Scam

[bluenose1940]

I currently have my IS220d for sale on Autotrader (am hoping to get me an IS250) and, during the weekend I received an email asking if my car was still for sale and what is the current price. I responded by saying that it was indeed still for sale and the price remained as per the advert.

A few hours later I received another email in which he said that he was (quote) "Glad to inform me that I am satisfied with the details and conditions of your car on the advert. Presently I am in Italy for an assignment and am planning to relocate to Singapore. I will travel to the UK to complete the transaction but firstly I would like you to please put it off advert to avoid interruptions from other interested buyers and count it sold. I will send you a bank cheque of £3300 which I will allow it to clear into your account, You will keep £1000.00 as a non-refundable deposit. The remaining £2300.00 you will send to the shipping agent so that they can arrange a slot at the seaport for shipping to Singapore" (unquote)

The email goes on and on for quite a bit and at one point he says that he will pay me £100.00 in compensation for dealing with the shipping agent and for withdrawing the car from the advert.

Now even to me, despite being a grey haired old codger, this all smacked of being a bit on the fishy side. There can't be too many folk around who are prepared to lay out a few thousand quid on a motor that they aint not seen, not no how they aint and, on top of that, they don't know me from Adam, I could be a right rogue couldn't I!

I even mentioned in my response to him that there might be a delay caused by my needing to retain my number plate and having to re-register the car with a 57 plate. He wasn't put off by this and was prepared to wait.

Today he has been chasing me for my contact details etc so that he can get the ball rolling.

I was on the phone to Autotrader at 9am this morning and sure enough they confirmed my suspicions.

The outcome to all of this is that I still have my car and yes, it is still for sale. Hopefully I will get me a bona fide enquiry shortly.

If anyone else has their car up for sale at the moment, one more word from me...........BEWARE!!!!!!

[ChrisIS200SportTTE]

I sold my Honda accord via auto trader beginning of June and I got an email almost exactly the same only mine was to be shipped to Hong Kong!

I just deleted the email, never replied and never heard anything else.

Smelt very fishy to me also! Scamming gits!

[Rory]

they've been at it for years

[ridgersIS300]

This is almost comical it's that bad! Although some people must fall for it as its still going around

[wicked677]

This has been going on for years, not just with cars though. They send you two duff cheques that you can obviously tell have been printed by a home printer. And tell you to cash them at a bank, they rely on people to trust the cheques are real and send the item before you even try and cash the cheque.. I don't think it is very successfully as anyone in this country for the past 30 perhaps 50 years would know that you have to wait for a cheque to clear...

[gsdude]

I work for a bank and I see this sort of thing from time to time...luckily just the other week I managed to prevent a guy from wiring two and a half grand to somebody from a scam on pistonheads for a beemer he'd seen for sale but he was totally sold by the scam and I must say it was only due to my instincts telling me to do a bit more digging that we sussed it was a scam.

But for the sort of thing mentioned above the cheques aren't always fake, sometimes they'll be real but either stolen or drawn on a fraudulently opened account or an account that's closed hence will bounce. This particular example is quite obvious but its amazing some of the intricate lengths fraudsters go to con people out of their hard earned cash

[bluenose1940]

I currently have my IS220d for sale on Autotrader (am hoping to get me an IS250) and, during the weekend I received an email asking if my car was still for sale and what is the current price. I responded by saying that it was indeed still for sale and the price remained as per the advert.

A few hours later I received another email in which he said that he was (quote) "Glad to inform me that I am satisfied with the details and conditions of your car on the advert. Presently I am in Italy for an assignment and am planning to relocate to Singapore. I will travel to the UK to complete the transaction but firstly I would like you to please put it off advert to avoid interruptions from other interested buyers and count it sold. I will send you a bank cheque of £3300 which I will allow it to clear into your account, You will keep £1000.00 as a non-refundable deposit. The remaining £2300.00 you will send to the shipping agent so that they can arrange a slot at the seaport for shipping to Singapore" (unquote)

The email goes on and on for quite a bit and at one point he says that he will pay me £100.00 in compensation for dealing with the shipping agent and for withdrawing the car from the advert.

Now even to me, despite being a grey haired old codger, this all smacked of being a bit on the fishy side. There can't be too many folk around who are prepared to lay out a few thousand quid on a motor that they aint not seen, not no how they aint and, on top of that, they don't know me from Adam, I could be a right rogue couldn't I!

I even mentioned in my response to him that there might be a delay caused by my needing to retain my number plate and having to re-register the car with a 57 plate. He wasn't put off by this and was prepared to wait.

Today he has been chasing me for my contact details etc so that he can get the ball rolling.

I was on the phone to Autotrader at 9am this morning and sure enough they confirmed my suspicions.

The outcome to all of this is that I still have my car and yes, it is still for sale. Hopefully I will get me a bona fide enquiry shortly.

If anyone else has their car up for sale at the moment, one more word from me...........BEWARE!!!!!!

Still got my car for sale on Autotrader and within the last few days have had another email from a similar scammer. I have now removed my email address from the advert. The first one that I received was plausible-ish but this second one was well, quite unbelievable really, their command of the english language left an awful lot to be desired, it would be extremely difficult to imagine anyone getting caught out by that one.

Well done George for helping your customer to avoid chucking a fair few quid down the proverbial. I'm sure that he will have been extremely grateful to you.

Still hoping for a genuine buyer for my 220d!!!

[Anuj's Bro Maneesh]

How much do you want for it?

[bluenose1940]

How much do you want for it?

Hello Maneesh, Hopefully this link will take you to my advert :-

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201229479391440/sort/default/usedcars/price-from/9000/fuel-type/diesel/price-to/11000/transmission/manual/body-type/saloon/model/is/make/lexus/page/7/saved-search-id/2c9218313851e3e801387591c4820010/radius/1500/postcode/ex84el?logcode=p

[ridgersIS300]

Gumtree is just as bad.... I put an old camera On there for £20 and within a couple of hours I had 3 scam emails. They wanted me to send a crappy camera to Africa! The postage would've been more than it was worth lol!

[Ichiban]

I had this all the time when I was selling my Impreza. I enjoyed winding them up, you can give them any excuse and they buy it.

When it sold, it went to a chap in Holland, I thought it was a scam!! I refused to take a holding deposit just in case, I knew he was genuine when he sent me flight info and times. Although, over £5k in £50 notes felt fake :P

[steve2006]

I had this all the time when I was selling my Impreza. I enjoyed winding them up, you can give them any excuse and they buy it.

When it sold, it went to a chap in Holland, I thought it was a scam!! I refused to take a holding deposit just in case, I knew he was genuine when he sent me flight info and times. Although, over £5k in £50 notes felt fake :P

They didn't look like these did they? If you send them all to me I could check them for you and if genuine will send you a cheque in place of them from the bank of Bongo.

[matt-c]

Just tell them to send the cheques, and you will contact them after they have cleared. Funnily, they don't reply back after that...

Or better still, do as Chris did - delete the mail, don't reply, and ignore them

[Ichiban]

I had this all the time when I was selling my Impreza. I enjoyed winding them up, you can give them any excuse and they buy it.

When it sold, it went to a chap in Holland, I thought it was a scam!! I refused to take a holding deposit just in case, I knew he was genuine when he sent me flight info and times. Although, over £5k in £50 notes felt fake :P

They didn't look like these did they? If you send them all to me I could check them for you and if genuine will send you a cheque in place of them from the bank of Bongo.

Seems legit :D