Can anyone tell me if this is a scam or not? Question: I replied to an ad on craigslist and this is the email I got back......
Hello there,
This 1996 Nissan 300ZX Turbo with 77,359 miles, runs and drives excellent. This car has been extremely well maintained. No accident, clear title, free of encumbrances and liens. I bought it when I was serving in Fort Stewart, GA.
I have dropped my price to $1400 (purchase price) since this is an urgent sale and I need to sell it before 20 February, when I will be deployed in Iraq with my platoon replacing the troops scheduled to come home.
I have decided to use eBay for this sale . The car is already at our Military Logistic Department form Fort Stewart, U.S. Army, crated and ready to go.
The Logistic Department will deliver the car to your home. I will offer a 10 days period to inspect the car from the moment you receive it, before I will have your money. The shipping will be free for you! I'm currently stationed in London, United Kingdom until 20 February, when I will be deployed to Iraq. This is why I must sell it before that.
If you agree with my price $1400, I need your FULL NAME AND ADDRESS, so I can inform ebay that I have a buyer! I will forward your details to them and then you will receive an invoice(with no further obligations or fees). Like this you’ll be able to talk with them directly and ask all you want to know.
PS: If there are any questions left please don't hesitate to ask.
More Pictures:
https://picasaweb.google.com/113606794004920228728/Untitled Album?feat=directlink#
(if the link doesn't work copy and paste it into a new web browser window).
Thank you,
Hope to hear from you soon,
Lt. Susan Bryant
Answer:
100% scam.
There is no car.
There are stolen pictures of someone else's car.
There is only a scammer trying to steal your hard-earned money.
The next email will be from another of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses pretending to be the "car shipping company/agent" and will demand you pay for "shipping costs", in cash, and only by Western Union or moneygram.
Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever.
Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram.
You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information.
Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash.
Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.
If you google "fake car shipping scam", "western union shipping fraud" or something similar you will find hundreds of posts of victims and near victims of this type of scam.
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