Asif Zamir: Who is he?

I have a bit of a description of Asif Zamir's appearance from somebody who has met him face to face that I would like to share with you:

"Asif is about 5'5" give or take. Slim/small frame. Black hair, medium complexion/East Indian. Soft spoken. Wears glasses but I don't think he does all the time."

As I have mentioned before, Asif Zamir has a very particular voice. It is a high-pitched to the point that it can sound androgynous at first. As he continues to talk, however, it is clear that it is the voice of a man.

Still no sign of Asif Zamir. Still no evidence that he was a victim of identity theft. Still no proof that his ebay account was hacked. Plenty of proof that he was paid thousands of dollars by people who trusted him. Plenty of proof that, in the very best possible case, Asif Zamir does not care enough about the people he owes money to to call them. In the worst case, he has planned and executed fraud to the tune of at least nearly $10,000.

More Asif Zamir News

Word is getting around that Asif Zamir cannot be trusted to complete a transaction. I found a link to Craigslist that states that Asif Zamir is a thief:

http://toronto.craigslist.org/pho/452412527.html

God knows what Asif Zamir is doing with all of this money. He may be hiding out in New York. His mother claims to have not heard from him for months. Riiiiiight!

By the way, I'd like more information on what Asif Zamir did in his life, what he looks like and what kinds of things he does. He still claims to be involved in missionary work, but let's face it, it would be pretty surprising to be scamming people out of thousands (and maybe tens of thousands) of dollars and also being a Christian missionary. Then again, Jim Bakker did it. Ted Haggard railed against homosexuals while getting action from a male prostitute, so I guess Asif Zamir's hypocrisy is not unheard of.

Finding Asif Zamir

Asif Zamir is in hiding as I have mentioned, and that's not an accident. He knows the police are on his trail and he knows that there are a bunch of angry victims too. So, how can we find Asif Zamir?

Some of you have met him. Some of you know where he used to work. I would like to have all the information that you have so that we can try to narrow down where he is hiding. The police are limited in their ability to do anything until they can find him.

As I have said before, he can't hide forever. One day he will come out of the woodwork and all of this will be waiting for him. In the meantime, let's do what we can. I know that this blog will go a long way to warning people off doing any kind of business with him, and that's a comfort (for me anyway). Of course that's cold comfort for James, who was bilked out of more than $4,000.

Anyhow, give me the information that you have, and I'll post it here.

Spotting a Scam

I know this is like closing the barn door after the horse has left, but I thought it might be helpful to show people how to spot scams.

Ken Rockwell has an excellent site, and I wish that I had fully explored it before sending my money to Asif Zamir. So, here are a couple of links:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/buy.htm

And there's this too:

http://newyork.craigslist.org/about/scams.html

It's bad enough to feel like an idiot like I do for having sent all of that money to Asif Zamir. It is even worse to find that all the information to spot him as a fraudster was out there too.

On the plus side, one of Asif Zamir's victims was careful enough to check his driver's license when he met him, so we know for a fact that Asif Zamir is his real name and that he lives in Toronto. We also know, as a result, what he looks like and sounds like.

I assume that the $10,000 that we know was taken by Asif Zamir is only the tip of the iceberg. I'm sure that if we looked into his bank transactions we'd find that he has taken much more money and we would find many more victims.

I wonder if he has paid income tax on all of that money... Well, that's a side issue, I suppose.

Worst Theft to Date

I was just doing a little research on Asif Zamir today to check to see where this blog comes up in the Google results and imagine my surprise when I found this:

http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00MpOc

Do a search on the page for "Asif Zamir" (what else?) and you will find a post by a man named James Cripps. This poor guy lost $5000 to Asif Zamir through ebay.

Is there anybody reading this who doesn't believe that Asif Zamir is systematically committing fraud? We are up to almost $10,000 in money owed by Asif.

Here's a quick chronology just to illustrate how absurd the "identity theft" claim is (note how the pattern begins long before Asif Zamir claims to have had his identity stolen):

Spring 2006: Pat pays Asif Zamir $750 for a new camera. Never gets the camera or his money back.

October/November 2006: James Cripps pays Asif Zamir close to $5000 for photographic equipment through an ebay transaction. I need information from James, but from what he wrote, he never saw his goods nor his money ever again.

October/November 2006: Mike pays approximately $1500 to Asif Zamir.

January 2007: I pay Asif Zamir $1190 for a new Nikon D80 with a lens kit. I never see my money again.

January 2007: Asif Zamir gets some bad feedback on ebay claiming he is a liar.

January 2007: Asif Zamir's ebay account is suspended.

January/February 2007: Asif Zamir starts telling people that his identity has been stolen.

Spring 2007: I send Asif Zamir a letter of demand by registered mail. It is returned marked "Refused by addressee".

Spring 2007: A fraud detective from the Peel Police department gets involved. He says that he is in almost daily contact with Asif Zamir, and if everybody is patient, all will be refunded. Some people get refunds, including Mike who is partially refunded.

June 2007: The police detective goes on sick leave until the beginning of August.

Summer 2007: Asif Zamir solicits customers who received goods in previous transactions. Jakub and another man both pay Asif for new Canon lenses.

August 2007: The fraud detective returns to work and reports that Asif Zamir was evicted from his apartment for non-payment and that he can no longer be found.

A New Victim

I have been contacted by yet another victim of Asif Zamir who was solicited this past summer. It's a terrible shame.

So, that brings the number of confirmed victims to 6 and the total of money that Asif Zamir has that does not belong to him up to about $4500.

All of the people who were solicited in the summer were contacted long after this whole claimed "identity theft" issue. Asif Zamir claims to have had his identity stolen, and he uses that as an excuse for not paying me back my $1190. But the people who were solicited this past summer who have had Asif Zamir disappear on them are a completely different story. Asif knew that he hadn't paid me, Mike, Pat or Raymond. But he still went after others. The best that he could have done is stolen from Peter to pay Paul, so to speak.

My belief is that the identity theft claim is a canard. There was no identity theft. Asif Zamir just took a bunch of money from people and thought that he could get the police on his side by claiming it. Has anybody investigated this identity theft? Have the police even been asked to look into it?

If this had really happened, Asif Zamir would have kept in touch with his supposed customers and kept them up to date on what was happening.

Unfortunately, I expect that there are going to be more and more victims of Asif Zamir.

Contacting me

Because I had a request to contact me directly, here is my email address:

rob_vanhell@hotmail.com

Anybody wishing to contact me can do so using this email address or just by leaving a comment.

A bit of reality

I tried to contact Asif Zamir on the cell number that he gave Jakub and all of the others that he solicited this past summer. It was not surprising that it was no longer assigned. Let me reiterate that Jakub had dealt with Asif Zamir before and knew his voice well, so when Jakub used this cellphone to talk to him, he knew he was talking to Asif Zamir and not some imaginary identity thief.

What I wanted to tell Asif is that he is making a big mistake. Here he is, hiding from his creditors and hiding from the police. (The police, by the way, seem to get somewhat annoyed with people who hide from them - not to mention people who conspire to hide the person as well. In any case, from what I know, Asif Zamir owes about $3000 to $3500 total to the people I have been in contact with. Maybe there are more out there, but this is what I know. It appears that Asif thinks that not repaying this amount is worth his future. There are a few points that I think make repaying the money a bargain for Asif. Here are some of them:

1) As it stands, this blog is the first thing that you get when you Google Asif Zamir. I am not going to stop this blog until I get my money. So, if Asif ever wants to do legitimate business on the internet, he would not want his illegitimate past documented for all to see.

2) Asif Zamir cannot hide forever, and I will not stop looking. I realize that he is probably living with his mom right now, but I still have to execute the rest of my plan before getting to the point of actually locating him myself. When I do find him, I will drag him to court. He will obviously lose the case, so he will have to pay me. The only way he can get out of paying me is by declaring personal bankruptcy. If he does that, his credit is ruined for 7 years. No loans, no credit cards, nothing.

3) He faces the prospect of being charged with fraud. If convicted he will have a criminal record and he won't be able to go to the US. Not only that, but a civil case is a certainty, so he could well end up a bankrupt convicted fraudster.

So, a rational person would look at these potential outcomes and think "$3500 is a bargain to avoid this!". This is Asif Zamir's reality, and he seems Hell-bent on pretending it is not.

Wow, I coulda had a D200!

One of the things that bugs me about the $1190 that Asif Zamir took from me is that if you consider that I ended up paying retail for the D80, and I paid Asif, I'm out almost $3000. If you take all of that money, I could easily have bought a D200 and the new 18-200 mm lens from Nikon!

But instead I have $1190 less, a D80 and this blog to try to protect others who may hope to save money by doing business with Asif Zamir.

I am a reasonable guy!

I sent Asif Zamir an email back in May or June saying that I would accept that he pay me $1000 instead of $1190, if he paid me within a reasonable delay. I offered to negotiate payment terms. I did everything except forgive the debt. Not once did Asif Zamir even contact me. This is one of the reasons that I have come to the point now where I simply do not believe that he ever intended to pay me back. Why not just call me?

If Asif Zamir called me today and said that he would give me the new 18-200 mm Nikon lens in compensation for the $1190 he owes me, I would consider that offer. In fact, I think Asif Zamir would be very surprised to find that most of his creditors are reasonable people.

But then this assumes, again, that Asif Zamir took money from us with the intention of providing goods in return. Given his failure to contact people and his solicitation of more funds this past summer, I cannot make that assumption. Right now Asif Zamir has too much money that does not belong to him to assume that he ever had good intentions.

Unmistakeable Voice

One thing that all the people who have spoken to Asif Zamir say is that he has a distinctive voice. The point here is that people who say they have spoken to him all describe his voice in the same way, therefore we know we are dealing with him and not a fraudster posing as him.

Fairness

I was wondering if Asif Zamir feels like a victim. I know he claims to have been the victim of identity theft - although I must admit, if this is the case, he should have worked with the Detective who was working on his creditors' cases. Let's say he was a victim of identity theft, does he feel more of a victim than, say, me, who is out $1190 because of him? Does he think that I should just forget that I parted with this hard-earned money and got nothing in return?

I can say that if Asif Zamir stayed in touch with me, involved the police, and worked to resolve this, I might have a different perspective. But the truth is that I have not heard from him in about 4 months, and when I did hear from him, it was because a fraud detective was calling him everyday. Also thanks to the detective, I received some "mass emails" promising payback dates that never materialized, and at the very start I got two voicemail messages from him, one saying that my order was fine, then one saying that he would pay me back. Those voice messages were left at my home when I was at work, even though I told him to call me on my cell, and the calls came after I left about 10 messages with him.

So, in over 8 months I have heard almost nothing from him. Had it not been for the police detective, I'm sure I would have heard less than that.

All this to say that if Asif Zamir had demonstrated any kind of goodwill by communicating with me, agreeing to repay me on a schedule, actually entering into some kind of dialogue... Well, I guess if he'd done that, you wouldn't be reading this, the police would not be involved, Asif Zamir would not be hiding.