Scam Warning!!!
Overseas Buyers
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There have been several incidents where ads posted on this board have been targeted by scam artists. Please do not become a victim of this.
The message received frequently indicates that the sender is a car dealer in Nigeria or Saudi Arabia or some other exotic locale, but recently European countries have been showing up as well. It is generally obvious that English is not their first language, but the grammer has been improving lately. The maessage goes on to say that they want to buy your car and they have a contact in the USA who owes them money. They offer to have this American contact send a cashier's check (counterfeit) or wire the money to your bank. Of course the amount is more than you are asking for your car so they want you to send the surplus on to them. They don't ask any questions about the car (they really don't care).
Beware of these scams. The premise behind this scam is that most US banks will automatically clear the funds after two weeks, whether or not they get a clearance from the source bank. Many of them will clear a cashier's check in 24 hours. People believe they have the funds (i.e. the check cleared) and then the bank withdraws the money a month later. It makes no difference that you were acting in good faith!
Closing the account is not a good option as the bank will try to charge you with fraud, even though the issue was caused by their automatic check clearing. The amount that you lose is enough to hurt your personal finances severely, but not enough to interest the FBI.
Internet car ads can be dangerous. Unfortunately, about the only thing that I can do is to warn you.
Here are a couple links to more information on internet scams:
www.Scambusters.org/
www.Fraud.org
If you have any questions, please
email David Lieb.
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