Auto trader car scam

Please be careful of scams on auto trader asking to contact the email address privately rather than through auto trader.
The following emails are scam emails:
[email protected]
[email protected]

I'm sure they change email addresses all the time.

This person came across very genuine, saying he was from Durness in Scotland and would drive the car I was interested in to Manchester to meet me. This was on the condition that a family member transferred me the car's value via western union and then I emailed the receipt to prove the money was there. A family member transferred the money to my name for collection. Using western union you can only collect money with ID and the MTCN number. When emailing the receipt I covered the MTCN which meant I was not giving the person access to collect my money at all.

This is an inside job within western union, somehow this scammer has managed to get my MTCN (which we believe they know someone in the customer service office in the Philippines - the only people that have access to this info) and has then been able to withdraw my money with either fake ID or by knowing someone in the shop. Probably the latter.

Please be careful - never send a receipt photo and if so cover the name and MTCN.

Please post the emails, including headers. Anyone who asks you to pay for something by Western Union or MoneyGram is a scammer. The trick of having you send money by WU to yourself and the scammer taking it is also well known.

Can I ask whether you have tried to get your money back as I to have today been scammed by John. Exactly the same story. I can't actually believe I was stupid enough to do it but I did and have lost money. I'm not sure whether I can get my money back as it is classed as fraud to start with if you get someone to pay this money in the first place.
I covered my MTCN number up and my friends name up so not sure how they managed to get the money as I was assured that they needed photo id to collect.

Welcome to Scamwarners Lisa Fox

This is very common on the Autotrader UK and indeed on al ad sites and I specialise in seeking out fraudulent adverts on AT UK which I post here. I have one rolling thread with 42 pages since the beginning of March 2014 and many other individual fraudulent adverts.

http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=6

To be honest there is little chance of you getting your money and this is the case even when the money is paid in to a bank account, which you would imagine would be safer than western Union, but these people are professional fraudsters and are very well organised and set up to make the best of any weakness in a system. They 'phish' car dealer accounts on AT UK to get access to the site and have unlimited access to money mule bank accounts in the UK, so much so that using Western Union is quite unusual, but there are many people seeking out their 'money mule' accounts which may be making them use this as another alternative.

If anyone you don't know asks you to pay them by Western Union, it's a scam. The problem is, as many people have discovered, that paying in to a bank account gives you no more protection.The fixed rule is never to buy a car you haven't seen and inspected yourself because, apart from scammers without any car to sell, there are many other types of scammer selling some very dubious vehicles and, if it's a bargain as these always are, there's a good reason why. The truth is that there is no better option than a trusted local dealer. Buying from any ad site is a risk and one I would never take. They make their money from the seller and don't provide a buyer with any worthwhile protection.

I have received an enquiry from a CHAMIN LADDAHINGA from email address [email protected] claiming to be a "medical sailor" who was working on-board wanting to buy a car as a present for his son.

Chamin Laddahinga wanted to pay the full price for the car without seeing it, and offered to pay an extra £300 for me to remove the Autotrader advert.
He said as he was working away he would pay directly into my bank account or my PayPal account.

I was skeptical so as he already had my email address (all communication was via email except his first text to me) I advised he could use my email address to send any monies via PayPal.

No money was received, instead he told me his courier (in Italy!) wanted paying by Western Union for which he would send me the money.

I suggested he use the Western Union online facility, a friend or family member to pay the courier, or use a UK courier and refused to give him my phone number. I did offer to pass on cleared funds at my local western union branch local to me providing the payee details were clear and funds were confirmed as cleared in advance.

Needless to say I never heard back from him!

SCAM!

Did you get an email apparently from PayPal saying that they're holding the money until you send the money to the courier in Italy? All such emails are fake.

If you had provided him your bank account number, he would have sent money to it from a stolen account. It can take months for the banks to figure out that it's a fraud.