Please beware. If you happen to be negotiating with a guy pretending to sell this car, then stop immediately. This guy is a scammer and he's out to take your money.

The advert for this car came out on autotrader a couple of weeks ago. It has since been taken down. Whether it was taken down by autotrader or taken down by the guy himself, I don't know.

I'd been exchanging emails back and forth with this guy over the past couple of weeks. And then something happened that made me realise that he was trying to scam me.

I'll copy paste some of his emails here for you to see.

 

Hi,
Just received your message about the 2005 Chrysler Crossfire 3.2 V6 2dr, thankyou for your interest! Note that the location on the ad is not shown correctly,that's my old residence. Just recently moved to Austria and the car ispresently in Innsbruck ready for test drive or transport. I bought the carChrysler Crossfire in the UK, it still looks and runs great, non smoking owner,accident free and HPI is clear! Full service history is available, the carstill has 8 months tax, 8 months MOT and odometer reads 27000 miles.
Reg number is TT51MUZ, number plates are included.
Considering current offers my asking price is £3.950 which includes delivery tothe UK. The car is ready to be delivered with all UK registration documents,service records, original invoice, both car keys and the bill of sale.

Kind regards,
Steve Mark

 

Hiagain and thanks for getting back to me! I drove this Crossfire for as long aswork kept me in the UK. It's completely free of issues and initially wanted tokeep it so it was sent on trailer to Austria. I'm admitted to hospital forsurgery, replacing my TEP voice prosthesis. Just learned that insurance won'tcover "optional" replacements, in their opinion a whisper quiet,button operated prosthesis works just as fine. So I need to sell the car,preferably before month's end when I will be discharged.
If the price is right I'm including delivery to your address on a trailer withAVL International. Working in the airlines implies carrying our stuff so we'regiven these vouchers, I saved plenty and we can use them to pay transportcharges with AVL. As far as DVLA is concerned it only travels to Austria sothere's no import tax when coming into UK.
We can work with an escrow and you can have the car delivered in approximately5 days then keep it for 7 days to test drive and check registration documents.By doing so you get to test drive and check registration before releasing thepayment.
Let me know if you want it delivered, details about the escrow service are inthe attached document.

Regards,
Steve Mark

 

Phil sorry for so latereply! I was with some medical exams yesterday and until now I was offline. Iam glad you've decided, let's go through the steps together and if we're level,we can proceed. I will draw a conditional contract with Amazon for an escrowholding account. Terms on contract will be a sale price of £ 3,950, 7 daysobligation free inspection and payment release upon registration transfer.We'll be provided with a holding account under Amazon's management in which youwill secure the payment, then I'll be cleared to ship the car. You will have itdelivered to your home address in 5 days tops and once delivered you will have7 days to test drive, have the car checked and check registration. If you'rekeeping it, payment will be released to me after registration is transferred.If you're not happy with the car or there are issues preventing theregistration transfer then we will arrange return shipping on my expense andyou will get your payment back in full from the holding account.
When ready I'll need your delivery name, address and your mobile number as wellas the name and address you need on the v5c document, I'm responsible forinitiating the transaction with Amazon and will also cover escrow fees!

 

After I received this 3rd email, I sent him my name and address and phone number and I got the following reply:

 

Sorryfor reply so late Phil! Thanks for providing me with the information! I'mstarting the transaction with Amazon tomorrow then will get back to youimmediately after it's done. Thanks in advance for a smooth transaction!

Regards,
Steve Mark

 

After that he sent me an invoice from Amazon, which turned out not to be from Amazon at all. That's how I found out because I have an account with Amazon and I checked my account and saw nothing on there about this transaction. That's when I knew it was fake and he was trying steal my money.

 

This is the last email I got from him:


Ijust wanted to let you know about transaction, the payment of fees is confirmednow. This being my 2nd encounter with the service, let me give you a bit ofadvice. Escrow operates on deadlines, it's best you confirm the transactionwhen money is available in your account, ready for transferring in escrow. Oncethey assign a payments supervisor and we are provided with the holding accountthere's a deadline to secure the payment and we don't want surprises. Then we'dhave to request new data, run into delays and so on. Let me know when you'reready to proceed, keep me in the loop.

Regards,
Steve Mark

 

I wrote him back and told him that the transaction hasn't appeared on my Amazon account and as such would be unable to to proceed the the deal.

That's the last I heard from him.

 

I don't know how to take a screen print. So I just copy-pasted the invoice instead.









Thanks for using Amazon FPS for this order, Mr XXXXXXXX
The next step is to pay for your item. Check out and pay to get your item as soon as possible.
Purchase Information




:

 

If someone can tell me how to do a screen print I'll do that and show you the invoice as it appeared in the email. Have to say it looks pretty authentic. You would never know it was fake. I don't know what would have happened if I'd ticked the yes box. I don't ever wanna know.

 

I don't think there's any need to show us the invoice. It smells of scam from the first e-mail. That is a very common ploy... at least over here it is.

 

His emails were several days apart. One time I didn't hear from him for nearly a week. He said that's because he had been in hospital. I realise now that his infrequent replies were probably due to his big case load. Which means that there are other people being scammed by this guy as we speak. God, I wish there was some way I could warn them.

 

It is really a shame this type thing happens. I have had eBay auctions hijacked and it has gotten so I hesitate to contact anyone responding to an CL ad I post.

I am not sure why the collecting of phone numbers, names and email addresses are important to these scammers and while he was successful in that, at least he did not get your money nor banking information.

Thank you for warning the community and congratulations on taking the time to check your account.

 

Yeah, that's a worry. He got my name, address and mobile phone number. Not too happy about that.

 

Don't worry about your name and address. All they want is to get your money. You should never considering buying by sending money without seeing the car in person and talking with the guy in person, and even there you can never be 100% sure. Deals what seem too good to be true are 99% scam.

 

It's the old Nigerian scam or a variation of it. Been around since the inception of the interenet. I'm surprised that it's still around.