a foreign car dealer wants to buy my car (advertised on web) and pay for it by bankers' draft only (cont'd)!!

Question

I am a victim of a scam and I have received now 3 different propositions from 'foreign dar dealers' who say they want to buy my car. I did believe the first one but the more I communicate with him and the more I realise it is all just a scam. Also you guys on Y/A have warned me that it might be so.

I have carried on emailing this 'potential buyer' and the story gets even more dodgier... they say they have a client in the UK who owes them £9000 and who paid that money in my account which should be cleared by Monday!! that I should deduct the price of my car and transfer the balance back to them!!!! all that and give away my car!!

now do you have any idea what I could give them as an answer please? they are s c u m and I want to get back to them with fireworks!!! (obviously they can still wait for my money to be transferred, it ain't going to happen!!)

Answer 1

Call the police.

They have probably gained access to someones account by PHISHING and need a third party to transfer the money to. YOU WILL LOSE EVERYTHING. Your car and the money, and they will have not only your car but the money you send them. Normally they target students for this sort of thing.

Your Bank will be able to trace the money source and alert the phishing victim that their account has been compromised.

If you get involved you are legally an accomplice - I was suprised to learn that too.

Answer 2

The scam is simpler than that. It's a favourite of Ebay scammers and it depends upon a strange quirk of British banking regulations. A bank cheque goes through two stages of authentification once it is credited to an account: "Sight of" authentification means that it can be seen to be a genuine bank cheque, draft or postal order. If it passes this stage banks can, and do, credit the funds to the receiving account. Then there is Vendor Authentification, which means the bank cheque is sent to the issuing bank for approval. These scumbags are experts at beautifully forging bank cheques and postal orders which will pass Sight Of authentification, but obviously it fails Vendor Authentification. By then - typically six weeks after the forged cheque was credited - you've withdrawn the money and sent the funds onto the scamming scum who sent it to you in the first place. The real killer here is that you are then going to be responsible for the unauthorised and very expensive overdraft on your account. Check the fine print on the paperwork you signed when you opened the account. The way around this scam is simple, too : tell the scammers that you will take their postal order/draft/cheque, but will not dispatch the goods until it has passed Vendor authentification. You'll never hear from them again.

Answer 3

It is probably a scam, but it could be genuine as a banker's draft is a convenient and cheap way to pay.

To be safe, tell them that you will deliver the car after "Vendor's Authentication" or they can pay by an "irrevocable letter of credit" on an American bank. If they do not accept, it is definitely a scam

Be careful not to give them any other details like date of birth, account numbers, telephone numbers etc as they can use them to impersonate you and clear your account out. The biggest scams now originate in Africa.

Answer 4

I have had the same thing when I sold my car on the net. Just leave the transfer in your account and notify the police. Tell them you will do as they have said but obviuosly don't. Also notify your bank. They can be traced but it is difficult and the police need all the details they can get including ISP addresses and bank details which they can obtain from you. This is becoming more and more common. Sorry this has happened and it is horrible.

Answer 5

I am glad you know it's a scam.

I live in the US, and people in my state are notorious for being naive and falling for all sorts of scams. This particular one has affected people in my community so frequently that it has been on the local news several times in the last six months.

What they advise you do is "string them along" and contact your state attorney general immediately. Your state attorney general (or the equivalent, if you live outside the US) will have a fraud division. One way of stalling them is to send an email telling them that your bank forces a 5-business day waiting period on money transfers over X amount of dollars, and that you then have to go to the bank and sign for it in person. Or, you can tell them that your bank requires 72-hour notice on transferring funds. Another way I have heard of stalling them is to tell them that you have contacted a shipping company, and they are scheduled to pick your car up on Tuesday, and that it will then be transported to the coast, and loaded in a freight container. The main thing is that you play along with them, and make them think that you are buying this baloney. You will need copies of all the emails for the attorney general's office. If I am not mistaken, once they are notified, they will handle it from there. That may involve giving them access to the email account in question, but that seems a small price to pay for busting some dishonest butt.

In one of the cases discussed on our nightly news, the person in question managed to get the state attorney general's office involved in enough time that they were able to trace the country of origin of the emails. I am not positive, but it seems like they involved the federal government in appealing to the nation hosting the scumbags to try and bust them.

So, your job is to make them think that you are going along with them until you can get the authorities involved. Because it is a weekend, and banks are closed, you should be able to stall them until Monday afternoon. Call your local authorities early Monday, so they can tell you how to proceed.

A bonus to this is that sometimes the crooks are operating from the US, which makes catching them and busting them a bit easier for the US authorities. They just act like they are in a foreign country, usually with help from confederates on foreign soil, but the actual scammers are in the US.

So play along like the nice little fool they would like you to be. Act like an idiot until you can get the authorities involved. And get back at them by bringing the ire of a US law enforcement agency down on them but good.

Good luck!

Answer 6

Give full details to police.Ask the police if they intend to act.If you do not get a straight answer write a letter stating all details of this Scam,the police station where you gave your information,time,date,name of officer to whom you spoke,his rank if you know it.Send your letter recorded delivery to the chief constable of your area asking what can be done and why his officer failed to take the matter seriously.

Answer 7

I really do hope you DID NOT give them your account #..If so go to the bank ASAP tell them what is going on and get it changed to a new account!!! You are being scamed....don't answer any more of thier mail .

Answer 8

tell them NO. if you gave them personal information, change your bank accounts and check your credit report etc. to see if they have used your name for other things.

someone got my debit card number from a company used by stores where i live and my life was upside down for a while. it will work out but tell them no to anything else.

Answer 9

give them nothing.... i have heard of this before. if you go to the citizen advise burou, you will be able to speak to a solicitor free of charge and they should be able to draft you a letter advising this company on what they should be doing and they will be able to advise you so you dont get ripped off. good luck

Answer 10

how unimaginitive - it must work from time to time.

go see mr plod at your local police station (bet they can't be bothered)