ScamAlert! Online Car Sales & 'Advance Fee Fraud' (a tale in two parts): Part Two

Seriously, he like emails me ALL the time! ©

PART TWO

(for Part One of this story, click here):

Thankfully, we got wise to what was planned for us. We'll forward any more correspondence we get from our fraudster to PayPal's fraud reporting division. But the frightening thing is how close we came to getting stung. And it really can happen to anyone - obvious as the scam may seem from the description above, it wasn't at the time. Like any busy couple, only one of us was monitoring the transaction. Mrs Higherthanexpectedcallvolumes isn't stupid; she's just the two things current scam artists trade on - busy, and trusting.

Police and consumer affairs bureaus in several Australian states have recently issued warnings about this scam, as have online car sales sites.

Similar scams currently seem to abound covering all manner of online buying and selling (on Ebay and Craigslist, for example). Online scams involving people offering to sell fake cars are also reportedly on the rise.

In summary of those warnings and our own experience, some pointers to avoid getting caught in similar situations:

*reveal as little as possible about yourself on your car or other online sale ad;

*as far as possible, only use PayPal to transact sales and purchases (not your own bank account details);

*offers to deposit more than the agreed purchase price of an item are almost certainly indicators of a SCAM.

*never pay anyone you don't know anything via Western Union. Legitimate people and businesses have PayPal accounts.

*If you work out you're involved in a possible scam, forward all correspondence to the fraud section of PayPal or other site you're selling through, and cease all correspondence with the fraudster. Odds are they're running many other scams at the same time, and will quickly tire of contacting you if you're not going to be a good mark.

*in the case of car sales, think seriously about dealing only with people who actually come to see the car, with contact details you can verify.

Oh, and maybe, think about that less-than-market-value trade-in after all...

UPDATE: Mrs. Higherthanexpectedcallvolumes ended up selling the car successfully, and the old fashioned way: to a real live human being who came to our place to test drive the car. Mind you, he did pay in cash. Will let you know if it turns out to be counterfeit.