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Police get '250 calls a week' about scams on Gumtree

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

December 30, 2013 | 1 min read

Around 250 crime and fraud allegations are made a week in connection to the online classified ads service Gumtree, according to a report.

Today the Daily Mail quotes the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau as saying that out of the 19,530 reports of fraud and cyber crime in October alone, 997 had a link to Gumtree - 249 a week or 32 a day.

That pales in comparison to web giant eBay which had a connection to 1,483 cases, but as the paper points out, eBay guarantees customers they will get their money back in cases of fraud, whereas the smaller site Gumtree does not.

The Mail's investigation into Gumtree follows its report on Saturday that a woman tried to sell her baby on the site for £150,000.

Gumtree said its users' safety is its "top priority" and that the number of fraud cases is less than half those suggested by police figures.

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