Internet Scammers

[markiii]

Ladies & Gents

I'm sure by now your all aware of the overpayment scams that have been circulating for some time. Seller is given a cheque for considerably more than the purchase price and asked to send the balance back.

Obviously the cheque is a fraud and the seller gets stiffed having already sent the cash back.,

It seems that these ever desperate fools are moving on from the likes of Autotrader and Pistonheads and are starting to target forums such as our own.

The following PM is copied from another board I frequent where this scam has been attempted.

Hello

I am interested in buying the Landrover Freelander Td4 Se that you have placed for sell now, and I would want to enquire about the present condition of the above mentioned, as well as some detail about you. I expect this timely enough.

As for the payment, I would need you to get back in touch with the last asking price as I will be paying with a certified cheque.

Lastly, please forward to me your full company's (or house address, telephone and fax) details as I will subsequently prefer reaching you through these facilities.

Yours interestingly,

Raymond Griffiths


Should you need to reply to me, Please get back in touch with your
details to me at:usc200881@yahoo.com for a quick reply.

Should you receive any similar PMs that you are suspicious about please treat it as a scam and contact an Admin immediately.

many thanks

Mark
MR2ROC ADMIN

[uktotty]

All too common I'm afraid.

Just be bearing in mind that the English grammar is not the often greatest in the communications of this type. You can spot normal if when you am reading it that it sounds in the style of Stavros.

[carl_evs]

TBH anyone who accepts a cheque for a car without it clearing should take a look at themselves in a mirror and give themselves a good slap!!

Your usually talking about a fair bit of cash and most people know (or I would of thought so) that cheques aren't the safest way to do things!!

As for the grammar, I know this is mainly a British forum but not everyone on here has English as their first language and even some of those that do don't have a great grasp of it!!

It is an indicator but you should look at these things as a whole and hopefully make a wise decision.  Nice one on the heads up though Mark!!

[Jigwar]

TBH anyone who accepts a cheque for a car without it clearing should take a look at themselves in a mirror and give themselves a good slap!!

There are 2 steps in cheque clearing: the bank can accept the cheque, deposit the money in your account, you go ahead and dispatch the car/cash/whatever, then the bank discover the cheque is fraudulent, remove the money from your account and you are left high and dry.

[nutjack]

I had a, similar experience, but they sent me a so called bank draft to pay for car with the heading BBC aufwiedersain, pet Christmas special as you can see comma was in wrong place. I put draft into bank and they assured me it looked OK. three days after the bank told me the funds were available. still not happy and still had car, I contacted Lloyds TSB where the draft was from, showing my concern they checked and told me it was fraudulent, I contacted the police who was not interested as I still had my car, load of to--ers, my bank checked and said their fraud dept. was aware of this scam. and told me a cheque etc. can take up to three weeks to come back to you if fraudulent or insufficient funds, so seller BEWARE. luckily I kept my car.    nutjack

[Anonymous]

ALL I WANT TO DO IS SELL MY CAR DO PEOPLE STILL THINK WE ARE STUPID!!  s:x :x s:x  

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Hello,
I am much Interested in your car and wish to be the next owner. I will be making my payment via Bankers draft and i will arrange pick up after the Bankers draft is cleared.


The car is being purchase for my Dad.


I will be including the shipment and General Maintenance fee on the Bankers draft, so immediately you get the Bankers draft you will deduct your money and the rest would be for transport agency so that all papers works(DVLA) and other documentation  for the shipment will be done to make the transaction complete.My private transporter will take of all necessary documentation and Registration that need to be done will be taken care by Him.


I want you to get back to me with all the necessary information listed below in order to make out the Bankers draft


Name : -
Address : -
City: -
Post Code : -
State....
Mobile Number : -
Office Phone : - # if available
Home Phone : - # if available
Selling Price : - ? ..




I will make sure the Bankers draft get to you within 7 working days. Awaiting for your swift response and your payment Information


Best Regards,
David Cole
On




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "davidcole00@gmail.com" <davidcole00@gmail.com>
To:  e enquiries@autotrader.co.uk e  or call us on 0845 345 3450.

The following customer is interested in the vehicle you are advertising on
 m http://www.autotrader.co.uk m

Received: 28 December 2010 10:50

Customer Details:
NAME: MR David c
TELEPHONE:
EMAIL:  e mailto:davidcole00@gmail.com">davidcole00@gmail.com e

Vehicle Details:
MAKE: TOYOTA
MODEL: MR2
PRICE: £4000

Message:
Hello,
I am really interested in your car listed for sale on auto trader website.
I will like to know if you still have it for sale.
Are you the first owner?
Did you have all the paper work and the receipt of purchase for documentation?
What is your last asking and the present condition?
The area for the pick up and lastly the reason for offering it for sale.
Thanks and i look forward to hear from you today
Cheers
David


This e-mail is sent on behalf of Trader Media Group Limited, registered office: Trader Publishing Limited, Auto Trader House, Cutbush Park Industrial Estate, Danehill, Lower Earley, Reading, Berkshire RG6 4UT. Registered in England with company number 3909628. VAT number: GB 614891820. This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the sender.


________________________________________


This e-mail is sent on behalf of Trader Media Group Limited, Registered Office: Auto Trader House, Cutbush Park Industrial Estate, Danehill, Lower Earley, Reading, Berkshire, RG6 4UT(Registered in England No. 4768833). This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and may be legally privileged, and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the sender. This email message has been swept for the presence of computer viruses.

[Ilogik]

LoL, Had several of these, just ask them if you can sleep with their mother, it really confuses them.

[Fatbloater]

Also be aware of a fairly recent scam involving 'Yahoo buyer protection car sales scam from Spain'.

Essentially they are using Autotrader to advertise vehicles at very cheap prices and claim to ship to the UK.
They use Yahoo/MSN money transfer for transferring and robbing you of all your cash.

Hers the URL for more information :

http://cars.uk.msn.com/news/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=147865299

In essence....unless you see and drive a car pay for it.
Sounds simple but clearly people are falling for it.

[Anonymous]

had another one now saying they will pay by paypal thats a new one on me thought paypal was a trusted site

[Cobroulis]

Has anybody ever had some fun with this? In an email I got the "buyer" says that he is sure I cannot wait for 9 weeks  s:P s:P  Part of me wants to say I'd be glad to wait for such a great man...! I remember reading some topic in a forum, where somebody had received an email from someone who was planning a revolution in their home country where people are oppressed, asking to help transfer a gazillion monies to europe and get to keep half as a thank you gift, and he actually responded saying stupid things (such as "I too am planning a revolution in my country and we can rule the world" etc) and kept that going for a bit  s:P s:P

[AckersMR2]

Me and some mates from work once strung along "Ekatrina" who was a poor unfortunate and yet stunning young lady who had been let down by a cad of a man from Manchester who had devoted his love to her and she was at Moscow airport just about to come here to live with him when out of the blue he announced to her that he was happily married with children and had no intension of upping stick and moving in with her!..... The charlatan!
So we did what any honourable man would do and offered to send her the quite frankly small amount of $175 so that she could come to England to start a new life with Mike (our designated work colleague) who we told her was fortunately a millionaire.
To cut an already long story short, we strung her (him, whoever) along for a number of weeks each time dangling the money carrot in exchange for more and more risky photos, even telling them mike had a fetish for baked beans and got her to send a photo of her holding a plaque up saying "I luv baked beans" which was clearly photoshopped  s:lol: :lol: s:lol:
In the end they cottoned on and told us to leave them alone and that they were blocking our email address. It was most entertaining  s:lol: :lol: s:lol:

[The moneypit]

I'm in the process of tormenting one of these so called sellers.... he's advertising a car £14000 below book price and seriously thinks nobody would either care or notice.
All he's done is rob the previous owners pics and advertise on the 'free' car for sale sites, but is being vague about how long he's owned it etc.
Will post my results if they're worthy  s:) s:)

LATEST: Here's a recent reply I got from a scammer after enquiring about the above car... typically sh!te

Hello,

I'm very sorry for my delayed answer, but my work don't allow me to have access to the internet all day long. I'm pleased that you are interested of my car. I want to sell it because I do not use it no more due to my work. I have recently signed a 2 years contract to work in the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program who is a scientific research initiative that began work in 2004. From my point of view, this is not a car that you would leave it in your garage for 2 years, right ? The car is in good condition, has no technical damage and never been involved in any accident. I trust the condition of my car, and I am more than 100% that you will love it from the moment you take your first ride. The engine runs smoothly, great condition and well maintained. It has the title of ownership, cleared of any obligations or fees and comes with all the documents you need to register it onto your name. You will not have to pay additional taxes for this. I never smoked in the car as I am a non smoker. The car has full service history at dealer representative. Will come with Road TAX and MOT. I am the second owner. The selling price is so low because I need some cash asap due to some personal problems!

I'm currently located in Ireland and I have a busy schedule. Because of this I have requested personal support from eBay and I was approved to use eBay's Purchase Protection Program. The transaction will be managed by eBay Motors. I? affiliated to their program and since they offer the highest rate of safety and reliability during online transactions. I? going to sell the vehicle only by their service. If you are interested let me know and I will explain you how the deal works.

Thank you

I can't wait to view it.... just as soon as I've finished my study on the increasing decline of coconuts in Bermuda.   s:D s:D

[Abiwalker]

I just want to let you know about the paypal scam that someone tried on me.
I received a text message from someone asking for more information on the car, but asking me to reply to his email address.
I emailed him with lots of info and then got this reply:

Thanks for getting back to me, i just wanted to make sure nothing is been left out. I will be buying this for the price you have listed it for. Payment will be sent using PayPal and i will handle the PayPal surcharge as well. I will arrange with a shipping company to have this picked up at your location once i have paid as i am out of town at the moment. Am a marine engineer and due to the nature of my work, phone calls making are restricted and i can ONLY DEAL VIA PAYPAL,so you can send me your PayPal email account so that i can send the payment at once and its easy to sign up for one just log on to  m http://www.paypal.com/ m  i will be responsible for the pick up charges Note: i'll also include the Shipping company's fee so kindly Get back to me with your PayPal email account so i can proceed with the payment thanks
   

At first, I thought, GREAT! Sold my car. But the penny dropped after a minute. It just didn't feel right. Sounded too good to be true and a bit of an odd request. But I couldn't get my head around how he could take my money... PayPal is safe right?

Well, googled it and it has been done before, you send them your paypal address and you receive an email from what looks to be paypal, informing you the money has been transferred into your account (for the car and the shipping fees) and you need to follow the link in the email to pay the shipping company... And boom, you enter your information and they take what they want.

Cheeky buggers!

[normanh]

Had a pop up the other day saying it was Windows Fire Wall security alert and instructed me to phone a Sheffield number to get the pc unlocked. It effectively locked and frooze google chrome, was a bloody pain but easy enough to sort just ran Norton and that unlocked the browser, then closed the link - bloody scamming twats, have the number saved if anyones interested?

Norman

[cabbydave]

I sold a mr2 on Gumtree once and had a strange reply from Italy. everyone said it was a scam so I played the guy along but then he wanted to put money in my account as a deposit so I let him put money in a rarely used account. He then wanted to meet at the airport and pay me the rest of the money. I was still thinking it was a scam but he turned up on time payed the money and drove the SMT all the way back to Sicily.

[BahnStormer]

Crazy that these scams are still going nearly 20 years after I was first contacted by somebody on this, when I was selling my old E30  I wasn't scammed, I just miss the E30....

Not quite the same as described above, but the general premise was that he was buying a car on behalf of somebody else, who wasn't fussy, but just needed a good, working can and had already authorised a bankers draft for a few thousand more than the car was worth. I think I was asking £1750 and he had a draft for £4000.

He was happy to round up by a few hundred Pounds "for my understanding and inconvenience", but he'd need the balance refunded.

Having just done my FSA AML course (Financial Service Authority, Anti Money Laundering), I contacted the fraud and compliance department at my office and they explained how they try to do this: the bankers draft (bank guaranteed cheque) is honoured as it is an EU bank and you can withdraw/transfer the money immediately, but when they complete the clearing (normally 5 days later), the fraudulent bankers' draft is uncovered and the funds are withdrawn, potentially leaving you thousands of pounds in the red.

I was tempted to proceed, but tell them I'd withdrawn the money as cash and they'd have to collect it when they collected the car... but I was advised to just ignore it completely.

[Ardent]

had another one now saying they will pay by paypal thats a new one on me thought paypal was a trusted site

Glad I opened this thread.
Got something on gumtree and got the same paypal type message.
Regards other posts above, do not think a slight was intended against those where English is not their first language.
More a case of the scam emails just seem to have a certain flavour - structure -air about them.