I was a newbie designer goods seller and happened upon Rebecca Rushing's website, queenbeeofbeverlyhills.com. Shortly after that, Rebecca and I ended up speaking on the phone and she told me that she had a trunk show in Beverly Hills every couple of months and invited me to meet her at the next one.
The day she arrived with all of her handbags, I met her in a little room on the second floor of a building that I believe was on the corner of Charleville and Beverly Dr. She had a southern accent, was ultra friendly and sweet as pie...
The room was filled with designer handbags and there was another woman (jewelry seller) that I believe was from the Los Angeles area. She had some of her handcrafted jewelry all laid out on a small table.
I proceeded to purchase almost $10,000 worth of "designer" handbags. Right before the transaction was completed, a couple of Rebecca's regular customers had arrived and were obviously upset because I'd bought up all of the best pieces. Lucky me.
Within the next couple of months I was trying to learn all I could about selling on Ebay. I also decided to check out some high end department store websites such as Barneys to get a "feel" of how one should describe the bags. While perusing various sites to read their copy, I realized with horror that my bags looked a bit different from some that I'd viewed...
I called Rebecca and told her what I'd seen and of course, she acted surprised and told me that there was nothing wrong with the bags. Period.
At that point I called my credit card company thinking that they would help me out... They informed me that what I would have to do is go to stores such as Gucci and Prada and ask them to take a look at my bags and if they felt something was wrong with them, I would have to get it in writing and then send the credit card company the signed notes...
When I called Gucci and Prada and told them of my dilemma they said that they couldn't help me. It wasn't a service that they offered... The sales person at Prada was pretty snooty about it. A gentleman that I spoke to at Gucci was sympathetic but he said that his hands were tied... It was against company policy...
I called Rebecca, told her what had happened and you can guess the rest... I was out almost $10,000! I was heartbroken when I found out that she was a scam artist and that no one would or could help me.
A couple of other tidbits... Her Italian male partner's name is SIMONE (?) SIMONA (?) SIMORA (?) and his phone number (I spoke to him once on his cell) is in Rebecca's name. I believe he is from Florence, Italy. She told me that he is the one who travels overseas to
purchase the bags.
I also recently met a woman who used to sell designer handbags and she told me that she had also met up with Rebecca and that the bags were in fact fake.
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