Why do people put fake Autotrader and Craigslist Ads?

[baljet]

I've been looking for used cars and have been noticing ads that are either clearly fake or suspected fake. What gives them away is the price which is usually way too low compared to what the car generally goes for. Often there is no phone number and email contact results in no reply.

Why do people do this? Is it an attempt to drive down the market prices?

[Frostybunny]

Most likely trying to run a scam of some sort


There is no Tapatalk, only Zuul

[phill0046]

Scammers gonna scam

[baljet]

How does the scam work?

[Live-Wire]

Maybe they've never heard of the crime of fraud/false advertisement

Scammers always are around, they probably want you to provide them with a PayPal transfer or something before they deliver the car. When I was selling a few cars on Autotrader I was contacted by a few people who gave almost no details, but were adament they wanted to buy the car sight unseen using PayPal. Sorry pal, no cash in hand delivered by a real person = no car. It's a good rule to live by.

[VadGTI]

How does the scam work?

US Army officer's widow/missionary/businessperson must sell the car immediately as the officer was killed/they are moving somewhere else/are in Europe/etc. You cannot see the car (it's inla different state/country) but they'll ship the car to you at their cost (if you're not happy, ship it back with pin 7 days) and the transaction will be covered eBay/PayPal/Autotrader buyer's protection. Now, please send a Western Union transfer for the sale price to us, thank you. Come on, you know you want this $3,000 E46 M3!

Preying on the gullible and greedy, who don't realize that shipping a car on an airplane (often Luftansa) and offering to send it back if not satisfied will cost 10x the price the car is advertised at.

Sent from a rotary-dial phone using Edna the Small Town Operator

[Fe2O3]

US Army officer's widow/missionary/businessperson must sell the car immediately as the officer was killed/they are moving somewhere else/are in Europe/etc. You cannot see the car (it's inla different state/country) but they'll ship the car to you at their cost (if you're not happy, ship it back with pin 7 days) and the transaction will be covered eBay/PayPal/Autotrader buyer's protection. Now, please send a Western Union transfer for the sale price to us, thank you. Come on, you know you want this $3,000 E46 M3!

Preying on the gullible and greedy, who don't realize that shipping a car on an airplane (often Luftansa) and offering to send it back if not satisfied will cost 10x the price the car is advertised at.

I would say it's amazing that this scam works, but working in a bank for several years exposed me to a segment of customers that would fall for ANYTHING. Unreal.

[BODH1]

The prince of Nigeria needs my help quite often.

[deagle]

How does the scam work?

basically, with a too-good-to-be-true price, it requires/prompts for a small deposit (which the victim never gets back)

this is RAMPANT on CL

[joe97]

Why are most Facebook accounts fake?

[McBanagon]

I've been looking for used cars and have been noticing ads that are either clearly fake or suspected fake. What gives them away is the price which is usually way too low compared to what the car generally goes for. Often there is no phone number and email contact results in no reply.

Why do people do this? Is it an attempt to drive down the market prices?

Welcome to the internet.

[BRealistic]

basically, with a too-good-to-be-true price, it requires/prompts for a small deposit (which the victim never gets back)

this is RAMPANT on CL

And just like with email spam and telemarketing, they wouldn't do it if there weren't people that fell for it.
Don't blame the player, blame the idiots that keep falling for them scams enough to make them keep doing it.

[sortadelux]

I had a guy hack my Craigslist account and post cars for sale in the Seattle CL. $2000 for a 2010 Jeep because his work transfered him out of town and he had to sell it now. Claimed he was in ATL and another deal fell through after leaving a deposit so all he needed was 2k. I would see these posts show up saying my CL post was active for things that I never posted. So I started replying to them, asking to arrange to meet him to look at the cars. After dodging a couple of these attempts, I just told him to GTFO my account or I'd go internet bully all over his ass. Never saw another post on my account.

[lowredcabrio]

If you really don't like someone, you put their phone number on an out of this world ad...

[leaftye]

Often there is no phone number and email contact results in no reply.

Why do people do this? Is it an attempt to drive down the market prices?

If they can't be contacting, they're trolling. Why do people troll here? Probably for the same reasons people troll CL. One reason they keep doing it: it works.

[miatafreak]

If you really don't like someone, you put their phone number on an out of this world ad...

Like an ad for a hundred yards of free copper wire that just needs to be removed from my lawn...

[zmt]

If they can't be contacting, they're phishing.

FTFY. Now the bot that placed the ad has a brand new email address to sell to spammers.

[This is my username]

If you really don't like someone, you put their phone number on an out of this world ad...

THIS. My friends and I mess with eachother all the time on CL.

I put a pair of tickets to a NY Giants game for a low price and used my friends phone number in the ad.

The tickets never existed, it was priceless and a game in it's own trying to keep a straight face when he would mention the endless amount of people asking about tickets he never had.

[geofftii2002]

[WakusPakus]

[Fritz27]

I would say it's amazing that this scam works, but working in a bank for several years exposed me to a segment of customers that would fall for ANYTHING. Unreal.

I read something somewhere that the scams are intentionally stupid/obvious because the scammer wants to find the stupidest possible people to scam. They know that if it seems to realistic there will be smarter people that will catch on quicker to the scam than really dumb people.

[Mtl-Marc]

Scammers gonna scam

This.

[baljet]

I didn't say it was true. I also don't think some are scammers because they don't respond to contact attempts. So they could be people who are posting fake ads with cheaper prices so that when they go to buy a car they can point to that ad to help bargain.

[Fe2O3]

I read something somewhere that the scams are intentionally stupid/obvious because the scammer wants to find the stupidest possible people to scam. They know that if it seems to realistic there will be smarter people that will catch on quicker to the scam than really dumb people.

That's probably a good move for the scammers. Cuts way down on time wasted on people that have any shred of suspicion.
I actually had to argue with some of our customers that they were being scammed or had been scammed AFTER the fact. They didn't even comprehend what had happened after it was over. I tried to stop some from wiring money out, so they took cash with them and went to Western Union.

[TM87]

Like an ad for a hundred yards of free copper wire that just needs to be removed from my lawn...

We done this. My friend had to change his phone number.

I called a guy once about a car and his voice mail stated " Im not selling the xxyyy car, stop calling."

[vr6vdub97]

The prince of Nigeria needs my help quite often.

No it's cool he emailed me too, I am going to help him

[CHABER]

just troll them.

a friend of mine trolled a scammer pretty bad for a few weeks. made them send countless fake checks using next day air delivery ($$). i could only laugh when he showed me the conversations.

[clutchrider]

About 7 years ago I sold my 02 Civic EX Coupe on Cars.com within a week of posting. I tried the same with my Matrix last fall and was left with fake calls, fake emails, and loads of scams. I finally gave up, put a sign on it and parked it on the lawn. Sold it that way in a week.

I've given up on the internet to find a car unless it would be something like say CarMax. We have something around here called the Bargain News but it's online site is a complete farce and everyone on there is a joke.

The best is when people cannot even put a decent picture of the car (granted they may not want to because of it's condition) but I don't even bother with ads that do not depict the car, and 90% of the time if it's a dealer of some sort, they throw up a "file photo". OOOOO it looks so shiny.

Internet and used cars