Nov 16 2008
The Fake Dealer Scam
You’re searching online for a used car and come across a car for sale that is a very good price, you contact the seller and they tell you the car is a fair distance away but they will pay for the cost to ship it to you, they ask you to pay via a wire service they use many times and you never see the money dealer or the cars for sale again.
The scam is clever here because the money wire website they have you use looks just like one you would expect to see, sometimes they look better than the real money wire websites they use the popular brand names on their site to make it look official and make a minor change to the web address which normally goes unnoticed. The money is wired and picked up in minutes never to be seen again. The car pictures and details are normally copied from local dealers websites and the scam artist poses as one of the dealers.
How to Avoid this Scam: The first warning signal is them offering to ship the car for free, not only I the car cheaper than normal but they are willing to foot the bill for shipping which is normally many hundreds for long distances. Never use someone else’s recommendation and never use a money wire service for online payments as they are just not secure enough.
