BEWARE of scammers on Craigslist – Don’t Get Taken

Unless you’ve been living  in a cave somewhere just east of Siberia for the past year and a half, you’re probably at least somewhat familiar with Craigslist by now.

Craigslist is a website that allows anyone to post items for sale and they don’t charge any membership fees, listing fees, or selling fees.  Great deal, eh?  Yes and no.  While it gives you an opportunity to sell your items and provides you with national exposure that you probably wouldn’t get if you advertised in the local paper  — it also opens you up to the skilled and seasoned scam artists of the world.

Scammers love Craigslist and the best ones make a good living off of the website by preying on gullible victims.  It’s been said before, but I think it needs to be said again … “if it sounds too good to be true — it probably is”.

One of our sales guys recently posted his personal vehicle for sale on Craigslist and he got a response asking if the truck was still available.  He replied to the email saying that it was available and he got back the following email response: 

Thanks for the swift response…I am willing to buy it now kindly get
back to me with your last price also if possible i will like to see
some more pictures for it and know the condition..But due to the
nature of my job and location…i will not be able to come for
inspection,am a very busy type as i work long hours everyday,i have
gone through your advertisement and i am satisfied with it. As for the
payment..i will be paying you via the fastest and secure way to pay
online(PayPal).I have a private courier agent that will come for the
pick up after the payment have been made …so no shipping
included.You can send me your PayPal email so i can pay in right away
and also include your address in your reply.If you don’t have a pay
pal account, you can easily set up one…log on to  www.pay pal.co.nz
and sign up. its very easy. I await your reply asap.

Now this was suspicious because:

1)  The buyer didn’t provide a phone number.

2) The buyer said that he wouldn’t be able to come here to pick up the vehicle.

3) The web address he provided for PayPal was not the real Paypal address.

Furthermore, when we copied the potential buyer’s email message and then pasted it into the Google Search Engine, we found that this same message had been used verbatim on many occasions by — you guessed it — a Scam Artist.

As the Craigslist community grows, we urge you to be overly cautious whether you are buying or selling something on their website.  The website is a great tool, but like every great thing — there will always be evil-minded individuals out there who will throw ethics completely out the window and try to wield it for their own gain.

If you are new to Craigslist, we advise you to never communicate with anyone who fails or refuses to provide you with their phone number.  If they don’t have access to a phone, then 99.9% of the time it’s a scam waiting to happen. 

Our salesman didn’t fall for the scam that was afoot and we hope that you aren’t tripped up either when confronted with a similar situation.