Name this (Craigslist; car related) scam.

In My Humble Opinion
1

'Cause I’m bewildered…

We need a vehicle. We look on Craigslist, among other sites. See vehicle, nicely but not unbelievably priced (a bit more than at the auction house, less than at the used car dealers), private seller selling it because of “a divorce,” lives about 5 miles away

We’re interested in purchasing said vehicle. Call the owner, can we see the vehicle? The vehicle is currently 30 miles away, taken there by seller’s employee. Probably not going to be back with it until late, he’ll call us tomorrow. Does he have the title? Absolutely. Is it clear? You betcha. Okay, call us tomorrow.

Today (tomorrow) my other half called him again while I was at work. Can he come see the vehicle? He can catch a cab and come over whenever. Oh, the car’s not around, but The Guy (the employee, I guess) can bring it over on his way back later. 1:30, 2ish. So my partner gives him the main intersection closest to us, not the address.

'Round 'bout 3:00 when I get home, there’s still no sign of The Guy or the vehicle. Call again. Oh, it’s at the intersection of This and That, if we want to go meet The Guy and look at it. Sure, okay, so we hop in my car and head over.

No Guy, no vehicle. Text, call. Oh, it’s over at the intersection of Something and Other, at the gas station, about 3 miles away. We drive over. No Guy, no vehicle, no gas station. Call, text, WTF? Oh, they’re about two blocks south at the gas station there. We’re getting grumpy and suspicious, but what the hell, in for a penny, in for a pound, off we go.

There was a gas station there, but no Guy, no vehicle.

Lather, rinse repeat twice more before I said, Fuck This and texted the owner that we were done. If he wanted/had a vehicle to sell, he’d bring it to the fast food restaurant at the main intersection near our place. If not, have a nice life.

Dinner time, text: Guy’s on his way to the fast food place near us. Fine, text us when he’s there, with the vehicle in PARK! He’ll be there in 20-25 minutes, we’re told.

45 minutes later, another text: he’s there. We walk over, with my short but muscular teenaged son by our side and a bottle of pepper spray in my pocket, making sure our front door is locked and there are no shady characters lurking outside. You guessed it…no Guy, no vehicle.

W
T
F
?

So what’s the scam here? This guy has nothing but a cell phone number and a rough idea of what neighborhood we live in. What’s he hoping to get out of this wild goose chase? I’m sick of hunting snipe here.

We got home, told him we’re done. He says he will bring the vehicle over personally, himself, tomorrow. No more Guy, no more runaround. I have a bad feeling about this…

2

An ancient and honorable tradition, is the Snipe Hunt…

3

I would strongly advise against letting this specimen have your home address. Meeting at your or your other half’s place of work or other public area, yeah. Letting someone this flaky/suspicious know where you live? IMO, not a good idea.

4

Craigslist, hunh? An ancient and honorable tradition that is.

5

Could he just be screwing with you? Make you run around town just for laughs? If not that, I got nothing.

6

I know, right? At some point, I started to think maybe he was trying to disorient, confuse and just generally wear us out so that we’d be easy to carjack/mug. Hence the decision to meet at a public space we could walk to.

But don’t you have to actually, y’know…be there to mug someone?!

Maybe his Guy just really is a flake. Maybe he’s stolen the vehicle, or wrecked it, and the owner just doesn’t know yet.

But yeah, IF we meet him tomorrow, it will not be at our address, and it will not be The Guy. I’m only going to consider it if it’s actually the owner, with the title in one hand and the keys in the other.

7

(Oh, and if anyone in the Chicago area happens to be selling a Hyundai Sante Fe w/ a V6 for somewhere in the neighborhood of $3000 and you’re NOT a total looneybird, do drop me a PM.)

8

I think if either the owner or The Guy contacts you again, your best response is to tell him thanks but you’ve decided to buy a different car.

And consider the possibility that the guy is in the middle of a nasty divorce and trying to dump his wife’s car while she isn’t looking, and that maybe the title isn’t as clear as he insists it is.

9

Another hypothesis…is it possible that he has to try to sell this as some condition of the divorce, but he doesn’t really want to? And maybe if he, say, puts it up on Craigslist for 30 days (or something) and it doesn’t sell, he can tell the judge it’s not selling and maybe keep it?

Do lawyers/judges ever make you (try to) sell assets against your will in divorce cases? Mine was uncontested and pro se, so I have no idea.

On Preview:

Ooh, that’s a thought. An ugly thought. Of course, it’d seem to be more likely if he actually produced the vehicle for us to purchase…

10

So, I took the liberty of searching for that ad. If you punch the guy’s phone number into google, you’ll see there’s a few other cars he has listed as well, but with no mention of the divorce story.

I think there’s two possibilities. One is that he’s one of those unlicensed car dealers who keeps his inventory parked on the street all over town and he just has his hands full with his exciting life staying one step ahead of the parking authorities and whatever other agencies might be after him. He also apparently doesn’t know how to use a camera.

On the other hand, it could very well be that there is no car (although you’d think he could steal some better pictures!) and the whole rigmarole is to make it all look like a bunch of crazy mix ups in order to establish a “relationship” before the real scam kicks in.

Either way, I would be verrrrrry careful if you chose to go forward. Even if it is a real car, it sounds like the guy isn’t being 100% honest with you.

11

If you tried to get a date via Craigslist and got stood up like that, how many times would you play along before saying the hell with it ?

How desperate are you for that one special car?

12

The car navigation system seems to be malfunctioning badly?

13

My gut says he’s trying to keep you busy and distracted whilst something else is going on - perhaps the burglary of your home? It reeks of misdirection.

14

Or maybe he’s trying to manage his time with the car’s clock/calendar: The most useless accessory in my car is now even more useless - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board

15

How? He doesn’t have her home address(does he?!!) so I’m not getting the scam either, unless he was there scoping you out from afar.

Did you give this guy your address?

16

Nope, no address given. No address *will *be given, and we live on an urban street where lots of other people live, so we’ve only narrowed it down to within walking distance of X intersection for him.

GreasyJack, thanks for the detective work. Yeah, that sounds likely.

He’s supposedly bringing it to the fast food place near us at 10am, with the title. We’re not holding our breath; we’ve got a couple of others we’re going to look at today. If this one falls into place today, great. But we’re no longer going out of our way to pursue the deal.

If the title looks at all hinky, we’ll walk. Of course, it wouldn’t be terribly hard to make a faux title, but if the guy can’t even steal a few pictures off google, he’s probably not got a great auto title counterfeiting ring going on, either.

17

I haven’t bought or sold a car for a long time, but is there some online state database that can be checked to see if the title is genuine? I would feel very apprehensive if I couldn’t verify it in a private party transaction with so many red flags.

18

Seriously, I can’t believe you would waste another second on this.

19

Since he has your phone number he may have your address already. But it’s still a weak scam, he doesn’t know if someone is still at home when you go to meet him. Sounds almost as likely to be severe ADD as a scam. Possibly there’s a warrant out for the guy and he’s just nervous about staying in one spot. Anyway it goes, you don’t want the car anymore.

20

He may know my cell phone carrier, that’s all.