my mind immediately came up with the "perfect" response.  However, I wanted to be a man of truth so I didn't use it.  Even so, it took every ounce of my will power NOT to answer the caller's question in the following manner:

[breaking down and weeping on the phone]"...because...[sniff] [sniff]...I CAN'T REEEEEAD!!!" [I would continuing on for several more rounds of crying and weeping uncontrollably, eventually hanging up.]

Even as I write the account of this, I still get a big chuckle out of it - even though it didn't use it.  (In a way...I sorta wish I had.)   But, at any rate, hopefully some of you will get a chuckle out of the story, nonetheless.

Tom

[R. T. POTEET]

I tried to look up the 'zeke' topic but couldn't find it so I am going to suspect that it got removed.  I did not respond to it; I was forced to stay off of the forum for a few days and by the time I looked in a few days after its original posting it had already gone to multiple pages.  Something, however, struck me as just a little bit strange and that was the deliberate appeal to sympathy by his galfriend - zeke was at deaths door.  If good ole' zeke was at death's door what was zeke's galfriend doing up on the computer appealing for sympathy. It struck me as just a little strange that, of a sudden, somewhere between forty-eight and seventy-two hours after the topic posting, here come's good ole' zeke, completely out of harm's way - "I'm going to make it through this but it won't be easy and I'm just a poor disabled veteran who can't work and . . . . .'  I have some news for you: if zeke is, in reality,  a disabled veteran he is drawing a military retirement pension which is tax-free; he is also drawing SSI which is also tax-free; and he is covered by Tricare/Champus which will probably cover seventy-five to ninety percent of his medical expenses. In addition to all of this zeke resides in California and when you live on the left coast he has a couple of thousand dollars worth of entitlements per month. 'I.m going to make it through this but it won't be easy and I'm just a poor, disabled veteran who can't work and . . . . ."

My father had a heart attack in 1984 - he was at death's door and spent the better part of the first week in ICU; I had a heart attack in 1997 - mine was painless and I drove myself to the hospital emergency room because I thought that I was having other problems.  I spent six nights in the hospital because they had to transfer me to another hospital where they could do an angioplasty and this was Labor Day weekend - Princess Di bought the farm that weekend if you remember - and they would not transfer me from one hospital to another for something as base as an angioplasty until Tuesday morning, 2 September.

Sorry, zeke; you never did quite attract my sympathy.

Heartless S.O.B., aren't I?

[SteamFreak]

Like Dave, I was taken in by Zeke's Memorial Day testimony, and even though I've never served I'm angry that someone would impersonate a wounded vet for some ill-gotten gain. Unlike some claiming to have clairvoyance () I didn't see it as a scam, since there was no monetary request, but the compounding list of ailments was beginning to stretch credibility. I even made a Daffy Duck reference, because it was beginning to sound like a cartoon.

Dave V, you shouldn't feel in any way diminished about the role you played in defending the country; if only every soldier's tour of duty could be so blessedly uneventful. You certainly didn't know what was in store when you stepped up to the plate, but you did it just the same. I remember how you told Zeke you felt awed and humbled by his heroism, so the consequences of this deception go far beyond financial fraud. It would be great if this individual could be prosecuted, but if not maybe some real veterans could visit that address and give "Zeke" a firsthand lesson in shock and awe.

Doug, don't get cynical and lose your generous spirit because of one jerk.

[MisterBeasley]

For example, any time a telephone sales person calls me any more, I tell them, "Hey listen. I did not originate this call, and you could be anybody. So unless I originate the call, I don't do business over the telephone. Goodbye."

I'm a bit more subtle.  First of all, I've signed up for every "do not call" list I can, and I'm happy to report that it really does filter most of them out.  However, I still get the occasionally nitwit.  So, I just politely say, "Just a minute..." and put the phone on the table.  I check back again about 10 or 15 minutes later to make sure he's gone before I hang up the phone.

[jfugate]

Interesting thread ... and the original Zeke thread was a bit too good to be true for there to be a person like Jenny, and too bad to be true for one person to have all those ailments in one body. I'm not saying such people don't exist, just very unlikely, which means we should be wary until it's proven out.

One key learning from this is that people can pose as anybody from anywhere over the web and there's really little we can do to check out their story. Some learnings:

1. If the person has no established track record with the group, probe deeper to find out their motives for being here and posting such off-topic personal information. Even though we all care, posting details of your medical condition is off topic for this forum and should be moderated closely, IMO.

2. It's perfectly acceptable to ask for photos to back up their claims. True photos can be faked too, but words alone can be faked in moments with only some minimal writing skills. Photos can take hours or days to fake and require quite a bit more skill.

3. It's okay to be cautious. For example, any time a telephone sales person calls me any more, I tell them, "Hey listen. I did not originate this call, and you could be anybody. So unless I originate the call, I don't do business over the telephone. Goodbye." Same applies to posters on here. We can say: "Can you back up your claims somehow? It's really easy to come on here and post almost anything ... we want to believe you and help out, but some kind of proof is required before we do any more than offer you some encouraging words."

Unless the person has a solid track record with this group, DO NOT send them anything ... money, goods, anything. Sorry to take that position, but it's the wise position to take in this day and age of the world wide web, where any crackpot in the world could pose as anybody anywhere and sucker all us compassionate and well-meaning people into giving them the shirt off our backs. 

[Cederstrand]

Hey, I have Sarcoidosis (look it up) and my wife still needs surgery on her shoulder for a huge bone spur. (All True) So, what do we get?LOL Getting older is not a fun experience, but at least we get to and the alternative isn't all that desirable. Hope everyone has a great day and spends some quality time with loved ones..."their model trains". -Rob

[Cederstrand]

[What goes around comes around " border="0" width="15" height="15" /> He will have his day in court]

Sadly, that isn't always enough. A bastar* named Chuck starved horses we and others had sold him over a two year period while buying more (he always paid cash) until his County found the starved animals and rescued them. One was euthenized (a once beautiful mare we sold him), the others have been placed in wonderful new homes and are recovering well. The worst part is he had plenty of money to hire a good enough lawyer to get entirely away with it. No jail time, not even fines, nothing. So, if I may offer my two bits, justice in court doesn't cut it anymore. But he is going to pay for what he did in time, one way or another. Yes, I don't get angry, I get angry and get even. Rob

[Cederstrand]

***Dave, THANK YOU for your Service and I am glad you came through uninjured. I share your anger to learn of such a false claim by the Zeke entity.  Thanks for the extra tidbit on potential penalties for doing so. However, like the USPS, laws are broken daily and authorities are too busy working more serious crimes to tackle the lesser stuff. Never hurts to mess with bad people though, IMHO.

Rob

[Wayzata Modeler]

 

It me, Ethel again.  I am bedside of Wayata Modeler.  Surrounding me are the machines and IVs that sustain his life.  The doctors and nurses talk to me in hush tones - sharing that its all up to Wayzata Modeler now.  His ability to find purpose and meaning to his life is what will bring him back to all of us.

  Wait, he is trying to communicate to me!  Since he is paralyzed below the neck, his only way to communicate is to point to letters of the alphabet holding a pencil between his pale, drawn lips.  Let me see..... B..., I....,G  (this is so hard as tremors constantly surge through his frail body)...B....,O.....,Y    (what could be so important to him now that he is using all of limited strength to communicate?!).....H....,  E.......R.....E     (I dont understand, I dont understand, who could possibly understand what he is so frantically trying to communicate!?) .....Y....,E......,T   

 He has now collapsed, having fully sapped all his strength to point out these letters.

BIGBOYHEREYET

What could it mean?,  maybe you, his closest and dearest friends understand what this dear man is trying to share? - what seems to be the only thought and purpose that sustains him above the black abyss of death.

 

 

 

[selector]

I replied to this thread much earlier, but the post doesn't appear.

I was skeptical, yet it is in my nature to offer encouragement.  Also, I recall no solicitation for goods, favours, support, information, or money, just "Jenny" passing along "Zeke's" misfortunes.  If Jenny is indeed part of a scam, it is a brilliant stroke.

In any event, I gave nothing more valuable than my good wishes.  The receiver(s) is free to do with them as he/she pleases, including paving their way to Hades.

[MAbruce]

I've been saying this for years:  When it comes to on-line forums you just can't be sure who is on the other keyboard (with very few exceptions).

Although I did find it odd that the member ID used had been around for a while with a fairly high post count.  It just didn't fit the usual (recently joined) troll-like profile.  Perhaps this was a legitimate ID that was hijacked?