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motorcycle_jack's avatar
motorcycle_jack
Explorer II
Jul 23, 2015

Sophisticated acam going around

Well I'm selling my 5th wheel (DRV). I was contacted by a very articulate person saying they had read my ad and was very interested in my unit. What was my lowest price and where could they see it. So I told them the price and that it was located in Florida. He said he was in Canada on business but would return to Lititz, Pa soon where he lived. At that time he would send me a cashiers check and could we then meet to go over the unit and he would then have his transporter move it. So my hair went up. Where do you live in Lititz? I live just 10 miles away for 20 years. My son is a police officer in Lancaster and can stop by so you know I'm legit. Who do you work for? Since you are going to the bank to get a cashiers check why not do a wire transfer? Safer and protects him from fraud via banking laws. Well never heard from him again. Wonder why ???
  • You probably haven't sold many higher ticket items if you thought that was a "Sophisticated" scam or anything close to being a "new" scam.

    They will change their fake location, names, and occupations, but it is the same scam. About one out of five of these crooks that have contacted me claim to be active military, which really burns me.
  • I still have the check they overnight ed to me four years ago.
    I told them I will give difference to their transporter.
    Never did see their transporter.
  • I had a s&b on the market a few years ago and almost immediately received an offer of 1/2 of my asking price, wanted all of my contents left, and wanted me to finance it at a rate half of the market rate of the time. My realtor would not respond to his offer the way I wanted to. I wanted her to send him a two word response and the second word was YOU. We settled on a response that was double my original asking price, no contents, and no financing and closing must be in 30 days.

    That was the end of that "Offer".
  • The real lowlifes try to tell you they're a serviceman headed overseas and need to get this transaction taken care of before they leave. Real bottom feeders.
  • That sounds normal for Craigslist. That and even when the goofball is local they still want to ask if you will come down on the price but haven't even looked at it.

    I hope you aren't in a rural area like me. There is so little money here that it's hard to sell anything. I had a garage sale and one person wanted to look inside the house and a few others just stopped to see if they could have all the stuff that was left over and wanted to know when the sale was over.

    keep being cautious, there are tons of con artists out there.
  • These low-lifes have no limit on how low they will stoop. I was selling a $500.00 guitar on Craigslist and got the typical scam response wanting to send me a cashiers check for $750.00. I was to let his agent have the guitar and the extra $250.00 for his handling and shipping.

    A few years ago when selling a 5er, I got the same sort of deal offered.

    You can't be too careful buying or selling anything any more.

    Ken
  • That sounds pretty generic. That's the way I've seen most of them work: cashier's check that bounces in a couple weeks, and you're SOL. It's just amazing that people still fall for this after all the publicity about how this scam works.

    But I guess the Nigerian scam works enough to keep it going, and that seems totally unbelievable.