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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