A few weeks ago I posted my truck for sale in the AutoTrader. On Tuesday, I hear from this guy in Russia and smell a scam. Just for fun, I post back telling him I'm interested. This is an old scam that has been going around for some time. Enjoy folks, here was his reply today.

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HI STEWART,

After the Excutvie meeting today,We concluded with our client and he has instructed to carry on with the transaction,he said that I should inform you that payment will get to you in a cashier check of $12,410. which is a refund payment of a cancelled order earlier made by my
client. because of his delay and lateness of in reply.
Due to company policy this check has to be made out in this amount to you ,because company policy only allows a refund payment on one cashier check,so you are required to deduct cost of your (CAR) $7,370 when payment gets to you and refund balance $5,040 to my customer via western union money transfer or money gram transfer for him to be able to offset
shipping charges.

After payment has reached you and balance sent back to him, our agent will come for the pick up and drive to a prepaid shipper to be shipped to my customer, while title papers and other necessary documents will be sent by you via fedex courier to my customer. With this we can send the payment to you. Please Confirm this very important by providing your = NAME, ADDRESS and PHONE number for check payment to be delivered to you via fedex courier.

Thanks for understanding. REPLY ASAP
*KARPOV BOTVIN*

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Ahahahahah, you should play along and when the guy comes to pick up the truck have the cops hiding inside your garage <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" /> That'd be ***** awesome...

A local kid here got scammed the same way from Africa. The bank even said the check looked legit and cashed it for him. He wound up owing the bank the full amount of the phony check, eventhough they told him it looked good.

You don't get it, they never come to get the truck. They just take your money if you were dumb enough to send it.

This scam has surfaced before, but it seems to have taken on a new life in spring 2004. There've been a rash of scammers attempting to use this ruse in long-distance auto sales. The punch line is that the cashier's check is bogus, and you will end up being liable for replacing its full face value. The amount you forward to the scammer's cohort (e.g., the 'shipper') is his profit from the con. You can read more about it at scamchecker.com (or check the Yahoo directory for other sites documenting known scams).

that sucks. I don't think I would have replied back. Now they have your email marked and if they can figure out who you are, they'll keep trying to contact you, because they think you bit their bate.

It's funny, where I live has a HUGE Russian immigrent population and there seems to be a lot of similier type automotive scams from those guys. Especially when it comes to buying and selling rebuilt wrecked and totalled cars.

Of course, most of them are probably nice, law abiding, people, but it really chides my hide when some A-hole comes to this country and then commits criminal acts.

2 months ago my friend listed his 2003RSX ACURA on Autotrader.com and he got more phone calls from people in Iceland, Africa, Norhtern European countries... it was crazy! One guy was saying I'm sending the check.... for 30G, you send me the difference of 8G's.... my friend never heard of this, but i have, so told him how it works so we kinda wasted all the guys' time...hehe. i'm sure calling from Tim buck 2 to Tampa, FL wasn't cheap!! He listened to him talk about this crap for like 30mins! nice phone bill!! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/rodent.gif" alt="" /> I hate those people. I wouldn't even respond unless it was a F U email. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/nana.gif" alt="" />

Ah, don't worry i know about it, it's pretty huge in the MTB world... we have made many a huge threads on this topic alone... sometimes keeping the scammer "hungry" for weeks and satisfying them until the end, before we say "sorry"... it's so funny <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/notooth.gif" alt="" />... <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />

My supervisors son listed his Jeep on autotrader and got this same scam. They didn't bite because it didn't make sense to them why the "Client" would want to pay a total of $7,000 for a Jeep that was only worth $3,000. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/butwiggle.gif" alt="" />