Apr
Car scam on Craig’s list
By now you may already know we are looking for a new car to replace our current vehicle when the lease expires this summer. We have been looking on Craigs list and Ebay and recently caught an obvious scam on Craigs list.Here is how it works. The scammer posts a nice vehicle for a ridiculously low price. The scamee contacts the person about the car and it told it is available, however he is in the military and cannot be reached by telephone but can ship the car at his expense if you simply send him the money. The scammer then asks that you use E-bay’s “buyer protection” plan as insurance that the deal is legit. It isn’t. E-bay’s “buyer protection” program doesn’t apply to deal done on any other web site and certainly doesn’t apply to cars sold on Craigs list. I attempted to mess around the guy a bit but he simply dropped out of view.This scam has actually worked in some cases and it has left some people without a car and the money to buy a new one. Remember the golden rule, “If it seems to good to be true, it probably is…”If you are looking to buy a new car, I do not suggest Craigs list unless the seller is local and you can see the car in person.
This exact same scenario happened to a member of my family. The family member was overseas with the military and wanted to have a car waiting for him when he got home. He found a truck online (Ebay I believe) and began communicating with the ’seller’. Right at the point when he was about to send almost $20K to this ’seller’, my family member found the exact same truck posted under various different ads around the ‘net. At that point, we told the family member to let us deal with the transaction stateside for him while he was out of the country and so he communicated this new arrangement to the ’seller’ who promptly disappeared. Scam aborted.
April 17th, 2010 at 11:49 am