Avoiding Used Car Scams

Lots of little towns have impromptu car lots where locals might park their vehicles and offer them for sale.  Ours did, and so did the neighboring town.  We happened to be in the neighboring town and drove past a lot where a pretty little thing caught our eye.

It was a great little car, pretty much everything we had been looking for and the price was attractive.  The owner introduced himself as Oleg.  The more we looked it over, the better we liked it.  It was exceedingly clean and had surprisingly low miles.  That’s when I opened the glove box and took out the registration, only to find that it was a re-issued title as a “salvage title”.  What this means was that the car has undergone some catastrophic damage, either accident, flooding, or damage that would cause the insurance company to designate the vehicle as totaled.

“What’s this Oleg?” I asked. “A salvage title?”

“Oh, that is nothing, she was in an small accident to the right rear fender.  See, come look, she’s excellent.”

“Why are the miles so low?”

“My uncle, he have her in the shop for a long time.  He is an artist, my uncle, he fix her slow and good.  Here, take a look.  See, she’s fine.”

We passed up the opportunity to buy something from the snake oil salesman, but further down the road was another lot and we stopped there too, hoping to have better luck.

The guy selling the nice looking little red car introduced himself as Ivan.

“You got a brother named Oleg?” I muttered.

We immediately looked in the glove box and found a re-issued title.

“What’s this Ivan?  A salvage title?”

“Oh, the car was in a small accident to the right rear fender.”

“Why are the miles so low?”

The slick horse trader told us the same story about an uncle who had a body shop who didn’t have time to fix the car for a few years and it sat around until he did, thus for the age of the car, there were low miles.

We got in the car and drove home, deciding to buy a car on Craig’s List.

We found a beauty with very low miles but it was in Arizona.  When we emailed the owner, he said he was a Major in the Air Force about to be deployed and he was selling his car as his wife was going home to live with her parents and they didn’t need it.  He would ship us the car for our inspection.  All transactions would be via PayPal. 

I can’t state that I knew this was a scam, but as they say, when something is too good to be true…

My husband said that the owner did not need to ship the car, he would fly down to Phoenix and look at it.  Not to worry, declared the buyer, I’ll ship it.  When we persisted in wanting to look at the car, he disappeared.  There was no car.  This is called the “Escrow Scam” where a buyer is asked to put money in a “safe” account like eBay or PayPal, and the funds will not be released until both parties are satisfied.  Once the money is transferred, contact is broken (or sometimes additional funds are requested to cover “unforeseen” events). In any case, the legitimate buyer never receives a car and loses their money.  PayPal does not guarantee that the people using their services are legitimate.

Here are some tips to avoid being the victim of car buying scams.

1.      Get the VIN and run a history report.

2.      Know the blue book price of the car make and model you are interested in.  If the price is too low, run, no matter what sort of hardship story you are told.

3.      Never wire money or use bank-to-bank transfer. 

4.      Try to buy a car locally where you inspect it, meet the seller, look at the title, and get the VIN.

5.      Beware of exceedingly low miles.  There are ways of turning back the odometer.

6.      If you feel you or someone you know has been a victim of a car-buying scam, report the scam to NCL’s Fraud Center at www.fraud.org.