Too good to be true? Is this a scam???

[JerArdra]

There are a bunch of vehicles that were under water in New Orleans.  If this is one of them don't even think about it.  BTW, the owner would not even have to get a new title so the title check would not show water damage.  One giveaway is when it is being sold by someone whose name is not on the title because this seller probably bought it VERY cheap to resell.

Glad you decided to pass this one up!

JerryF

 

[Karl]

Jeff, OOPS! Sorry; meant Jerry :-[

BTW, the owner would not even have to get a new title so the title check would not show water damage.

I was thinking of the 'new' owner having purchased it from the insurance company - if it was insured at all. Not uncommon for auto repair shops to do that - buy for next to nothing, repair obvious damage, and dump it on the unsuspecting.

 

[chaajoad]

The post about New Orleans vehicles brought back a cautionary tale ...

Many years back a family member dreamed of owning a used car lot. I know, I know - but it was his dream. He finally managed to open a small corner lot with a partner. At some point, this "partner" convinced him to buy a truckload of vehicles at a very good price. Well, he did it and when the transport truck showed up with a bunch of shiny cars, he was beaming.

That didn't last long.

I helped out there and I vividly recall going out on a test drive with a guy and, as we went over the car, he pointed out a faint but visible line in the interior. It was a water line. The buyer bolted.

Then the rains came. The first big rain after the cars arrived prompted clumps of mud, twigs and vegetation
to fall from the under carriage of the cars - the water loosened it up. The car lot went out of business pretty quickly after that.

I would imagine there are MHs of all kinds that were hit by Katrina, given a surface clean up and put on the market. Just trouble waiting to find a victim ...

 

[ronhix]

I would imagine there are MHs of all kinds that were hit by Katrina, given a surface clean up and put on the market. Just trouble waiting to find a victim ...

Wow, that is a sobering thought.  A thorough visual inspection seems to be the best defense.

My wife and I drove through dangerous snowy conditions today just to look at a unit that we felt was perfect for us.  The unit looked just great in the pics and the owner had glowing praises of the unit. 

We got there and immediately noticed a huge "repair job" on the leather couch that was conveniently left out of the pics and never mentioned on previous phone conversations.  The other couch also needed repairs. 

Further inspection reveal water marks around the edges of the ceiling all around one side of the back bedroom.

A crack is the shower unit wall, also was not mentioned during previous discussions.

In spite of these disappointments, we test drove the vehicle anyway since we had traveled 4 hours one way to see it.  As soon as we got it on the road it began to rattle and squeak all over and sounded like it was gonna come apart around us. 

The coach was priced $10K above NADA AVG Retail and the owner said he had done all kinds of upgrades to warrant the extra asking price.  After talking him down to $2K under NADA AVG Retail, we agreed to come and look at the coach.

We were sorely disappointed and a bit discouraged...but glad we learned a valuable lesson.
 
A PICTURE MAY BE WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS, BUT A DETAILED VISUAL INSPECTION IS WORTH MUCH MORE!

 

[Shayne]

Amen

 

[numbnutz]

Sounds like a scam to me that I had a similar e-mail on a rig that sounded too fgood to be true that I enquired on. Here is the response that I got....I'm runninng from this one.



I will email you my terms and conditions, please let me know if you agree to them, and I will then call you to conclude this deal.
I have the title clear, in hand.  I can guarrantee you that you'll love the rig, my father took very well care of it, he always garaged it ans serviced it on time...you'll see all the service and maintenance records.
If the rig proves not to be as I mentioned, please belive me that I will pay for the costs of your tickets from your place and back.
So, from my point of view, I can have the deal done any time you wish.
Now, I told you that I am in the military and now I am stationed in the Davis Monthan afpo, near Tucson AZ . I am not allowed to leave the base without a strong reason. I came up to CO  3 weeks ago  to meet someone who told me he is very interested in my motorhome, I took 3 days off to meet him, but he never showed up, he told me that his Credit Union did not aprove his loan and he is no longer able to buy the motorhome. So, I made all the trip for nothing.
I will not take another 3 days off to meet you without a serious proof that you really want to buy the motorhome.
So, we can have the deal done in 2  ways:
1. you can place a $3,000.00  deposit on your name,  here, in MORRISON CO  and  as soon as I get the deposit confirmation, I will take up to 7  days off and meet you and have all the things done. In order to place the deposit, please go to www.moneygram.com and you will see there a button "FIND US". Please click on it and you will see where is located the nearest Money Gram office from your place.Every Walmart has the Money Gram service available. Please  ask your wife or a friend to go in person to your nearest Money Gram office and deposit the 10%  on your name, in  Morrison CO.  Your wife/friend  will be the sender of the deposit and you  will be the receiver of it. That way, the two of you  will be the only persons who will have access to the funds. Once the transfer is done, they will give you a Reference Number (a 8 digits #). Please email it back to me together with your full  name and address, and your wife's name,  so I can call and check it at Money Gram. Or
you can simply scan the receipt of the transfer from Money Gram and email it to me, so I can check the transfer's availability.
As soon as I call MG and they confirm the $3,000.00  deposit,  I will take the permission and meet you and have all the deal done. If you like the motorhome, we go together to a Money Gram office and you pick up the deposit and handle it to me, together with the remainingg amount. If not, I will pay you the Money Gram fee.

2. We can also have all the deal done through www.escrow.com, as rvsearch.com advices and also all banks advice that this is the safest way to deal.
If you are not familiar to escrow, please ask your banker or please  look over the escrow agreement, to see how it works:

http://agr84.50webs.com/agreement.hta

Please click on this link to see the agreement. I also have prepared the bill of sale and the title transfer documents:

http://agr84.50webs.com/title_transfer.hta


http://agr84.50webs.com/bill_of_sale.hta



Anyway, all you have to do, after you read them, is to go to www.escrow.com and register with your email address, and then start a new transaction. As soon as you start the transaction, I will receive a notice from escrow.com and I will agree on it.
As soon as we agree on it, you will have to deposit the $11,000.00 to escrow. Then we can meet or I can ship to your addres, you'll have 5 days to inspect it, and if everything goes ok, you have to notify escrow to release the funds to me. If not, you'll get a full refund back.
Look forward to your response... It is all up to you... . To be honest, I would prefer the money gram deposit, because it takes only a few minutes and I can call them immediately to check the it's availability.
I look forward to your response. hope to come to an agreement and meet you soon and have the deal done.

 

[Wendy]

Sounds just like the other one....non-English-speaking grammar and spelling. RUN!!

 

[John From Detroit]

This offer has been showing up all over with slight variations, The person always wants you to send money for the rig sight unsceen and what's more he does NOT want you to mail a check (this is important) often they take pay pal or they want you to wire it western union.

It is a sacm

A legit seller will let you see the rig, and put hands on before asking for so much as a dollar and won't be offended by the US Mail

You ask, what does the mail have to do with it?  Two things

One: He would have to give you his real address (makes him easier to arrest)

Two: If you think police can be nasty, you should see the federal postal inspectors!! THey get real mean, serious penalities for mail fraud, far greater than state laws on wire fraud. 

 

[Wendy]

Let us not forget that the IRS would like to know about any money received and not claimed on tax returns. And NO ONE is meaner than an underpaid government employee with lots of power.

 

[John From Detroit]

Let us not forget that the IRS would like to know about any money received and not claimed on tax returns. And NO ONE is meaner than an underpaid government employee with lots of power.

There is a Science Fiction story (The name that comes to mind is Doorway to December but I'm fairly sure that was something else, Doorway to _____ is right though)  There is a young girl that has some special powers.

When she looks at the IRS man she sees him in an **** SS uniform 

You are quite right

 

[Ian]

I would follow one of these options in order to drop the guy in the can - at least for that web site...this is the Abuse reporting guides for 50webs.com, his site host:

Abuse report
50Webs.com firmly sticks to our Terms and Conditions and is highly concerned for any act of breach that could affect the reliability of our service. We offer different means of abuse reporting that our customers and partners could make use of when needing to notify us of a specific case.
Please, make sure that you supply us with the offending domain/subdomain (for example: domain.com or subdomain.com) and the exact type of abuse (for example: spam, illegal acts, harassment, copyright violation, adult content, warez, etc.).
The abuse report can be implemented in the following ways:
    * via e-mail sent to: abuse [at] 50webs.com that will be responded asap
    * via phone call to our Abuse department either at: 1-954-323-2199(USA) or
      at:+359-888-373-946 (Europe)
George Gazurkoff
Site Admin

Easiest/cheapest would be to forward these emails to their abuse address and forget about it, up to them to kick the stinkers out.

 

[Ian]

Please go to wwwwesternunion.com and you will see there a button " FIND AN AGENT"

Ron and anybody else reading a message like that one, DONT' click on that link. Notice that his site isn't www.westernunion.com that you might have been expecting to see.  It is wwwwesternunion.com, that site translates to the DNS of 204.13.160.129 and you can check the DNS record here http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=204.13.160.129&src=ShowIP. That has nothing to do with Western Union's DNS record  and lots to do with a Scam site that probably will install a keylogger on your system to track your bank accounts and passwords. That's why I have my Firefox set to Paranoid safety. I give permissions out, not some fools in Redmond. That's why I use Firefox and not the Scammer's Friend, IE.
NEVER click on a link that you cannot be sure will take you to where you expect to go.

 

[stretch12]

We had a trailer for sale once and we got emails all the time from a couple different people that wanted to buy it.  They were overseas and they said they'd send us a check and they'd pay for shipping, etc.  Yeah right!  Stay clear of it.