I don’t use Craigslist and this isn’t a negative comment about that service, but I’ve talked to one guy I know, a judge, who purchases cars there, sight unseen, following a check-out by a mechanic at the remote selling location. Most of the deals have been good ones, including a late model Lincoln. These are legitimate deals involving real people and real cars.
Today in The Detroit News appeared an article by Matthew Kauffman/The Hartford Courant titled,
“Great price, perfect condition on Craigslist: It’s a steal”.
People are paying good money to scammers for great cars that don’t exist.
Let the buyer beware.
Most people are more cyber-savvy than I am and know all this already, but be very careful, guys. This looks like the modern day equivalent of fifty-dollar Jeeps packed in cosmoline. Give it a quick read and see what you think.
CSA
As a regular craigslist scanner I can say that the scam posts are a routine part of it in the autos section. (Maybe in other sections as well. I mostly look at cars). Only a newb who knows nothing could get taken in by this. In addition, craigslist was long ago modified so that you can’t click directly to cars & trucks section. You have to pass through an extra screen that says stuff like:
"How to recognize a vehicle scam attempt on CL:
Shipping a vehicle to you is suggested by seller
eBay Motors or another intermediary is specified by seller
Payment by Western Union or a money wire is requested
Price is unusually low (fraction of blue book value)"
The scammers are quite easy to recognize if you pay any attention at all.
Craigslist even puts a warning about things like this on the opening page but peoples’ greed often overrides common sense. Scams like this will never stop because the sucker pool is too deep.
It’s not only CL where things like this occur. I’ve even seen a few ads in the local newspaper from time to time that are obvious scams and eBay has a number of scam auctions going on all of the time along with the obligatory number of people who have fallen for it and are now out thousands of dollars.
An interesting story in the local paper a few years ago about Nigerian scammers was amazing to me. While one often thinks of the person being scammed as a stupid person an interview with a Nigerian scammer showed that was not always the case.
This scammer stated that many of the suckers who fell into the trap were actually college educated, often successful business people, and so on. Sheer greed caused them to toss common sense out the window and lunge headfirst into a proposition that many lesser educated and less successful people would run screaming from.
A man from another state was duped a couple of weeks ago by a local scammer. He listed a rare Mustang for 125K with a phony bill of sale and registration information.
The duped man sent the money and showed up to get the car. He found out that there was no car and that he was out 125k. Investigators found out that the man that lost the money was a professional car buyer who was desperately looking for that rare Mustang.
He must have already had a buyer lined up so he dropped his guard due to greed (my opinion).
Sorry cigroller…I was wrong on the amount. It was 135K.
I just have a hard time believing that anyone sends anyone they don’t know $$ on the promise of delivery - save, of course, that you can verify that you’re dealing with a legitimate business. Its more insane at $125K.
I was actually in touch w/ one of the Craigslist scammers recently. The ad didn’t have the normal giveaways in it and the car/price was good but not outlandish. The person on other end of the email said they had just moved to North Carolina for military service & didn’t need the car anymore. (This was listed in VA). They said they could ship the car wherever. I said fine. Sign the title over to me and ship the car. Once I had a chance to check it out, I’d send the money. I never did hear back from them…hmmm…
"I said fine. Sign the title over to me and ship the car. Once I had a chance to check it out, I’d send the money. I never did hear back from them…hmmm… "
Maybe they thought you are a scammer. It’s hard to know who you can trust at these distances. I don’t think I’d trust any private seller over the internet unless I finalized the deal in person.
The signature of the craigslist scammer is the offer/promise to ship a car. Who moves 400 miles away from a place, then decides to sell a car in the market where they used to live with the promise that they will ship it? A scammer.
That bit about being in the military and having to sell a car for (pick a reason) is beaten to death on eBay and people still fall for it.
There’s not a problem with the Craigslist model but it does boggle the mind that someone would even send a deposit to someone they don’t know and who lives, allegedly, a 1000 miles away.
I bought my Lincoln off of CL after several months of searching for the right car. The seller gave the right answers to any questions and I drove 300 miles one way to get it.
Prior to finding that particular car I did find one on CL that was listed in 3 metro areas (Wichita, Tulsa, and OK City) and was apparently a scam. The seller had different mileages listed on all 3 locations and this seller had stated in one that the car was in Wichita, KS and on another that the car was in OK City
When I started prodding about exactly where the car was because I wanted to look it over and had cash in hand the ads came down.
A month later they were back up again and I’ll never know if anyone got snookered or not; or rather, allowed themselves to be snookered.
I’ve bought and sold several things on Craigslist. NEVER EVER send money ANYWHERE. I’d NEVER buy ANYTHING that way. I know several people who sold cars on Craigslist. Craigslist is just the computerized the old Want-add Magazines.
Works the other way around too. In the Minneapolis paper yesterday, a guy was charged with providing a phoney cashiers check to a seller, getting the car, and selling it at auction. The owner is out the car and the money and the scammer collects the aution proceeds. Even cash now you have to be careful that the $100 bills haven’t been washed and reprinted $5’s. Copper wire, water pipes, converters, cars, drugs-these guys are very creative. Makes you want to just deal with a dealer.
As far as the $50 jeeps go, when I was a kid there was an add in Popular Mechanics for $5 3 or 4 horse Clinton engines. I poo pooed it and didn’t bite. My friend bought one and in the mail came a brand new small engine that worked just great on his mini bike. After that, three of us bit on the .303 Enfield surplus army rifles for $10. There are legitimate deals out there but gotta be careful.
Craigslist only works one way…The buyer and seller both meet in person where the object to be sold is. If the buyer wants it, he pays cash for it. Buyer takes possession of object. That’s it, there is no other safe way. It is very rare that big-buck items are sold using craigslist. eBay has a bigger market and much better safeguards. But you still have to be careful…
Back a long time ago the old 50 dollar Jeep story has some truth to it. Back in the mid 60s I was in TX and went down to a local gas station to look at (not buy) what were supposed to be cheap military vehicles.
This guy had about 15 of them sitting out back for sale with 50 bucks marked on each windshield.
Whether any of them were worth 50 bucks each at the time was debateable. Not one of them was a complete, even non-running vehicle and some of them were peppered with bullet holes.
Engines missing half their parts, busted radiators, bald tires, missing seats, and so on. They were all pretty much cannibalized relics. My rough guess was that if someone bought all of them they could have assembled 3 or 4 complete ones out of the entire lot. (Not factoring in engine or trans rebuilds, new tires, etc.)
It was interesting to look it over anyway.
“An interesting story in the local paper a few years ago about Nigerian scammers was amazing to me. While one often thinks of the person being scammed as a stupid person an interview with a Nigerian scammer showed that was not always the case.
This scammer stated that many of the suckers who fell into the trap were actually college educated, often successful business people, and so on. Sheer greed caused them to toss common sense out the window and lunge headfirst into a proposition that many lesser educated and less successful people would run screaming from.”
So you don’t think those people are stupid? In that case, have I got a deal for you!
ANYONE who gives even one time to the Nigerian scammers is NOT thinking correctly. This scam has been on the internet for 10+ years…The minute I saw my first Nigerian spam email I knew it was a scam. It was so obvious.
Ummmmm…the Nigerian scammer said this? And you believed him?
Perhaps when the scam first started, but today anyone who falls for the Nigerial scam thing is not likely to be and educated professional…unless he’s in the beginning stages of alzeheimers. Unfortunately, many of them are. Countless elderly people get taken by these scams regularly.
The reason I mentioned professionals being taken is because of that story. Several professionals allowed themselves to be quoted for that story and they were plenty embarassed over falling for something that was such an obvious scam.
These were college educated businessmen and did not fit the mold as the type of person who would fall into a trap like this.
Washington D.C. is chock full of educated people who know best and there’t not much coming out of there that makes sense.
Over the past few months I’ve been getting about 10 to 20 emails a day from Nigerian scammers and they all get deleted PDQ.
Apparenty every single person in Nigeria has tens of millions of dollars they don’t know what to do with and half of them are Drs. …
These Nigerian scammers go through college directories and target faculty. Before I retired from university teaching last May, I would get about one of these scams a week. When I was growing up, money was pretty tight in our family, so I thought having food on the table and a roof over my head was all that was really necessary. Since I wouldn’t know what to do with all this Nigerian money even if it was legitimate, I delete these emails without opening them. I thought I was wealthy when Mrs. Triedaq would give me $2.50 at the beginning of each week so that I could have a cup of coffee with my friends 5 days a week. When my friends and I discovered that we could get a senior citizens’ discount on coffee at McDonalds and coffee was 25 cents with a free refill, I really thought I was in the big money. I could take the savings through the week and buy a cinamon roll to go with my coffee on Friday.
For my automotive purchases for both new and used cars, I research prices and then go to established dealers and pay cash. I think I have done well through the years.
