Abhishek Tripathi = Scam Artist

Unfortunately my very first PayPal transaction was with this scam artist. He goes by both Abhishek Tripathi (real name) and Mukesh Guruchal. His Web sites include www.mediawick.com, www.abhishektripathi.com, and www.theseohut.com to name a few.

I paid him $500 to begin the design and roll out of a blog I wanted. Deadline after deadline passed without any prototypes being posted. I then noticed that although I was dealing with Abhishek, my payment went to Mukesh - a quick search on this character yielded many fraud claims, a sample thread can be seen here:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=538757&highlight=Mukesh+Guruchal&page=5

After I called him on it and filed a complaint with PayPal, he agreed to refund the money several times. Sadly, it became apparent that this was also not going to happen, so I elevated my PayPal complaint to a claim - although the phantom Mukesh has no funds in his account so it is to no avail (wonder what name he's using now?).

I'm told that it will cost more than it's worth to get my money back, so I'm going the public service route instead and offering to help you not get duped by this duper. Did I mention that all three provided phone numbers have been disconnected?

I'm happy to share the entire email trail with anyone that's interested (shoot me a PM if you'd like me to forward it to you) as evidence to this situation. I'm sure that Abhishek will respond to this with some excuse, Lord knows that he has enough of them - from the flu to his credit card company being closed (that was my favorite). But I have all of our conversations neatly bundled to clearly show that he stole $500 from me.

I've learned some powerful lessons about dealing with people I don't know, so I guess I'm thankful to Abhishek that it only cost me $500 to do that. I was so excited to do this project and will most likely jump back on the horse after my wounds heal.

I'll be posting my emails here to help everyone avoid this scammer. If I'm not posting fast enough for you and you're considering hiring Abhishek - let me know and I'll get you the information ASAP.