Indochinagems and Imperial Jewels Fraud from Thailand

[jshepherd]

I received a very interesting post from Thailand this morning told a story from the inside about Imperial Jewels, AKA Indochinagems on eBay.

Hopefully eBay is finally cracking down on their fraud. We've discussed it here before. All of their auctions were recently removed for shill bidding, and their PayPal account frozen for possible laundering activities.

Here is the post.

I want to tell all I know about Imperial Jewels, and about all the lies the company tells. I contacted you because I want other buyers to be wary about buying from their online store imperialjewels.com and from their eBay store, indochinagems. I know that this in an old issue on the forum, but I only recently found the thread about Imperial Jewels on Pearl-Guide.

I don't know where to report them because I am also afraid of my safety here in Thailand. I felt hopeless until I found the forum thread, https://www.pearl-guide.com/forum/p...erialjewels-com-ebay-scammer-goes-online.html

Almost gems Imperial Jewels and Indochinagems sells are of extremely low quality. Almost all of their rubies are lead-glass filled. Some tanzanites are not real, they are lab-made or a different gem. EBay buyer Gizelle Loots (princessgem2004) can testify to this because she sent some of the tanzanites to a well-respected gem lab in Africa and found out they were fake. The same thing happened to eBayer Paul Hewgil from the UK. Another eBayer from Korea, who received a pad sapphire, sent it to GIT in Thailand where it was determined to be "synthetic", but none of the buyers left negative feedback. One customer from Netherlands bought plastic pearls and returned them without leaving indochinagems a negative feedback. Their policy states that if a negative feedback is left, they will not accept any returns. One eBay user, fastmomma85, left a negative feedback and now is no longer registered as an eBay user because of the lies indochinagems told to the eBay southeast Asia Manager – the eBayer was booted from eBay. I pity the buyers who had 100% positive feedback but fell victims of a bad seller. They have been kicked off eBay at the request of Indochinagems.

The lab certificates Indochinagems uses are called AGRL, but they don’t exist - they simply create the certificates at their office without testing the gems. There is no gem laboratory at their company. They only order a hologram and stick it on photo paper. Same with the appraisals they use on the jewelry they order for 80 baht (Less than $3 US) per card and sell with USJAA Appraisal/Lab certificates (US Jewelry Appraisal Authority) The lab does not exist.

The owner, Mr. Simon David Bruce Lockhart changed his name to Steven Gates on their web store imperialjewels.com. He is a British guy who does business in Thailand.

If you can help me tell the story of the "LIES" they’ve lived for many years, I’d greatly appreciate it. All of the pearls they sell are freshwater pearls from Hong Kong, and sometimes they even mix them with plastic imitations. Please help me report them. All they do tell lies.

Take look at a page they built and posted at http://www.ebay-chaos.50webs.com, every one of their excuses are not true, they simply made it so that other eBay buyers would not give them negative feedback for not shipping the paid-for items. They offer the kindest words in their emails, but they are all lies.

I am telling my story because I pity the buyers who do not have enough knowledge of gems to buy online. They already have thousands of victims. I want it to stop. Could you please help me? I have no idea where to report this company so they will stop the evil things they do to innocent buyers. Thank you in advance for your help and your time.

 

[jshepherd]

I have a small update on this post. The person from Thailand has not really given any additional information that was worthy of a post. But I've been doing some checking on Indochinagems and ImperialJewels.com myself.

The imperialjewels.com Web site has undergone a face lift since the last time they were discussed. But the product remains the same. They are still selling junk-freshwater pearls and calling them everything but (http://www.imperialjewels.com/productdetails.asp?productid=HA004700), and still touting the fake USJAA lab report which is completely fraudulent - the lab does not exist. But they have taken the fraud to a whole new level in their new site design.

In the footer of every page there are a lot of different logos; McAfee Secure, BBB.org and security by Thawte. All of these companies protect customers from fraud. A site secured by McAfee (Hacker Safe Company) is tested daily to ensure the site is secure and customer financial information is secure (you can see the same logo in the bottom left navigation bar on Pearl Paradise). Thawte is similar, and we all know BBB stands for the Better Business Bureau. But from what I have been able to dig up, Imperial Jewels does not belong to any of them. There is no record at BBB, Thawte says they are not customers, and the Secure tag is supposed to change daily, but it is a GIF file (permanent image file) loaded on the site itself, not delivered from McAfee - it is a fake.

This seems to be a somewhat new breed of criminal operation, one that has net the perpetrator millions according to his own published numbers. It is the virtual equivalent of the Thai Gem Shop Scam.

Well kudos to eBay (sort of) for finally taking this group off, even if only temporarily. If they really have sold as much product as they claim, I can only imagine how many fraud complaints have been registered against them. I don't know much about stones, but I do know pearls. And every piece that I have found on their auctions and their Web site is fraudulently represented.

Hopefully the posts here on PG will be found by potential future customers before they fall victim to this operation.

 

[pattye]

Rather sad you have to spend time on this kind of stuff, Jeremy, and big thank you to your contact in Thailand.

 

[jshepherd]

Criminals like that hurt all online sellers. I don't like to waste the time on it, but I do think it is necessary.

 

[pearlescence]

Hi. My son and his partner are going to Thailand next week. Is there anything that they could usefully look out for (they know nothing about any gems)
thanks
wendy

 

[jshepherd]

I would just tell them to read this before they go:
http://www.2bangkok.com/2bangkok/Scams/stores.shtml

 

[Miriam Reed]

Criminals like that hurt all online sellers. I don't like to waste the time on it, but I do think it is necessary.

Thank you for taking the time to warn others. It does hurt all reliable sellers to have such fraudulent sellers out there. It's good to have a place like this where you can check up on sellers and benefit from others experience.

 

[pearlescence]

Thanks Jeremy, it is passed on.

 

[Caitlin]

That article was very interesting. I am going to send a copy to TPP the pearl professor, though he probably knows about it. He does have a good platform for exposing these frauds.

 

[jshepherd]

Maybe he doesn't need to. The site is gone today. That may be because the domain name expired two days ago. Then again, they may have already been shut down.

 

[jshepherd]

Nope, it is back. The domain had expired and apparently they didn't notice until it was down. It seems they are having a pretty bad week at Imperial Jewels.

On a positive note, the BBB, Thawte and McAfee logos have been removed. Someone over there is reading the PG.

 

[Alison]

Thai gemstone sellers on eBay

Thai gemstone sellers on eBay

I would like to add a comment here about similar eBay sellers based in Thailand. I have not, and never will, buy pearls from these sellers so my comment is limited to gemstones.

I have found that many Thai sellers are reliable for some stones, e.g., tourmalines. It's when you move up that the problems occur, and rubies are a big one.

Last year I purchased a group of small "African" rubies from a Thai eBay seller. I own the incredibly useful Presidium gemstone tester, a great tool when combined with a decent knowledge of stones, but it can be fraudulently used as well. It distinguishes various gemstones based on their conductivity, and is quick & easy to use (the most useful distinction on it is "Glass"!).

I tested the rubies (shown in the photo below) and had never seen such a weird reading -- needle zooming all over the place, made me think the instrument was broken. I tested other stones and it clearly was not.

I believe that either lead filling caused this reaction, or the stones were some strange cooked-up mess of corundum, glass, synthetic spinel, etc. I contacted the seller to return the stones, and they readily agreed. But I hate seeing crooked sellers survive by taking returns and not getting negative feedback. I got my refund and then, as soon as sellers could not neg buyers, I left feedback. (This was nice coincidental timing -- I had previously left negative feedback in these type of situations and also gotten two sellers suspended for fakes.)

The seller then sent hysterical e-mails in broken English, begging me to retract. Bottom line: they said that the same supplier sold to most of the Thai sellers on eBay (this "we all do it" refrain was hardly a convincing excuse).

Another buyer left neg and also contacted me; later I was contacted by others who suffered serious losses from buying fake stones. At least three of us also took the time to write a detailed complaint for eBay. Result? Zilch. The seller is still there with the same junk.

The vast majority of buyers don't know what they're getting in gemstones, don't have the ability to test, and won't pay for testing unless the stone is expensive. That's the main reason these Thai fronts get away with it.

If you run into a problem: always be polite in e-mails; never leave negative feedback before getting a refund; use registered airmail for the return and insist on getting that money back as well; keep photos and all other documentation; and above all, do not let these scam artists intimidate you!

It's not correct to say that all the Thai sellers are fraudulent, because I have received the genuine article on many occasions. But if you can't test stones yourself or pay for testing, and you end up setting fakes in jewelry for resale, you could run into real trouble down the road.