There is no car for sale. There are stolen pictures of someone else's car.
There is only a scammer trying to steal your hard-earned money with a fake story of being deployed to Afghanistan.
The next email will be from another of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses pretending to be the "eBay protection program" and will demand you pay for shipping fees, in cash, and only by Western Union or moneygram. Or the scammer will want you to "prove" you have the funds by sending cash to a friend and sending him the MTCN#. The scammer then uses the MTCN# to pick up your cash and disappear.
Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever
Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram.
You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information.
Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash.
Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even partial sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.
If you google "Craigslist car seller scam", "fake truck sale scam Western Union", "fake car shipping company scam", "fake eBay protection program email scam" or something similar you will find hundreds of posts from victims and near-victims of this type of scam.
100% SCAM
Why are you choosing to ignore the whole page that comes up before you view any vehicles on Craigslist and the red warning on the top of every single listing?? They warn you about this EXACT SCAM
http://houston.craigslist.org/i/autos?&c...
"How to recognize a vehicle scam attempt on CL:
-Shipping a vehicle to you is suggested by seller
-eBay Motors or another intermediary is specified by seller
-Payment by Western Union or a money wire is requested
-Price is unusually low (fraction of blue book value)
If you see these tell-tale signs, flag ad as "prohibited" and avoid
Offers to ship a vehicle are virtually 100% fraudulent
eBay has no involvment in craigslist for sale ads, and any eBay or similar emails or web pages you receive are fake
Never use Western Union or wire transfer to pay for goods - only a scammer will ask for this, and any funds sent will be lost
Do not buy vehicles sight-unseen, regardless of low price. The vehicle does not exist, and any money you send will be lost.
Stories about divorcees or departing servicemen needing to sell quickly at a low price are generally fraudulent
If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is!"
Craigslist is ONLY for face to face transactions. Any time you cannot
- see the car in person
- test drive it
- have the mechanic of your choice check it out
- verify IN PERSON that the seller's ID is the same name as on the title
You are going to be scammed
Ebay has NOTHING to do with anything that is not listed ON EBAY.COM you bid ON EBAY.COM, you win the auction ON EBAY.COM and you pay ON EBAY.COM with your linked Paypal account. Ebay NEVER works with Craigslist
Scam city.
The real name for Craigslist is Scams List.
Easy to fool people.
I know someone who stupidly sent $5000 to a similar offer with lots of documentation, is there nobody in his city buying cars?
Buying any car, sight unseen is risky.
This guy says he's in the military and he's going to Afghanistan. He said he's going to ship the car to me but idk how to pay or If it's a scam. He said he's part of the eBay protection program but idk what that is?!? Is he scamming me??
