Craigslist Scams

Thanks scottalot. Title changed.

 

First off, if no one has heard of 419eater.com, I highly suggest checking it out. Be prepared to lose a couple hours of productivity in your day, however.

I may have, a while back, made a "hobby" out of leading scammers on. It's time consuming but can be pretty fun because deep down, most of the scammers out there are one braincell away from being a sea slug.

I had a guy going for 2 weeks at least thinking I was a wealthy british man named "Wedge Antilles". I ever created a separate gmail account, spoofed my IP address and used tools to tell me when he opened and read the messages about shit I straight made up. The point was to waste their time so they wouldn't be actively scamming a real sucker.

As far as craigslist goes, I've had some very positive results. Sold several things and had people come to the house (not before vetting them, making sure I wasn't alone and was indeed packing).
To be honest, now a days I would not tell people where I lived but I'm older and wiser now, so...

I tried to sell my old Ford 2013 Fusion on CL. Got very little response except for one gal that asked if she could take over my payments. I said hell to the FUCK no on that.

Best Craigslist purchase though?

I'm driving it now:

 

Still wouldnt. There are ways to cancel or place stop pay on cashiers checks regardless of regulations. With an affidavit you can still do it

 

The only time I've had my payment accepted as check is when it's a check from my bank and both the seller and I go to their bank and they deposit it right then and there. I've done that twice when buying trucks on CL and they never had a problem with it.

 

The check writer could stop the check after the fact.

 

I procurred my loan from Navy Federal Credit Union and both sellers banked with them. First guys cashed it on the spot ($6500), and the second guy just deposited it like normal.

 

I generally meet legitimate buyers and sellers on Craigslist. But at times, right from the get go, it's obvious the person on the other end of the deal is a scammer. Contacted a lady about a 2014 Yamaha XT250 she supposedly had for sale a couple of hours away from my place. The price was more than right and the bike looked great with very low miles on it. Told her I'd make the drive, cash in hand, meet her across the state line in NM, buy the bike, load it on my trailer and head back home. At which she apologized, saying her home was in NM but she was in the Air Force, stationed in Hawaii, and was being transferred to Germany, which necessitated the sale of her motorcycle.

Told me she would crate the bike and send it aboard a military cargo plane to Luke AFB west of Phoenix, where I could pick it up. All I had to do was send the money for the bike and she'd do the rest..... Yeah...

Told her that while she 'might' actually be a legitimate seller, she sounded way too much like someone running a scam. And that's the last I heard from her!..

 

This reminds me of a Two and a Half Men episode of Manny Quinn.

 

Another CL story was when my family did get scammed hard...

The ex-wife really wanted a dog. Like, badly. I finally agreed but said she had to handle getting one. At first we were going to get a shelter dog but after a bad experience with an adoption that didn't go well (TL;DR: dog turned out to be psycho so we had to return it), she opted to look for "bred" dogs... on Craigslist.

Long story short, we found a puppy from a lady that was selling "labradoodles" for $150 each. Ex met the lady in phoenix, got the dog and brought it home. Pup was super little, like maybe 6 weeks.
I'm not a vet or someone that knows much about dogs (guess which type of person I am) so I didn't know what a "labradoodle" puppy looked like...

Well, the ex started getting suspicious and started searching online for pics of labradoodle puppies and when the one we had didn't look like it, she decided to check "pitbull puppies" and BAM, we figured out we were screwed.

The ex texted the lady asking about it and the lady denied everything. Sent us some pics of the mom dog which was definitely the right breed.
I got curious at this point because I could tell something was off and reverse google image searched the sent pic and sure enough, it was something the seller copied and sent to us.

When we called out the seller she completely changed her tune and literally -I'm not even exaggerating here- sent us a text back that said,

"Haha whatever u dumbass I'm keeping the money it's your fucking dog now LOL"

We got completely scammed. Of course doing a quick search "craigslist dog scam" came up with tons of stories of the same thing. Felt really stupid and pretty angry at that point but there was literally nothing we could do.

Since the ex was weird about pitbulls we ended up relisting the puppy with the full story and disclosure that it was at the very least a pitbull mix and ended up giving away for free to a really nice family with older kids (ours were 6 and 2 at the time) who didn't care what kind of breed he was.

We contacted the local news station and had the chance to get interviewed but the ex decided not to at the last minute.

The happy ending was that a couple weeks later the ex's mom was looking in the paper and found someone selling puppies that were from a Aussie/Border Collie mix litter and for 25 bucks (cost of shots), we got an awesome dog that lives with the ex today (I kept the cats, she kept the dog... I called it a fair trade).

Moral of the story is: If you soon-to-be-ex-wife wants to get a dog, either pay up for a legit breeder or just adopt from a shelter because craigslist is super sketchy.

 

Roommate selling an older datsun z , with his back against the wall as he was moving abroad a couple of days later. These 2 shady looking guys come and look at the car and when it was time to test drive it would not start. It was in a street sweeping and neighborhood permit parking zone and my roomie had no funds for a tow or parking tickets. Accepted a greatly reduced price. As the guys were towing the car away I saw them stop, jump out, pop the hood and correct whatever they had disabled. Unhooked the tow strap and zoomed off.

 

I've had my fair share of Craigslist adventures. The best one by far had to be when I helped my buddy pick up a big flatscreen tv. He had some little g35 coupe that couldn't carry a watermelon so we took the taco. The lady said she would meet us at a gas station at the beltway and 249 I said no problem as the Tacoma has an outlet in the bed of the truck for electronics. We are sitting at the gas station and he keeps calling her and she's not answering so I'm getting pissed off. Finally she answers and says turn left out of the gas station and turn right into the neighborhood. After we get there we asked what's your address and she says she doesn't want to tell us and that she lives in a house with a red car on the driveway. Every other house in that shit put had a red car in the driveway so now I'm even more pissed. We eventually find the place and we go inside this shit ridden piss factory of a house and they have no floors. Just concrete. The tv is still bolted to the wall. Now I'm even more pissed. I go out to the truck and get a screwdriver to loosen the Phillips clamps that hold the tv to the wall mount. My buddy hands her the cash and she busts out that stupid fake money checker pen. Like I'm really gonna scam you. We take the tv off the wall load it in the truck and go home.

Another one was for a motorcycle. We were looking for a bike and we found a 2009 cbr600rr with only 3200 miles on it for 4K. The only problem it was in Corpus Christi. So we call the guy and talk to him for about an hour about the bike. It's registered in Washington and has Washington plates. No big deal. He tells us he is at the Air Force base in corpus. We agree on the price we load up the ramps and straps and we go get this thing. When we get there we try to start the bike. No joy. Dead battery. Then we ask to see the title and it's just a Washington registration form. My buddy talks with him for a while and he assures us he has a title it's just at his parents house in Washington. He called his parents and they sent a pic of the title and said they would put it in the mailbox immediately if we bought the bike. He took their word for it and handed over the cash and got a pic of the front and back of his dl just as a precaution. We loaded up and began our long journey back to Houston. We made a quick stop in Victoria Texas for a battery at an auto parts store and put it in and the bike started with no trouble. 1 week later the title shows up. Good deal in the end.

 

I agree with all the 'no check' stuff, and most of my deals are under $200 anyway.

However, consider there are lots of counterfeit bills going around $100/$50 are common enough in our area that the thrift resale shop the wife volunteers at won't even take them anymore. Yes, they have check pens, but if you get a bad bill, you can't return it to the customer. So now you have a new hassle with 1/2 pycho folks who likely are legit in not knowing it was bad..........

 

This may be my new favorite thread. One of my least desirable encounters was selling a shotgun private party to someone I didn't know. It was a completely legal sale, and I did a thorough bill of sale as a precaution. We met at my place because I wasn't sure where else to safely sell a firearm. I was packing, my buddy was packing, and this woman shows up with her husband, and they're both packing. I kept a gun lock on the shotgun and the key in my pocket until they were all done with the paperwork and whatnot. Luckily it all worked out in the end.

 

Something I haven't attempted yet but may is using a Square credit card reader to take payments at garage sales (because I hate the excuse, "I know this says 10 bucks but I only have two 1's...")

Not sure if I'd try that with a CL sale but the cc reader was free...

 

Don't know what the rules are or aren't for embedding youtube videos, so mods, if I did something wrong, it was unknowingly, but absolutely on purpose and meant to be malicious, so screw you guys (there goes my account). Totally kidding. Please remove this if it was done incorrectly.

My favorite scam video of all time, though not specific to CL (some NSFW language):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyA5gzqA3nU

 

If you just copy and paste the URL, it'll auto-embed.

 

Be careful man. I bought a used Remington 1100 on armslist.com and that's the last time I'm buying a used firearm online. Nothing but problems. O-rings get torn even when placed properly, link pops out and jams the gun all the time. Pain in the ass.

 

Yeah that was the only time I sold private party to someone I didn't know. The other two private party sales were to good friends/coworkers. I don't have any other to sell/buy.

 

Small dollar sales don't seem they'd be profitable with the Square CC reader. The reader is FREE, but you pay 2.95% of your sale price PLUS .30 cents for each sale you make. Cuts into your profits in a hurry..