Joe Barnes was just a dad looking to buy a guitar for his daughter when he stumbled across Nicholas Ferrell’s ad on the Nashville, Tennessee, Craigslist, offering a project piece for sale.

“I checked it and thought, ‘Dang! That’d be cool,'” he said.

The guitar was for sale in Nashville. Barnes said it was a reasonable price and seemed like something he could handle, especially for his 8-year-old daughter’s first guitar, so he contacted Ferrell.

He planned to travel to Nashville and pay for the guitar in person, but Ferrell responded quickly and said he wanted the money wired first.

“Wiring money is never a good idea,” Barnes said, “but it was $250 and I thought, ‘What the heck. Worst-case scenario, the guitar was never up there.'”

Barnes didn’t know much about Ferrell at the time, but he took the risk anyway.

“All I knew was I was getting a guitar from a guy who was in the music and guitar business in Nashville, like I was down here,” the Harvest resident said.

Fortunately, Barnes was able to not only retrieve the guitar from Ferrell but even pay an additional $40 for parts and a case. A few days after he got the guitar, Barnes said Ferrell reached out to him, offering more guitars.

“He texted me and said, ‘Hey, man, I’m going to Michigan to see my brother, and he said he might have some Gibsons he might want to sell,” Barnes said.

Barnes told Ferrell he would be interested in the brother’s guitars.

“At this point, I think I’m dealing with a legit business guy,” he said.

Ferrell sent him photos of different guitars, including an older Gibson for $200 and a guitar that had some issues but seemed manageable.

“The prices he had were not unbelievable,” Barnes said, “but they were definitely pawn shop prices, so it’s not so cheap that it’s suspect.”

Barnes said he sent Ferrell money via Western Union and MoneyGram, believing it was “no big deal.”

He said he had wired about $475 by that point.

However, Ferrell soon started ignoring text messages and “getting dodgy” when Barnes tried to meet with him for the guitars. Barnes also realized the photos he received were taken in different places, including one that was really grainy, “like he didn’t actually take it with his phone.”

After about two weeks of getting the runaround from Ferrell, Barnes said he began to become more insistent.

“I was like, ‘Look, dude, I don’t appreciate this. You got about a thousand bucks of mine, and I got nothing for it,'” Barnes said.

He said Ferrell offered to refund the money but insisted on using Venmo, a mobile payment service owned by PayPal. Barnes said he had never heard of the service before, so he searched for it online.

“I hadn’t done any research on (Ferrell) at this point because all I had was his name and his contact info,” Barnes said.

When he read Venmo was popular with scammers because it allowed them to manipulate customers by sending money, allowing customers to receive an alert and then canceling the transaction before they received the funds, he refused to risk more loss by letting Ferrell use Venmo for a refund.

Instead, he told Ferrell he would go to the authorities if Ferrell didn’t find a way to get his money back to him.

“And he was jerking me around, so first thing I did was go to the sheriff’s,” Barnes said, referring to the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office. “(Investigator Caleb) Durden uncovered a whole lot about it.”

Going legal

Durden took the information Barnes provided and began investigating. Ferrell had social media and webpages made for a business called “Funky Junk Guitars,” and internet searches provided a plethora of information.

“If you just type ‘Funky Junk Guitars scam’ or ‘Nicholas Ferrell scam,’ a lot of this stuff will come up, and there’s a ton of information on him,” Durden said. “There are people worldwide that he’s done this to.”

Many victims posted their own local Craigslist ads warning against business with Ferrell. Durden said he found forums in small guitar communities that discussed scams, too. Some of those forum posts dated back as far as 2012.

In all, Durden said he came across about 17 victims, many of whom were willing to share their experience.

“He might post a picture of it, but then he doesn’t actually have that item,” Durden said. “He’s selling stuff he doesn’t even have.”

However, in all of this, Durden couldn’t find a single person who had filed criminal charges against Ferrell.

“As far as I know, no one else has filed a criminal report against him, for criminal charges,” Durden said. “I heard from two individuals wanting to file civil suits against him in Tennessee, but that’s about it.”

Thanks to Barnes, Durden was able to change that. Records show arrest warrants dated April 17 were signed, charging Ferrell with third-degree theft of property and deceptive business practices.

Durden said Nashville police arrested Ferrell April 20, and LCSO extradited Ferrell on April 24. As of Friday, the 28-year-old Nashville resident was still being held in the Limestone County Jail with bail set at $2,500.

“Hopefully, this is reality setting in for him,” Barnes said.

Scamming nationwide

Barnes admitted he knew the warning signs and ignored them, believing “this was someone I’d already dealt with that I was dealing with more.”

“He did an interesting bait-and-switch, because the first (sale) was legit but then he was just sending me pictures of bull crap that didn’t exist,” Barnes said.

Andy Baerg of Minnesota fell victim to a different scam, also by Ferrell. Baerg is a member of a group for guitar enthusiasts on Facebook.

“Basically, a bunch of guitar nerds and people from time to time will post things there,” Baerg said. “In September, Nick posted a guitar I was interested in, so I reached out to him.”

Baerg said there was nothing out of the ordinary about the ad he posted, and when he looked Ferrell up online, he found an online store for Funky Junk Guitars at Reverb.com.

“Everything was great,” Baerg said. “Everything checked out.”

Baerg said he sent Ferrell money for a guitar in December under the belief Ferrell would ship the guitar right away.

“It’s probably a similar story you’ll hear from a lot of people,” he said.

Baerg said he didn’t hear from Ferrell for a week. When he did, Baerg said it was just a series of excuses and no sign of the guitar.

“The story he gave me was that he was selling it for a friend who had lost his job and needed money,” Baerg said. “So he was just helping his friend out, he needed to get the guitar from his friend … by the end of December, I still hadn’t received anything from him.”

He said it continued like that for months. Baerg finally posted in the group, asking if anyone else had had any experience.

“I was kind of shocked with the number of people who came forward, saying ‘This is what he does, he doesn’t have a guitar, he just does this,'” Baerg said.

One of the responses mentioned the use of fake accounts to boost positive internet reviews. It was suggested these fake accounts were the reason Funky Junk Guitars had a near-perfect rating on Reverb.com. The store has since been shut down.

“One person I talked to said he often puts things up for sale and then sets up dummy profiles to buy those things and make it look like he’s a better seller than he is,” Baerg said.

“I escalated things by going to his store website and posting things on Facebook about not dealing with him, at which point, he threatened he was going to tell crazy things about me.”

Baerg said he brushed off Ferrell’s threats because he knew there was nothing Ferrell could prove, whereas Baerg had copies of their text messages and conversations to back up his own claims.

He said he also had contact information for Ferrell’s girlfriend, a woman Baerg said worked for the Nashville Predators and who Ferrell had allegedly told Baerg to send money to at one point. Baerg said he tracked her down at work.

“I said, ‘Money was sent to your PayPal account, so that makes you legally liable as well,’ and that was the only time I got any money back from him, was when I got her involved,” Baerg said. “But then he disappeared again.”

Baerg said he got back about $200, though he said he had sent Ferrell about $1,400. According to Baerg, April 4 was the last time they spoke to each other. He said Ferrell told him money would be sent by the end of the week, something Baerg called “a common reply.”

Moving forward

Baerg said he considered legal action against Ferrell but ultimately decided against it.

“The amount of money it would take to pursue legal action would be more than what I spent on him,” he said. “It wasn’t a big enough amount for me personally that it’s worth spending more to go after him personally.”

However, that hasn’t stopped him from warning others whenever he can.

“The guitar community is honestly a pretty close-knit group, and we like to take care of our own and enjoy what we do,” Baerg said. “So to see something like this creep in and ruin that, I hate to see it.”

Baerg and Barnes each said they will also be using more caution when shopping for guitars online.

“Venmo is a no, and also Western Union and Moneygram is a no,” Barnes said. “If you’re so impatient that you can’t wait until I can hand you cash in person, you’re not someone I need to spend time dealing with.”

Barnes said it also made him wiser to how far someone will go for a scam.

“If this guy would put this much effort into a legitimate skill, he would probably be very good at it,” Barnes said. “You could have guitars and the things you want, and people won’t hate you or try to put you in jail.”

At the end of the day, though, Barnes encouraged all internet buyers to beware and for victims to follow his example by reporting to the authorities.

“He put a lot of work into setting me up like that, so I don’t feel so bad about it, but also I’m hopeful that maybe other people will actually start reporting,” he said. “These guys get away with it because no one reports it. I mean, I’m out some money, and I know the legal route isn’t going to get me the money back. For me, it’s just a side business. I’m a software guy, and that’s how I pay my bills, but for people who make music as a way of living … that’s not fine by me. This is not OK, and I don’t know what (Ferrell)’ll get for it, but he needs to realize what he’s doing isn’t going to work.”

And as for that original guitar, the one that seemed to be so legitimate it made Barnes feel comfortable enough to continue dealing with Ferrell? Barnes said he took it to Tommy Shepard in Huntsville and found out it was a dud in disguise.

“Hand (Tommy) a piece of wood, he can turn it into a guitar, but he looked at this and had nothing good to say about it,” Barnes said. “He said, ‘This is junk, man.'”