what is this scam

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WhyMe

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If they reply they'll have some story about how they got assigned out of the country and ask you to wire them money for the car. I think CL has been shutting them down so they can't reply to your email, of course some get through so they keep trying.
 
That used to be a scam on our Auto Trader website out here, assuming it's not what DoubleWasp suggests. I even contacted one just for the heck of it. It was about 8 or so years ago, and Auto Trader weeded it out. You know that when someone is offering a Powerstroke or Cummins at a ridiculously low price and claiming as local to Regina with palm trees in the pictures, something is wrong. Car ad posters have enough problems in this location when they have snow in the pictures, yet it's July and they claim it was just put on the market, or vice versa. Using pictures with palm trees is just idiotic.

It was funny, because I got what dishdude said, they're stuck out of the country. I said it's no problem. I'll get myself there and pick it up and pay in cash. They "couldn't do it," somehow. Big surprise.
wink.gif
 
Beware anything juicy like that . One of the favorite tricks if for some of Canada's 🤨recent immigrants from the garden spot of Nigeria setting up phony ads. They operate from Canada running scams in the US . You'll often find businesses and websites addressed as some town along the Canadian Border . They do that as consumers are leery of businesses outside the US so they invent phones ones planted in a place they found on google earth.
It works for them because the crime is committed outside their country where they live. That makes them hard to prosecute or even catch and lets face it in any major city cops don't much bother with small fraud cases. They can't even keep up with the major stuff let alone assisting outside agencies with all the complications. I only wish people knew and appreciated the scope of crime in the US caused by shall we say , other than local indigenous Canadians. And they get away with it.
 
NOTICE that the only way to contact them is by the email address (sometime a phone number) that is embedded right into the photo itself.... not through the regular "info" tab
 
I don't get how it works, but I guess it's just like scams through the mail--hit rate might be low, but all it takes is one sucker to pay off.

But these CL scams are so obvious that I doubt anyone is falling for them. I almost wonder if it's now just being done for fun--hackers in someone's basement, trying to rack up some score for the most "scams" online at once, or longest running program that doesn't need code rewritting, or whatever.
 
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Originally Posted by supton

But these CL scams are so obvious that I doubt anyone is falling for them. I almost wonder if it's now just being done for fun--hackers in someone's basement, trying to rack up some score for the most "scams" online at once, or longest running program that doesn't need code rewritting, or whatever.

I guarantee there's people who do no-shows for fun. You list a car for sale, they sound like a sane person on the phone while discussing some details and things, they say they'll be there in 90 minutes, then never show up and their phone number that worked 90 minutes ago now goes to a robot voicemail forwarding service thing.

And then you find out two days later the same person did the same thing to someone else recently.
 
Prob a dealer who will tell you the car is not available anymore and to come in to see what they have. Dealt with that bait and switch on a used Kia Sportage that was listed ~$10k under market value ~10 years ago - I knew it was too good to be true. Started getting cold called within an hour of inquiring.
 
There are many different scams that can come out of this. One is price a vehicle low enough that they have a good chance of people showing up with cash, using false credentials and a remote location rather than their own home, then rob them. They don't need to own the car listed to do that, but to reel in people a little closer they might pick a location where they see that model and color car parked often, then the police are chasing down that car's owner for a while.
 
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These ads are trying to take advantage of the folks that think its okay to buy a car sight unseen without a test drive, i.e. (1) decide from the pictures it is a good car with a good price, (2) - send money (3)-go get the car & (4) - post on social media how you just got ripped off and what does the collective think you should do about it.
 
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