WARNING – Car Buying Scam
This advert could seriously damage your wealth – How NOT to sell your car
A couple of months ago I decided to sell my car and as it was an MG, I offered it for sale on the specialist MG web pages. There were a couple of enquiries from “tyre kickers”, including one who actually showed up, but no serious buyers.
I decided to widen my market and offered the car nationally on the Internet. Almost immediately I had an email from a Nigerian “businessman” – this along with the next 25 such emails went straight to the trashcan.
A couple of possibly genuine enquiries followed then I received an email from a car dealer who claimed to be travelling around buying cars – nothing particularly unusual or alarming there. His written English and his grammar was not good; but again, not enough to ring any alarm bells.
A few emails back and forth followed with questions about the car and an offer to buy once the car had been viewed and approved. So far so good, I thought and then I received an email enquiring if I had any objection to his using a shipper to view the car on his behalf and make any payment directly to me on the behalf of the car dealer. This began to ring an alarm bell in my brain – I was sure I had read something about this somewhere but I couldn’t quite remember where.
OK, I thought, maybe this shipper does do some of the legwork for the car dealer, but somehow it just didn’t feel right so I waited to see what would happen next.
A couple of days later an email arrived asking if I had received his payment. Remember, at this stage, no one had actually been to view the car. I didn’t think any more about it until a courier package arrived for me. I wasn’t expecting anything, but I was curious, so I opened it to find a cheque for £7,500. This was ten times the amount I was asking for the car!
Now the alarm bells were ringing loud and clear – I was certain this was a car fraud and by now I had remembered where I had seen the warning and this fitted the modus operandi almost perfectly.
The cheque, which had been drawn on a major UK bank, looked genuine enough. However, there was no covering letter and the senders details were illegible, as was the signature on the cheque, which purported to be a business cheque.
A telephone call to directory enquiries suggested no listing for the company named on the cheque. However, a few other checks from various other sources confirmed that the company does in fact exist. Further enquiries revealed that the cheque had been sent from Lagos in Nigeria via Heathrow and thus onto me.
Needless to say I won’t be attempting to cash this dubious cheque and my car was subsequently sold to a genuine UK MG enthusiast who bought it in the traditional way!
Some of these emails are an obvious ploy to part you from your car and your cash but worryingly others are not. I was lucky because I have been made aware of these scams. These fraudsters are clever and a lot of people could be, and in fact a large number may already have been, conned in this way.
The details of this cheque and the packaging it came in have been sent to police fraud squad officers to see if they can catch these con men, but I hold out little hope that they will be caught.
Roger Parker at Club HQ also received an enquiry about a car and the fraudster was totally outraged when told he was a con man and did he think he had just fallen off the top of a Christmas Tree!
Normally the warning is “Buyer Beware” but in this case and I suspect in many others, it’s definitely “Seller Beware”.
This warning has appeared on the MGM classified pages, and has also been highlighted at various times in ‘Enjoying MG’, so my thanks to all for their vigilance and I am sure they will approve of me adding my warning to theirs.
DHL package
Warning:
Please beware of fraudsters who may contact you when you place a classified advert. A typical one is for the fraudster to send you a cheque for an amount greater than the car’s value and then ask you to send a refund. When you try to cash their cheque it bounces. This is one of many typical ‘Nigerian’ based scams.
Here is another along the same lines:
- A cheque is sent to you (often in a foreign currency or from another country)
- You bank it.
- 4-5 days later the cheque clears.
- You transfer some money to a bank account to pay for shipping etc.
- The guy who is going to pick up the car gets delayed and can’t come for another couple of weeks.
So far everyone is happy then the coup de gras. - Your bank then informs you that the original cheque has been rejected due to it being counterfeit etc.
Hopefully this article will help to prevent anyone else being defrauded out of either their precious car and/or their hard-earned cash.
A concerned MG Owner
Another variation
I had noticed various warnings of this car buying scam on the web link and there were many common themes with the correspondence that I had been sent by my bogus purchaser, including the Fed Ex packaging so I have listed the details below:
- The cheque was drawn against “Oxford University, 42 St Andrews Sq, Edinburgh”. It is a very good fake, but the Oxford / Edinburgh clash was another alert.
- All arrived in a white envelope marked Cole John 20 Western Av, Maryland. This was inside the Fed Ex package with senders details of “Greatking Sheriff, 1103 Evan Crescent, Maryland IOS, NIG”. The Maryland, IOS part appears to be common across these scams. The Fraud squad DC who visited me advised that under no circumstances should anyone ever give account and sort code details to anyone claiming they will pay the money directly into the sellers account. These “gentlemen” have a way of stripping the bank account that the banks either can’t or won’t stop.
We live and learn…
Eamonn from Glasgow