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First of all, what is an escrow company? Why do I care?
Legitimate escrow companies, commonly used when buying a house, are trusted third parties who hold the money until the goods are received by you the buyer. The escrow tracks the product when it ships and verifies delivery to you the buyer. Once you accept delivery and your inspection period ends, the escrow pays the seller. eBay recommends purchases over $500 use an escrow. eBay uses an exclusive escrow service through Escrow.com, a licensed, audited escrow company incorporated in California. Slick fraudulent escrow sites appear legit and are run by fake "sellers". You never get your product.
How Fake Escrow Scams Operate: The scheming "sellers" have ads on Yahoo Motors, AutoTrader, Craigs List, eBay Auctions, eBay Motors, every known vehicle and motorcycle classifieds site, Amazon Z-Shops, etc. This Internet fraud has become an epidemic, but you need not be paranoid, just be prepared. Here's how the fraud works. You are buying a used car (or other product) on eBay, Autotrader.com, CycleTrader.com, Yahoo Classifieds, etc., and you see a hot BMW or Mini Cooper, or Camry, or Mercedes, or Harley Davidson whose selling price is much lower than other listings for the same item. So you ask the seller a question. The seller replies with a "Dear Sir" form letter, rarely do they mention your name, it's all scripted. It usually has poor grammar and spelling too. He wants you to use a particular escrow site, "he's used them many times already." He is offering to pay shipping for the car! Do you know how much shipping is on a car across the U.S.? It's usually about $900. And he's giving it to you for free? That's Red Flag #1. Take a look at this sample scammer email below with grammar and spelling errors. Red Flag #2.
Actual email we got from a scammer on Yahoo Autos
To: Reply to Yahoo!Autos Ad
Subject: Re: Reply to ad: 2004 BMW M3, posted on Yahoo! Autos[/font]
Hello,
Thank you for your interest in purchasing my BMW M3.The car price is only 12500 USD and the price inclued all the shipping taxes.The car is regesterid in U.S. but located in London U.K. whit me and my family becouse i am in U.S. Marine serving our country here in London.After i finish the mision here i want to spend the rest of my life in London.The title is clear that way you will not have any problems to regesterid in your name.Since this is an over seas purchase and in order for both parts to be safe we will use a third party to make this deal.The car will be shipped by Luftransa Air Cargo and she will be delivred at your home address in 8 days.I will send you whit the car the Title in original and the Bill Of Sale
Email me back ASAP if you are realy interested to my beutiful car.
Kind regards
Notice how they don't address you by name, they leave it generic, because they are using a script. What a moron scammer. Let's see, the last time I tried to fly just myself to the UK on Lufthansa Air, it was $600. And "she" is going to fly a BMW to my house for free on "Laughtansa!" I don't know who is more foolish here, the scammer for actually thinking someone will fall for that line, or the fool who actually falls for that line.
You'll discover later via a WHOIS search that the escrow site you were told to use was only created the week before, hence the liar could not have used them several times. Like a fool, you register a new escrow account at the online escrow site that the seller recommended, usually a polished looking site. See our screen shots further down. The escrow sites list "license numbers" with the state. Some generously sprinkle official looking logos from the BBB, Verisign Secure, TRUSTe, and Internet Fraud Complaint Center! Some fake escrows are brazen and warn you about internet fraud, and even link to the Internet Fraud Complaint Center! Most fake escrows falsely claim Copyright 1999 or 2000 to appear they have been around a while. Feeling secure, you send your $28,000 to the escrow company and lose it forever.
You never hear from the "seller" again. He walks away from his Yahoo email box that he created for this scam, does not answer the throw away cell phone he stole to act as his phone number, and any emails to the escrow site go unanswered, because they just walked away from it and setup the next phony escrow already.
Fake escrows herd you into 3 payment methods:
Payment Type #1: Makes you pay via Western Union cash transfer usually to Spain or Italy (real bad move, never pay for auctions with WU!)
Payment Type #2: Makes you unknowingly send payment into the E-Gold, or E-Bullion networks, EvoCash or E-Dinar type currency transfers.
Payment Type #3: Makes you wire payment directly from your checking account to what you think is the "escrow company's" bank account.
Hey, stupid! Let me get this straight. You're going to blindly use the escrow service the seller tells you to use without basic verifications? That's like letting a real estate agent choose your property attorney. You're not going to verify the escrow site's license with your state? Or call the phone number and talk to a human first? Takes 5 minutes! You're going to Western Union $8,000 to someone you don't know? Do you really believe some idiot in the Netherlands is really going to pay the transport charges and fees to get your car to the U.S.? You're not going to verify the escrow site's usually non-working phone number? I have a better idea. I'm going to send you a postage prepaid box with my address on it. Just stick your wallet and your checkbook in the box and mail it back to me. Wouldn't you rather give all your money to me, someone you like, rather than deal with the heartache of knowing you got scammed in a car fraud by some overseas scammer? Let's turn you into a donkey.
CarBuyingTips.com ALERT: Many scammers claim they will pay shipping and transport charges, even from Germany or Switzerland! That's what lures in the suckers. Don't fall for this. It costs $900 to ship a car across the U.S. I don't know any seller who would pay for shipping a car. Use your head.
CarBuyingTips.com ALERT: Western Union, E-Gold, and MoneyGram are NOT appropriate methods of paying for auction purchases, or any type of escrow. Western Union is for you to send cash to your drunk jobless loser brother when he runs out of crack and needs to borrow money for "rent". Sometimes the scammers send you a fake email "from eBAy", telling you it's safe to use Western Union. eBay would never in a million years tell you this. In fact, eBay warns users NOT to use Western Union to pay for auctions.
The Dirty Dozen Common Fake Escrow Site Designs
There are many designs of escrow frauds you'll encounter, but these screen shots below are the 12 most common fake escrow designs we shut down. Once we get them shutdown, they usually carbon copy the site design over to a new name and start all over again days later, like the Whack A Mole games at the carnival. We have shut down over 600 fake escrow sites. The dirty dozen escrow frauds below have appeared over 50 times each under various domain names. Study these fake escrow screen shots, see how slick they look. If the other party tells you to use a site that looks like these, it's a scam for sure, no question about it, no doubt at all.
CarBuyingTips.com ALERT: Escrow sites with the word "Safe" or Secure" in their name are neither safe, nor secure
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Topic: Is This Guy Trying To Screw Me Over? (Read 211 times)