Legal advice on warning letter after dispute with overseas car parts seller

[MyMellowGreenBiscuit]

I’ve posted this in another part of the forum as I didn’t see there was also a section here to deal with legal matters. I’m looking for advice on handling this mess.

(And I’m sorry this is long)

I ordered a custom made product for my car (a bumper) from abroad, from Singapore, and was first told it would arrive in early February. This is a custom design and that was when I was told to expect it. I asked for a couple of small changes but was told nothing about there being any delay (I had ordered during the Christmas holidays so 3rd-sh week of December).

February comes round and no answer about delivery, I ask maybe 3 times what is going on over Facebook messenger and I’m being ignored. I can see he’s online but ignoring me. Around the 20th I get fed up and open a case/dispute with PayPal.

As soon as I open this he starts to answer and first implies I’m the problem completely but when I point out if there was a delay he should have informed me rather than ignoring me he apologises on PayPal and says he is working on it was gives me a timeline, mentioning too that I will get a tracking number.

After more back and forth I’m still feeling uneasy and decide to escalate the case. He asks me to close it. I say I will close if I can get a tracking number as he is now telling me it will ship on March 16th.

I am flying about and get stuck abroad as war is flaring up in the Middle East. My flights get cancelled and I get sidetracked and forget to reply to PayPal, missing the 7 day deadline. I miss the email and then realise afterwards PayPal has closed the case because I didn’t reply in time so now the seller has my money and does not ship out the item.

I post on FB in a car owner’s group and the seller comes on to blame me completely, even accusing me of trying to extort him and saying I should have been more patient. I forgot to mention this originally but he says it was Chinese New Year and so that caused the delay. That is fair enough but I thought I should have been told instead of blanking me. He says my order didn’t go out because I got my money back. Barclays refunded me AFTER nothing was sent out on March 16th.

He did send me a picture of a box and implied my bumper was in it. This was the week before, but I didn’t see the completed bumper. He sent a pic of what he said was the mould for it. It could well have been but I saw no bumper finished. I didn’t have my car between December and April as the colour was being changed with a wrap and I was of course waiting for this bumper so it couldn't be completed and I couldn’t drive it.

After I posted a I got a lot of backlash as the seller went on and said these things about me and I hadn’t included the fact I had been given delivery dates, was being ignored etc but amongst the backlash about my looks, saying I looked like an OF girl and how can someone with Botox and filler be trusted, I did receive messages privately too saying the seller had done this before and taken money but never shipped out what he was supposed to.

My order had been for a couple of thousand pounds but others had lost amounts ranging from hundreds to thousands. One guy contacted me with sceeenshots/proof he had lost 12,000+ dollars as he had placed an order and the seller had ghosted him. promising him his order was about to be delivered then went quiet. He never got his money back.

The seller is in Singapore and I’m a British citizen, so of course the bank covered me. Others weren’t as lucky and as I spoke out people thanked me as in Singapore they’d been bullied into keeping quiet with legal threats.

I’ve seen a couple of police reports and also a court ruling saying this seller owes somebody 18,000 dollars and he needs to pay up so I know these people aren’t lying. He’s a flash guy who used to drive around in a Ferrari, so was well known in Singapore, and then the car got repossessed. He was allegedly cheating to his wife too and being annoyed at the whole situation I posted ‘not only does he cheat his customers he cheats on his wife too.’ Not my proudest moment but I was so annoyed at the scamming.

Now I’ve gotten a letter warning me not to speak out and to remove all mention of him or I’ll be taken to Court. It also says I have to write he has never scammed anybody for anything or forged anything (not sure where he got the forgery bit from lol)

If I give in I’d be letting everybody down and also potentially putting other people at risk of losing their money/being scammed as well and how can that be fair if I got back my money? At the same time court costs can easily run into hundreds of thousands of pounds, possibly up to a million. I don’t have that kind of money obviously.

I feel massive guilt for the people who helped me, including the guy who lost his 12,000+ dollars and I’d probably be responsible if it happens to others in the future when I could have stopped it.

Advice would be much appreciated

I'd put something that's quite obvious and has the many inbetween lines that aren't actually written something like “I’ve received a notification asking me to stop mentioning ‘Scam Man’ and warning that the matter may be escalated if I don’t comply. I can’t afford to be involved in any legal action, so I’m stepping back. I’ve also been asked to make certain statements about him, which I’m not in a position to verify, so I won’t be commenting further. Please make your own minds up. Sorry that I have to withdraw.”

Can you delete everything opinion-based and just share facts (e.g. a timeline). Don't say scam as you don't have proof of nerfarious intention, he could just be useless for all you know. Stick to what happened from your end and surely there's no legal recourse?!

Without knowing exactly what you posted about him it's tough to say. A factual account of your personal experience is unlikely to be libelous. Repeating unverified second-hand gossip implying he's a scammer might be if it turns out not to be true.

Who is the letter from? A UK law firm or just from him?

I feel so bad about the guy that helped me first and he still hasn’t gotten back his money. He showed me screenshots beginning to end and it was a couple of years back he lost his 12,000+ dollars. Another said he lost 70,000 but I haven’t seen the entire conversation there. A third showed me his full conversations too and he lost 600ish with the scammer just stopping replying to him. This was the case with the first guy as well. Others lost money or were left waiting a couple of years after buying a new design of watch his company had launched. The watches were 900 dollars. I think I’m the only one who got her money back because of UK regulations. Most of the victims are from Singapore,as is he.

I’m not living there properly by the way, I’m British born living between the UK and Turkey.

The 12k guy is from Australia and moved to Singapore. Whilst looking into this I emailed the Australian embassy in Singapore who advised him to report it back in Australia as well to the police. It’s been reported in Singapore already but he said nothing happened and as mentioned I saw a second police report against rhe guy from someone else and a court ruling against the scammer in Singapore not involving the police I’m guessing ordering him to pay 18,000ish to another victim.

it just blows my mind he’s saying he’ll take me to High Court now and I need to apologise and say none of it is true etc, He wants it pinned to my Facebook profile

Yes, this is what I was planning to do but the letter I got says I shouldn’t even be allowed to mention his name going forward, which would make it easy for others to get scammed

Yep, I’ll see if I can add screenshots here. If not I can link to my FB if allowed as it’s on there.

It’s from a UK law firm and a lawyer that seems to specialise in defamation.

The irony was the man himself could defame me and imply I was trying to extort him and being ‘difficult’ in the FB car owner’s group and I was getting slaughtered in it as he declined to tell them we had agreed on shipping dates and he just never shipped my order. I had the men calling me all sorts and making out I was dishonest

You should consult a lawyer who specialises in defamation. However, if you have copies of the police reports and the court ruling, that plus the information you have from others he appears to have defrauded, especially if they are willing to go on record, may well be enough to resist any attempt to sue you for defamation based on your remarks other than the one about cheating on his wife. You also have the fact that he appears to have defamed you, accusing you of attempted extortion.

Yes, legal costs for defamation cases can be high, but that is only if this gets to court. My view is that there is a decent chance he would back down before it got that far. Scammers like this rely on people backing down in the face of legal threats. They don't expect people to stand up to them. And, if it did go to court and he lost, he would have to pay your legal costs, although admittedly this may not cover the full amount. Given that costs would be difficult to collect, you may be able to force him to make a payment into court to cover your costs and get any claim struck out if he refuses. .

If I were in your position, I would be tempted to respond to his lawyers referring them to the reply given in Arkell v Pressdram, but that is NOT legal advice.