February 1, 2023 9.00 am This story is over 23 months old

Scammed: People turn up at Lincoln home looking for a car that didn’t exist

They all paid deposits and travelled to Lincoln

“Sick to my stomach” — That’s the experience of a Lincoln woman who had a “sea of people” turning up at her home expecting to collect a car, when in fact they were victims of a Facebook scammer.

It appears that around 10 families were the victims of the alleged scam in Lincoln this past weekend.

Dawn Barron returned to her home in the Bailgate area of Lincoln at around 5pm on Saturday, January 28 to find around 20 people gathered outside her property.

Later more people turned up, including a woman and her dad who travelled up from London just to collect the car.

Dawn told The Lincolnite that they were “looking at us rather expectantly” and when she asked if she could help them, one person said it was about a car.

A confused Dawn asked which car and was told “the one for sale”.

Dawn does not have a car for sale and the address these people had been given was for a property that doesn’t appear to exist. But Google searches instead show Dawn’s house, which may have been what prompted the group to show up there.

Although Dawn didn’t report it to police herself, she said several of the people who turned up had done so.

She was told by different people that the scammer had given passport details and a receipt for the deposit to the people, who all believed they were legitimately turning up to buy a car.

Dawn said: “They were talking amongst themselves and it became quite evident that this was a scam.

“They had all paid money to someone via Facebook who claimed to be a nurse at Lincoln County Hospital called Grace who wanted to replace her Audi A1 car to get something bigger.

“They had all paid a deposit – some said £200, one young lady said £300. We think around 10 or 11 families were impacted and after they left we had a drip-feed of more people coming over the weekend, mostly on Saturday between 5pm and 8pm.

“At around 7.45pm a woman and her dad who had travelled up from London and got a taxi and said they’d come about the car and needed to get straight back, but they ended up having to get a cab to get a train back home. Another person came from Middlesbrough and there was a couple from Newcastle.”

“It was awful, looking at their faces as they were all working it out amongst themselves. I didn’t really get involved other than to empathise with people. I felt sad for them as they had trusted someone and been scammed by someone prepared to take their money for nothing.

“It makes me feel sick to my stomach. It was horrible to witness, all these different families turning up with the expectation of picking up a new car.”

She said one young lady who turned up got “quite upset and aggressive at the gate” demanding to know who she was as “she thought I was involved”. “She was just extremely frustrated so I kept her calm,” she added.

She said she wouldn’t personally buy anything from social media as she would be “nervous”, but knows others do.

Dawn already thinking of coming off Facebook and said this was the “final straw” and she is now taking a break from social media “to see if I can stay connected with people in a different way.”


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