I got a knock on my door early one morning a couple of years ago. Fella was asking for me by name. For the sake of privacy, I'll use my LU screen name in place of my actual name.
"Nuke?"
"Yep, that's me", I replied.
"You're Nuke?"
"I am."
"And this is 7 _______ Street?" (again, street name removed for privacy).
"Yes it is. What's up?"
"Well this is interesting. You're definitely not the guy who sold my wife a 2nd hand fridge the other day, but he had your name and your address."
To shorten the story from this point on, this fella's wife had bought a 2nd hand fridge from Facebook Marketplace. She'd driven from Mandurah (about 2hrs south of Perth, and I'm in Perth's northern suburbs) to view the fridge the previous week, then had them deliver it to her that or the next day. 2 days later the fridge was overheating dangerously and a sparky told them it was a lemon and dangerous, and told them to get their money back. Repeatedly phonecalls were ignored, blocked, ect, so the husband, the fella on my doorstep, drove up early in the morning to confront 'me' face-to-face.
Turns out, the fella across the street, one house over, was masquerading as me, selling dodgy shit online. He must have gone through my letterbox once to get my name and address. He'd set up a Facebook profile using my name, bought a mobile phone using my name (the police confirmed this to me when I spoke with them), and was doing the dodgy online.
When the wife came to look at the fridge at first, 'Nuke' had told her to meet him out the front. He'd put the fridge on the back of his ute, which had unique numberplates, driven 10m, and parked on the verge of the then-vacant land directly across from my place. She came, saw, liked, bought said fridge, and paid a little extra to have it dropped off to her place. Fake Nuke was obviously a deadshit moron, however, as his unique numberplates made his ute easily remembered.
When hubby came to see 'me' face-to-face, he realised it wasn't actually me, and saw the ute sitting out front of the house across the street. He showed me this guy's Facebook page using my name, showed me the guy's mobile number, and we went across the street to have a word to this guy, whose ute was now gone. He'd left, but his wife was home, as was an assortment of normally-indoor appliances in the open carport. Fella knocked the door, she answered. "Is Nuke home?" "There's no-one here of that name". "Really, that's interesting, because someone of that name driving that ute that was just here, sold my wife a dangerous fridge online."
She continued to pretend like she had no idea, so I piped up, letting her know that it is in fact my name and address being used by that fella driving that ute, and that I am now off to the police to report it. She went back inside, presumably to phone deadshit husband to inform him what just happened.
His dodgy Facebook profile disappeared later that day, not before I'd taken a screenshot and shown the police. They basically said they'd never heard of such a thing happening before, but took all the details I could provide. They did tell me the mobile number was under the name of 'Nuke' though, so time, effort, and thought had gone into doing this.
Scary stuff.
That dodgy fella and his uniquely numberplated ute still reside in that place across the street. Part of me wants to return serve ... but I have no idea what I'd do or how I'd do it!!
