Over on the Classifieds section of the Classic Nation website I often see cars that look solid and are being offered at a reasonable price. Every now and then I see some really great deals on project cars. But – it’s rare to stumble on something that looks like a finished car at a project car price. Here is what I saw:
The posting for this car listed some details about the car. $5,000 was the asking price.
I knew the $5K price had to either be a typo, or a scammer. So – I sent an email to the person who listed the car. I had done this once before when, on a popular class car classified website, I saw a $12,000 ’65 Cobra for sale and sent an email. The response I got about the Cobra clearly indicated it was a scammer. For this Mustang, I already expected this to be the case.
This is an unedited email thread between myself and the person who listed this car:
Always be cautious when purchasing items from private parties online and do your research. Hopefully you never have to deal with a scammer like this. If you find yourself in a similar situation, please, please, PLEASE mess with them (and hopefully they become better people because of it).
23 Comments
Scott Taylor
Good job catching him out, Evan.
As for the car, what a shame it wasn’t really $5000, beautiful classic.
rick McCormack
It is a really nice car. I did the finish build and owned it. Would love to get it back
James
You can add one more to the list. The dude sent email saying I would like to look at the car and if it was as good in person as the pics, I would buy it on the spot. Received email back stating that the car was already with a shipper and I could not preview. The conditions of the sale would be I pay the shipper and they would deliver the car and I would have 3-30 days to inspect and test the car before funds were released to the buyer. If I was not happy, the shipper would refund my money. Sounded good to me, but upon contact with the shipper they would only take a bank transaction – even though their web site listed VISA and other credit cards. This sounded suspicious to me, so I investigated the shipper further. Discovered their web servers were located in Berlin, Germany and had only been on line for 10 days 19 hours. Fed this info back to the seller who indicated that the shipper was a sub of a larger company which he dealt with. Investigated the “larger company” only to find that there was no information available other than their web site. The spooky part was that the shipper started communicating with me directly. At one point they indicated they were listed with the BBB – I couldn’t find them there and informed them. From that point the communications became more weird. Apparently the seller had a direct line to the shipping company because I was getting feedback from both on Sunday when the shipping company was closed. In the end I informed the buyer I would be contacting the authorities to report it as a scam, at which point he threatened to sue me. This may not be a scam, but I would certainly not provide any information to these people with bank information.
Classic Nation
Good catch, James. We are removing that post. Please let us know if you see anything else suspicious on the site.
sophia
Yep. I’m familiar with these scams. I don’t think there has been any other type of online scam that pissed me off more than these types. I seem to remember a friend telling me a story about getting revenge on them by sending them a package with bodily fluids. Back to the main topic though… has anyone dealt with a place in New Braunfels called A&E Classic Cars? I’m in San Clemente, CA. and thinking of driving down there to buy one.
Steve Vigus
This was hilarious. Thanks for sharing the full text. I went through this a few years ago and it really pissed me off. My only recourse was waste a bunch of the scammer’s time. Fortunately you were not one of the stupid suckers who fall for these.