What's The Scam

[Nick Algar - Competition Secretary]

When you are looking for cars on e-bay there always seems to be one that looks to good to be true advertised. ie an 08 for 04 money and then it says you can only contact them by e-mail. Working on the basis that if it looks too good to be true then it won;t be true I haven't bothered, but has anybody tried and what is the scam ? There has got to be one

[Blatman]

I looked at those myself recently. The one I looked at seemed to be from a dealer. A Google Earth search and streetview confirmed that there was a dealer at the address (Googled the phone number...) and it semed to be operational. So the scammers have done their homework!

As with much prety much all of this stuff, it's about stealing money either directly or via identity theft. And if they are genuine dealers, they maybe need to re-evaluate their modus opperandi

[Nick Algar - Competition Secretary]

That's what I thought Blatters, what I can't figure is how. Not many people buy cars at a distance, so how do they scam you ?

Have seen some obvious ones, like the cars in Spain and you pay for it we will ship it back etc. But a lot of these are not like that.

[Blatman]

Don't know actual the mechanism or methodology of that one...

OTOH... I bought a car off Autotrader from a dealer in Kirkcaldy. It wasn't too good to be true, but it was close!

I phoned up to put a non reundable deposit on the car to hold it until I could get up there to view it, gave the dealer my card number, bank details, flight number etc etc. He thought I was trying to scam him because from his perspective, the customer was too good to be true! It's a funny old world...

[Kevin Jones]

Think a lot are just the opening gambit for a remote sale, if you contact the seller the BS will start...

[Blatman]

It seems it's an information gathering exercise... probably similar to this one on eBay and alerted to this week...

[stephenh]

If in doubt, just contact the seller and ask where the car and paperwork can be viewed before you bid?

[Blatman]

Read the ads... the seller says contact by email only. The email header will contain information about the pathway the mail took and of course naieve punters may well include return phone numbers etc in the email. Build a database (an excel spreadsheet) then sell the data, or use it yourself to see what can be found. You'd be staggered at how easy some people make it, especialy with the likes of Facebook, Friends Renited and sites like 192.com. It can be quite easy to build up a decent amount of information about someone.

And when I say "sell the data", who do you think is buying it? Not fine upstanding(!) junk mail companies. The data is just as likely to be sold to criminals with identity theft on their minds.

[Kevin Jones]

That sounds way too much hard work for an ebay scam unless you were genuinely spearphishing. The second case posted is using formstack which just happens to have a tie-up to paypal for accepting payments. My guess is either they are after the paypal account details/password, or more likely given it's a high value item trying to get you to make an off ebay purchase via paypal.

[Norman Verona]

When I was selling our Jeep when I was in the UK and the car was here I left a friend in charge. He got a phone call from someone in Africa offering the asking price and asking if he could be picked up from Angers train station.

I said to Pete that this had to be a scam, he would probably turn up with a forged bankers draught.

Wrong! He was genuine, running a company in Tunisia making drive shafts and he wanted the car because they are 3 times that price in Tunisia. Pete picked him up, they went to my bank and paid in the cash and he drove the car away, never to be seen again. By the way, he was a Frenchman.

[Exsandman]

Mate of mine got scammed a couple of weeks ago. saw a small peugeot diesel yup for sale for £2,500. sent em an email and said he would give em 2,100

subject to a test drive , paperwork etc.

and this is where the scam starts,They then told him that through Ebay motors he could pay for it now and EBay hold the money for 5 days until you have a chance

to go and check the car over and then only release the money once the buyer agree's.

So they send you a pucker looking invoice with payment details, He pays the money, then we he tries to arrange a date/time he never hears from them again. He goes to th e bank to see if there is anything he can do and after 10 minutes they tell him to call the fraud squad and report it .They even putthe same car and photo up 2 weeks later :angry: .

I personally can't believe that anyone would part with cash without seeing a car or knowing where it was, But then again Scam's only work if it looks real

and no-one really checks anything.

[XTR2Turbo]

It is sad and scary how many people fall for this.

Travelling down to Le Mans a few years back I had a tyre delaminate. Pulled into a small tyre centre well off the beaten track.

They couldn't be more helpful. The TVR have large low profile tyres that were next to impossible to source but he went and got some well worn tyres from a racing Clio he had at home. After he realised we were English one of the young tyre fitters asked for some help. Turns out he had spent most of his savings on a car in the UK (unseen) and three weeks later it had not been delivered as promised.

We called the seller in the uk when we got back and they initially answered and then would just hang up. Reported it to the police but they weren't interested.

The banks must have their details. I can't see how they don't get caught and proscuted through small claims courts etc.

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Busy little b******* was at it again...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CATERHAM-7-car-/180894630750?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item2a1e29035e#ht_2323wt_1025

Already pulled the auction though.

[FILFAN]

it would be nice to think that ebay and the old bill would do more to stop it but i guess not.

[SteveD]

basically they cant be arsed ,they cant even to be bothered to investigate serious car fraud on there own door step ,so you have no chance abroad