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Originally Posted by husker boxster
Whoa....
The owner is in China? Have you actually seen the car in person or are you just dealing electronically? If you haven't actually seen the car AND the owner wants you to send money to him in China via Western Union HOLD ON. Lots of scams out there where unscrupulous people pull VINs and pics of cars they don't own and then want you to wire them money for it. They lie to you about how the money is safe and you are protected but that's not true - once you OK the wire transaction with WU, the money is out of your control and can't be returned. They try to prey on your greed factor - gotta hurry and get this great deal before someone else does.
When I was looking for my Boxster, I found an ad in AutoTrader for one that was almost 50% off. I did a CarFax on the VIN and it came back clean - no major accidents, which is what I was looking for. The "owner" said she had taken a job in England and moved there from ATL. Once she got there, she said it would cost $10K to federalize the car and she didn't like to drive a LHD car in a RHD country. Since the car was in England, she had to drop the price way down to entice buyers. Sounded good. She wanted me to wire her a deposit of $2700 and had some way she said would protect me from having the deposit stolen. Still all sounded legit. Once she saw the depost had arrived, she said she would ship the car to Omaha at her expense. If I liked it, I would wire her the rest of the money. If I didn't like it, I could send it back at her expense. Red flags started to go up. I asked her about the title. She said she would ship it with the car. At that point I knew something was fishy because you would never ship the title to a car when the owner only had a small portion of the price. I checked with WU and they said this was a classic scam. Your deposit isn't protected and the amount is small potatoes to the authorities. WU had me call the FBI but they never pursued it. Once again, had I not done some investigating and instead acted on my greed to get a great deal, I could have been out a nice chunk of money.
Hopefully this is not the scenario you are in, but your description sounded oh too familiar. Good luck with your purchase. Be careful.
Terry
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Hi Terry, thanks for the concern... the car was local and I dealt through him on email, but his daughter and wife in person. I'm pretty paranoid about such things, so I made sure it was all kosher. He was actually as careful as I was, so that made me feel a bit better also. I have the car and the title, so hopefully I'm in the clear! Thanks though!