I am in the process of selling my 79 Spitfire. So I put in in the local
autoshoppers and classifieds. Additionally I place it for sale on a
couple of internet auto sites. Previously I had very good results
selling cars this way. Especially British cars.
But I had heard of the frauds going on. But I had no idea how inundated
I would be with these sort of fraudulent buyers!
The basics are this:
1. They want to keep contact only on the internet. They neither call
you when you supply your phone number, nor will they supply their phone
number or address.
2. Their email contact is usually one of the anonymous type: yahoo,
hotmail, go.com, earthlink, etc. The sort that most spam filters keep
out to begin with.
3. They use poor English (ahem-American). Obviously some lame attempts
to translate are employed. These fraud perps definitely are from some
non-English speaking country. The funniest was the guy wanting to buy
"fairly used cars".
4. They are all too eager to send money while asking few questions
about the car.
5. Often they are representing a "client" who urgently needs the car.
6. Now it gets to the juicy part of the fraud: They will send a
"cashiers check". But it will be from 'a guy in America who owes them
money". An amount in excess of the purchase price of the car. This
full excess amount is to be sent to me, the seller. And after paying
the shipper out of the "excess", and sending the remaining excess
amount, via cashiers check, to the buyer, AND delivering the car to the
shipper--guess what: the original "cashiers check" turns out to be
counterfeit and is returned by the bank!
Don't worry. I still have my car and have not received the so called
cashiers check. But the site I advertised the car on had a posted
warning regarding fraud like this, stating the details as I have
recounted them. So far these perps have gotten as far as telling me
about their American contact who owes them money in excess of the
purchase price.
My response was to stipulate that only the exact amount would be
accepted, that they had to settle directly with the shipper themselves,
that the check had to clear before delivery, and that any other set of
circumstances would be submitted to law enforcement for fraud investigation.
This generally puts a quick end to their interest in the car.
I think these sort of frauds have been discussed on these autox lists,
but I had no idea that putting a car up for sale was such a magnet for
this sort of thing. I really pity the younger folks who still believe
in the "goodness" of the world out there! I suppose they will be paying
high tuition to learn a bit of reality.
Regards,
Brian
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