Selling a vehicle on Craig'slist, and payments

Now that you know...why not think of a way to screw with him...that agent at least, since he is in on it...
I don't know...schedule a series of drop off meetings in strange, out of the way places, and not show up with some imaginative excuse...do that several times before finally telling him it was sold to someone else...

I find it hard to imagine at this point that the Agent is not in on the scam or at least abetting the crime. It used to be a tow truck driver and he also received money from the seller because the buyer had used a check for more than the purchase. Now with the PayPal version there is still this guy who picks up the car, truck or motorcycle. Why is this guy never confronted by the cops once the victim has figured out he was robbed and made a police report to the proper authorities. I would think the same tow truck drivers were involved over and over. Now of course the seller had to be aware of taking numbers off the truck and or seeing his ID. But there are only so many TT drivers in any town. Around here I don't think the drivers are licensed as such but the trucks are.

I say go after the TT drivers. Eliminate that part of it and it may put a stop to the whole thing. Oh, how to do this? Very easy, the same way the cops busted me for selling pot back in 1973. Under cover cops make the deal and arrest the sum bitch when he shows up. Simple. Got me out of drug dealing and it will get these nice law abiding Americans driving tow trucks out of receiving stolen property.

Oh and by the way, it would be helpfull to all of us that DO use PayPal by copying that whole mess from the guy aand forwarding it to spoof@paypal.com.
Sometimes they even care!

I forwarded some of the correspondence to PayPal, but looked on CL and I get the impression they take a hands off approach...we just provide a place to put your adv. Looking under scams to report, they give suggested links to notify. I'm sure they only way anything could be done is to actually be screwed out of your money then the authorities might help, but that does no good.

oozing scam.
I had a similar one recently. I kept communicating with the 'buyer' trying to figure out how exactly how he was planning to scam me. I'd read about them getting the vehicle picked up and then the paypal payment disappearing out of your account... however, the thing was I was trying to sell a 30ft sailboat not exactly an easy object to load onto a truck and I couldn't figure out where the catch was.
The scammer wanted to pay me asap and get things moving he was going to get the item shipped to him:huh

As it turned out the seller wanted to include in my payment for the boat an extra amount so that I could pay the shipping for him to his shipping agent. This was the scam part I assumed and was the moment I let loose and abused the cretin. Never heard back after that of course. If I had more patience and less fury I would have tried to bait him a bit more and at least get a bit more information.

this has lots of good stories if you can be bothered reading through them
http://www.419baiter.com/games.html

personally I think the more time we can easily waste of these people the better for all. The trick is to invest very few words and time and make them invest a lot of words and time- not cut and paste stuff but actual things they need to put effort into. I really despise people who do these sort of things.

So if one "agrees" to pay their shipper, I wonder if the shipper actually shows up???? It would have been interesting to play it out and see if someone actually shows up for a cash hand off and take your vehicle. Yeah a 30ft sailboat would be a feet, especially if you didn't have a trailer.

There. Right there the person who shows up is receiving stolen property. I say we bait these people and when the "shipper" shows up we beat the shit out of them.

Alright, might not be such a good idea. But I think they know what's going on.

I just had an ebay classified turn into a "I'm in Buffalo, the car is in XYZ but my shipper will deliver it and you get 30 days to inspect it." THEN WHY THE (#*$ DID YOU LIST IT FOR SALE IN ATLANTA??? Grr....

Craigslist is meant to be local for a reason, to promote face to face local transactions. This is one of the reasons CL doesn't like the aggregation sites that let you look for "vincent black shadow" nationwide.

More scam sniffing tricks:

Tell them your cousin lives where they do and will come do the deal in person. Even if it's the Orkney islands. Legit buyers should have no problem with this.

Do you have a telephone #? Call me anytime to finalize the deal. Ask for a work phone #. I don't care where you work or to necessarily talk to you while you are at work but most people will at least offer a non-Nigerian story "I do shift work at the brewery so am usually drunk and we can't hear the phone over the machinery." or "I just moved here from Canada so I don't have a house or phone but call my co-worker Jim @ xxx-yyy-zzzz."

Look for timezone differences, "too fast replies" and "I ignored what you said". Everyone keeps slightly different hours but a day-job person in the USA responding to emails at 3am ain't usually right. Fast replies to emails or failing to react to what you wrote are also signs. "There was a small fire in the back seat and there's now some blood on the windshield." should cause a legit buyer to ask some questions.

If a Nigerian wants my bike that's cool, $200,000 cash in hand and I'll ship it.

I can't believe it the guy sent me another email, but it's the same as his 1st one. I already told him I knew it was a scam and told him authorities have been alerted, although they haven't.

This is what I sent

I'll need your full name, place of residence, phone # attached to your place of residence, plus cell number. The name, address of your transporter and his business address, plus his DOT information since he is transporting the vehicle.

If you cannot supply this information then there is no point in continuing.


Oh well,

In all of my Craigslist ads I state that I will not respond to anyone that does not reply with a phone number. If someone is serious they should be willing to talk on the phone. I like doing a bank wire transfer on big ticket items.

In my example I doubt a shipper would have ever turned up (this guy was saying he wanted to ship a 30ft keelboat overseas). In most of these examples I think the scam would be much simpler than that- ie, Shipper will be there next week.... Hang on, he requires prepayment to book it in, I'll transfer the money to you then you transfer it to him... the scammer sends you uncleared funds, you send your own money to 'the shipper' and the scammers funds disappear leaving you in the negative. Something like that. I'm not sure how it works.
If there was actual shippers turning up and taking (stolen) vehicles then where are they going and what is happening to them? I doubt they are going to nigeria or anywhere else where the scams originate from. Is there a domestic organisation involved? Either way, that sort of racket would be the kind of domestic organised crime that authorities would be quite interested in I would think.
I could be wrong, but I doubt there is much of anything more than emails and online transactions involved in these scams.

Either way I have ZERO sympathy for the people doing this. I don't care where you are from or how poor you are- a lot of these scams have the potential to destroy the lives of people being scammed.

ontic- your probably right. as these people want easy money w/ little effort. So if one is dumb enough to forward money to an account to pay the shipper that doesn't exists, but I'm sure it works w/ some less than brite people.

Oh yeah, it works, otherwise we wouldn't all be getting these emails. It's just a numbers game. That is why I like to try to waste a maximum of their time with a minimal investment of our time. (trick is to type as little as possible and get them to actually have to type out to you and not just cut and paste in pre-written replies- this is where playing dumb helps)

And it is a small point, but I also don't really like calling the victims things like 'dumb'- gullible and a bit naive and over-trusting certainly- but no real reason to blame the victim. Everyone is new to the internet at some point and a lot of people learn slow. People get told on the one hand to get online and sell your items- it's easy and you will make money. Then they get a buyer that quickly communicates with them and offers an easy solution where they sell their item for their asking price and it will get picked up by a shipper. Sounds real easy. People see money in their account, forward only some of it on, and don't realise they are getting screwed until it is too late.

another thing, I thought that if I transferred money from PayPal to my account the money would be safe. But in speaking to a friend about that, he suggested that PayPal does have my account information and "MAY" be able to withdraw the money from my account to protect their own interest. Like a buyer dispute or some other unforeseen issue as PayPal won't be left empty handed but I could be. As PayPal has access to my bank account and one credit card acct.

Sound like a very good case for a bank wire transfer!!!!

yes too true.........my mistake

I just checked through my emails with the last scammer.
He wanted to pay me with Paypal the complete asking price and include on top of this a payment for the amount to pay for the shipping. He then wanted me to forward that amount for shipping on through a Western Union transaction to the shipper.
I was having a tough day so that was when I let rip at the scum bag.

Next time I will look further into how to screw with them. I love some of the stories on the 419 site where people have actually scammed the scammers.

You need to be careful with PayPal, mid something is bought off you via eBay, paid with PayPal and they pick the goods up personally, you as the seller have no protection if they dispute the item through PayPal, and PayPal will take the money back.

Check the PayPal small print you have to use a tracked signed for shipping service, if you want to stand a chance of meeting the terms of the vendors guarantee and you have to watch the timescales as well.

I sold an scanner on eBay for £500, got paid via PayPal, then the buyers credit card cancelled the payment due to security reasons, luckily I had used a tracked signed for postage and was able to prove to PayPal that the item had been delivered and so my account was put back in credit. It's not a great process, really impersonal and you have to hunt around to find out what to do. Stressful.

And yes that email has all the marks of a scam.

Friend of mine knows someone who was scammed. Buyer used PayPal, car was 'sold', buyer files dispute and gets money back. He lost the car, and would have to go to court to get it back (knows where it is, and apparently it has been through one or two sales since then). Not worth the court cost, apparently.

So, possibly it's not considered stolen if the title is signed over, no matter what happens with the payment. Fraud, sure, but not stolen property.

All the more reason to deal in CASH and not to sign anything over until everything is hunky-dory.

Last time I bought a bimbo bike I made sure that the seller took care of the current registration and proved it with a receipt from the Cali DMV. Then he signed the bike over to me, I paid in cash and went straight to the DMV to do the transfer.

I never, ever sell through Ebay/PayPal without the item being insired and having delivery confirmation. With CL I want either cash up front or a postal MO including shipping costs in hand.

It also pays to be a good judge of people!