[hosep]

I have a concern. I listed a car for sale in the classified section and got what seemed like a good buyer. After several E-mails back and forth and me sending pictures a deal was agreed to. Mind you the first e-mail from the "buyer" said that they wished to purchase the car. They wanted me to remove the listing. I did put sale pending on the listing and left it at that. After various excuses thru E-mail I got a cashiers check thru UPS Express. The buyer said that a cashiers check is as good as cash. They wanted me to immediately send $2330 to their shipper and pay the $170 fee for Western Union wire tranfer of funds. Keeping the balance as payment for the car. I stated in the ad that the buyer was to pay shipping and now with this deal I was paying shipping, Even if it was there funds I was the payee and now resonsible. The kicker was that the check they sent was $500 to much. I e-mailed them of the overage and requested what was to be done with the $500. They e-mailed me back that it was to help me out. Now no one has ever just forked up $500 to me to help out. So I got to wonder. The UPS next day air was from New jersey, The cashiers check was issued from a Huston Texas bank the day before. OK maybe with all this rapid delivery stuff may be that could happen. Now the push was on to wire the money to there shipper ASAP and they would pick up the car Friday and ship it to California. I got the check late Tuesday and the bank was closed. Wednesday morning I go to my bank (They know me well) and present the check. POW. they want 7 to 10 business days for the check to clear. I asked why with a cashiers check. Now get this, they tell me that there are bogus cashiers checks AND money orders out there. They would give me the $2500 needed to wire the shipped against my other funds but not the check. I decided to wait the 10 days (business Days). I e-mail the buyer this and then they want me to send their shipper $500 to cover a fine for delay in shipping. No way was I going to use my money to cover their fine when in the first place they were to pay the shipper direct. Now the buyer has accepted the wait and backed off. I am waiting to see if the check clears. My bank is watching close for me. The thing is If the check bounced I would have been out $2500, and if they had moved as fast as they wanted I would also be out of a car. This may all be for naught but it sure smells bad to me. SO BEWARE. I have gotten 3 replies to the ad in the first week it was up and all 3 were in the same purchase format. Since then no replies at all. all I can say is I smell a RAT. I hope I am wrong.
I wrote this last Saturday and decided to wait to see if the Cashiers Checked cleared before raising all the fuss. Today I decided to call the out of state bank and check up on the funds. Well there is a RAT. The check is counterfiet, bogus, worthless. It sure looked real. water marks and all. I have made a report to the local authorities. They doubt that anything can be done but items did cross state lines and maybe something would happen.I have decided to only accept payment thru Western Union Wire Transfer on any thing. I COULD HAVE GOTTEN BADLY BURNED ON THIS ONE.
:evil:

 

[bowtiebabe72]

But anyway...man that really sucks. Just remember, if it smells like a rat and looks like a rat...it is probably a rat.

Or

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

 

[crazygutgut]

its an old scam.. someone who is willing to buy your car in the first email with no questions asked is usually to good to be true....

I have gotten these letters for cars I have on my websites that were not even for sale. The MO is usually the same, and if you advertise a car online, you can COUNT on them...

I used this as an advantage to get my Ranchero, the guy was telling me about a "buyer" in new york that would be sending him a cashiers check, but he had to pay shipping, his desire to sell the car without paying shipping is why I got the car for 300$ less...

http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html

 

[BarryK]

The scams are getting nasty!
The above scam has been around for some time.

Two months ago a friend of mine purchased a used truck for his business. They agreed on price and my friend says I will get cash or a cashiers check your choice. This guy says no I trust you just write a company check. Three weeks later he bounces a check on the business, because this guy has made 4 electronic draws off his account. I always thought the bank needed a signed card on file for someone to do that. NOPE! My banker told me only way to stop it or keep it small is check each account on line every morning. So guess what I do every morning 4 accounts with coffee.

 

[Restore60s]

Scam

hosep, anytime you recieve an e-mail about buying or selling one of the biggest give-away's is there spelling, it's terrible. I get these e-mail deals at least twice a month. Anyone that contacts you simply tell them Verifiable U.S. Funds only for the exact amount. They will not reply back.
For all of you Wire transfers with your account #, you go to your bank let them contact the others bank and account numbers are not seen by nobody. You ask for wire transfer Bank to Bank. If you let someone have your routing number of your account it's going to leave them wide open to your account anytime they want your money.
If someone has your number request for a account # change.

 

[hosep]

wire only now

I have had a bad year with the internet theft issue, This spring it was the identy theft problem. I am still on the look out for false transactions. I will only accept payment by Western Union Wire. That is it, no other way. I will not put out any account numbers for anything. This must be a sign of the times, more out of work or whatever than we know.:smash:

 

[Intrigue]

Warning warning Never Never except anything other then cash or a certified check and if you do accept a certified check or some kind of money order, make sure you ask the bank if that money can be demanded back in most cases it can be demanded back upto 45 banking days and then the bank will come after you for the cash. Bottom line if the deal has to many steps never ever release your property. You are involved in a very old scam.

 

[hosep]

Can wired funds be at risk as well???

 

[cletis]

If their email is not already listed at http://www.scamchecker.com/ you need to send it in.

 

[hosep]

e-mail

I will go and check out the list. I will add it if it is not listed. County boys are talking refering it to the Feds. I am pushing them. I have been able to get some information and I got one phone call that might help. There is other information but I can not say. I never give up and I have worked in computers for 30 years In one way or another. Just because it is an old scam should not let it slide. I have little or no trust now on these sales. I have been screwed on E-Bay and Pay- Pal. Which I won the battles and got my money back.

 

[willowbilly3]

This crap is epedemic proportions. I think our feds need to get on this thing. I think emails should be trackable. If it was kiddy porn and you were caught up in the net they would dam sure track you down via your email address. I realize that some of those scammers are using hijacked accounts, I've had my ebay account hijacked.

 

[Jon]

The email you receive upon signing up for a classifieds account contains a specific warning about this.

 

[killerformula]

Jon you've got to do something about these classifieds. Make it tougher to get into them or something. I don't even use it anymore because 99% of the responses I get are all scams, and I get a bunch of them! It honestly makes it hardly worth using.

How about a selling, trading, barter forum where we can post pics and people can ask open questions about things we're selling?

K

 

[Jon]

We're moving over to a system where we will have a little better protection.

Frankly, we don't have that much control over these scammers. I myself routinely get 100's of these emails every day.

 

[hosep]

2 more scams

Ok, I got 2 more replys on the ad. They were the same format as the first. I will not use the classified section again. I feel hotrod.com owes me $18 for this ad that seems to be a waste of time. I also get a lot more junk mail that I never got before. What is going on? I am sure that most in here are good people but there seems to be alot of scum surfing the site. Sending an e-mail warning people does not absolve one of a moral responsibility. Maybe the security should be better and screen the surfers, not allowing full access with just a click. I do not have the answer, but it will not stop until something is done. The police say what can we do? the Feds say the same, To hard to catch them....So we sit here and wait to be plucked like a bunch of chickens. Not me... I am not going to let this go.

 

[willowbilly3]

I think one small thing we might try is to break up the description of the item for sale so it doesn't pop up on their searches. I advertised a couple Expedition rear ends on another board and got 20 of those offers the first day. And most of them didn't even seem to realize what I was selling. I don't know if a slight mis spelling would work. Or maybe a few hoops for them to jump through that would weed out anyone who doesn't have perfect command of the English language. Maybe something like a spam filter that would just vaporize any response that had the words "best price" or other odd usage of English. Or any payment other than a western union wire must be include $100 cash. Or you could always use a 3rd party escrow service and take the heat off yourself.

 

[Jon]

Re: 2 more scams

Ok, I got 2 more replys on the ad. They were the same format as the first. I will not use the classified section again. I feel hotrod.com owes me $18 for this ad that seems to be a waste of time. I also get a lot more junk mail that I never got before. What is going on? I am sure that most in here are good people but there seems to be alot of scum surfing the site. Sending an e-mail warning people does not absolve one of a moral responsibility. Maybe the security should be better and screen the surfers, not allowing full access with just a click. I do not have the answer, but it will not stop until something is done. The police say what can we do? the Feds say the same, To hard to catch them....So we sit here and wait to be plucked like a bunch of chickens. Not me... I am not going to let this go.

I do not have the answer either. Ebay seems to be plagued with the same issue. I don't have a spam OR scam solution. The internet is the Wild West right now, and everyone's tossing the blame around for this particular problem. Webmasters want ISP's to take care of it with their email filters, and ISP's want webmasters to make it so that they never receive the emails.

We will happily refund your classified ad money if you are dissatisfied in any way. PM me your paypal email address, and I'll take care of it. FYI -- we're "Hotrodders.com" though, not "Hotrod.com".

 

[hosep]

refund

Thank you for the reply but I do not have a paypal account anymore. There is still a hacker trying to use it with 2 to 6 hits a month. I had to close the credit card account and my check account that was associated with it. I even removed them from the account, tried to close the account at paypal with no luck, and changed the password daily. All I get from Pay Pal is they are investagating the problem. That was back in March and it is still going on. My ebay account was also hacked into and it took 2 months to get it straight. So I do not know how to get the refund but thank you for the offer.

 

[Restore60s]

Scammers

Since this thread started I've gotten yet another e-mail from the uk wanting to buy my corvette interior I had advertised here. I fully intend to play this idiot out and get him to send me his check for $5,000 and he wants me to take mine out and send him the balance. My reason is that I have been complaining to the Fed's about this and they sit around and do nothing. I will present this check with copies of our e-mails and his western union account to the U.S. Marshall's office.
This web site has nothing to do with it, it's everywhere. These idiot's think we are stupid. I have tried several times with these scammers to show up and pick up what they want to buy. If I could get just 1 to show up I'll slap the cuffs on and take them right inside the Marshall's office delivered in person.

 

[hosep]

I know it is not just this site but it has to stop somewhere. I got a name and address for the person to pickup the funds I was to wire. I offered to wire some funds so the authorities could get them when they showed up to pick up the money or trace it from there. All I got was by the time they got the right agency to take the case, if any, it would be to late to get them. The scammers would have moved on. But HEY we have home security in force now. Yet these scams go on and they can not or will not follow thru. It makes me wonder...................