Is this Craigslist listing a scam?

[John Ott]

Here is what she said when I responded to the positing:


Hello,
Thank you for the interest shown in the 2006 Sea Doo RXT 215 I'm selling.
I took the wave runner from my ex husband at divorce 6 months ago and I'm selling it at the price of $ 1.900 because I just want to get rid of it and sell it very quickly.After the divorce I had to buy a new house and move in Mcalpin, FL so the wave runner is in my garage in FL. As you can see from the pictures the product is in perfect condition, has a trailer included and only 40 hours on it. It is paid off, clean title.
For the payment I prefer to use eBay services. I have to mention that I will receive the money only after you receive and inspect the product. I will pay for for shipping and handling (my ex buyer did not received his loan but he already paid for shipping and i don`t want this to be done again ) so there won't be any additional costs for you.
If you are interested in buying it please email me your FULL NAME and SHIPPING ADDRESS so i can get the ball rolling.
I am looking forward for your answer.

[rtfm]

Absolutely yes.

The biggest indicator that it's a scam: Why on earth would *eBay* provide payment services for something being sold on Craigslist?

Second biggest indicator: Why would someone offer to pay for shipping for something that will be extremely expensive to ship?

Offer to come to her home in person to view the item and pay her cash. I *guarantee* she'll find some reason that she can't do this.

[Uncle Jimbo]

Yea probably, I once responded to an add for a product that was outrageously under priced(seemed too good to be true), and I received a similar email to the one you received. "Go pick it up somewhere else...bull shit bla bla bal..or something like that. "For payment I prefer to use ebay services", ect. The one that I dealt with, said that they were out at sea studying the wales, so I had to send them my money on their ship, before I could get the product or something like that. That add looks very suspicious.

[sophieb]

don't bite on this one.
They want to sell it "quickly" after a divorce and the item might still belong to the guy and it's not hers.

[Kittysue]

This is one of the oldest scams out there

Ebay has NOTHING to do with anything that is not listed ON EBAY.COM, you bid ON EBAY.COM, you win the auction ON EBAY.COM and you pay ON EBAY.COM with your linked Paypal account. Ebay never works with Craigslist for any reason

Read Ebay's warning about these scams
http://pages.motors.ebay.com/buy/security/index.html
"eBay's Vehicle Purchase Protection (VPP) covers only certain vehicle transactions that are completed ON eBay.com. If a Craigslist seller "promises" you eBay protection programs, walk away. It is fraudulent. Only cars bought and sold on eBayMotors.com can legitimately offer up to $50,000 in vehicle protection.

Common warning signs:

Sellers who want to move the transaction from one platform to another (for example, from Craigslist to eBay Motors)."

Not to mention Craigslist is ONLY for face to face cash transactions. If the Sea Doo was in Florida it would be listed on Florida, not in your city, and they would never have to ship it

Report the ad ASAP to Craigslist to get it removed

[Tonya Three-Eagles]

It definitely is a scam.

[noisychin906]

100% scam.

There is no 2006 Sea Do RXT 215 for sale. There are stolen pictures of someone else's Sea Doo.

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 "eBay" and will demand you pay for shipping fees, in cash, and only by Western Union or moneygram. Or the scammer will want you to "prove" you have the funds by sending cash to a friend and sending him the MTCN#. The scammer then uses the MTCN# to pick up your cash and disappear.

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 partial 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 "Craigslist car seller scam", "fake truck sale scam Western Union", "fake car shipping company scam" or something similar you will find hundreds of posts from victims and near-victims of this type of scam.