Police investigate teen tycoon's trading exploits

Schoolboy 'entrepreneur' Gary Cooper is now the subject of a joint investigation by police and Trading Standards.

The 16-year-old who hit the headlines as the brains behind an online webstore, GC’s PCs, (www.gcspcs.com) is believed to have committed various offences.

Complaints from customers include taking unauthorised payments, non-delivery of goods, sending the wrong goods, failing to reply to customer queries about problems with orders and even charging extra help is requested. Computeractive is still getting requests for advice and information from livid GC’s PCs customers.

Terrence Warmbier placed an order for four Nokia 5800 phones costing £1,346 on 10 November 2008. On 8 December he found the cost had risen.

“My credit card was charged a further £800 by GC’s PCs. This was a totally unexpected and unauthorised charge. Mr Cooper has not answered any of my emails and I have no idea what this charge is for,” he said.

Mr Cooper tried to justify his actions by hiding behind the terms and conditions of contract on his site; confidently asserting they were correct and had been passed by Trading Standards. However, we and a lawyer assert that these terms and conditions were contradictory, muddled and in parts breach consumer statutory laws.

We contacted Barclays Merchant Services, the bank that has authorised the merchant account about the suspicious transactions. The merchant account was then suspended.

When we made a test purchase on the website after the account was suspended, we were directed to the Paypal log-in page. We contacted the online payments company and it swiftly got back to us and said: “We have investigated Mr Cooper and all associated Paypal accounts and as a result of our findings, have restricted all his activity with our company. He is not someone we wish to do business with."

Mr Cooper also appears to have resorted to threats. Tarba Gill, one of his customers was on the receiving end of some deeply unpleasant behaviour.

She had filed a claim in the small claims court. Mr Cooper's response to the court was that Tarba was guilty of “fraud” and “deception”. He demanded that she admit this and “shall be investigated”.

The GC's PCs website has now been taken down, on the suggestion of the police after Mr Cooper complained he was being harassed by angry customers. Detective Sergeant Simon Dovaston, the officer in charge of the investigation, is sending us more details about the alleged offences later today.