Five Money Scams to Look Out for on Craigslist Chico
There was a time in which Craigslist was the go-to the site to buy and sell everything under the son. Unfortunately, Craigslist had no safety mechanisms in place like Amazon an eBay. The lack of safety mechanisms ended up creating an environment that fostered criminality at a phenomenal rate. Craigslist has become fertile soil for con-artist who come up with all types of schemes to separate honest hard working people from the cash. To help people gain a better sense of awareness of some the more common schemes. We decided to create a list of five money scams that you would do good to be aware of.
1. The House Rental Scam
Just imagine that you are looking for a home for rent for you and your family. You decide to check for ads on Craigslist. And when you find one that you like so you contact them. Here is where it gets interesting. They actually have access to the house and they show the house. You like it and pay the application fee and the deposit only to find out that the house belongs to someone else. This happens more than you can imagine. There is a thin line between being cautious and being fearful. There are so good deals on Craigslist but there are some shady individuals as well.
2. Furniture Money Scam
This type of scam can happen with big-ticket items other than furniture as well. When there is a big ticket item on Craigslist, the scammer will contact the seller and show interest in the item. Once the final price is agreed on, the buyer will send a check, but the check will be for more than the agreed upon price. When the seller notifies the buyer of discrepancy in the amount on the check and the price, they request that the seller wire them back the amount they overpaid. The problem is once the seller’s wires back the extra money, they find out from their back that the check they deposited is no good. In this way, the scammer normally ends up with the item for sale and a big chunk of the seller’s money.
3. Car Robbery Scam
While scammers have become more sophisticated over the years, there are some who still take the primitive approach of strong-arming or robbing potential buyers. Normally, these scammers will post cars for sale and when the buyer shows up to with the cash to buy the car, they will either snatch the money and drive off in the car, or they will literally pull a gun on the buyer and take their cash. In this particular instance, they ended killing the buyer. It is said that a person lost their life over a few bucks relatively speaking. It is not clear how much money the robbers got, but there is no amount of money worth taking a life for.
4. Used Car Scam
In this instance, the scammers are not looking to rob or strong arm the buyers, they are looking to get them to forward payment for the vehicle, but the problem is that they will continue to ask for money for all types of things like shipping costs, but they never end up shipping the car. Some potential buyers have been bilked out of thousands before they finally caught on to what was happening. You would be surprised at some of the stories these scammers will do to get the buyers to send them money. There was one scammer that said that he would have the car shipped on an Airforce cargo ship.
5. The Fantastic Four 1 Scam
I have to admit that this is the first time that I have heard about this one. The scammer claims to own an authentic Fantastic Four comic book. They claim that they don’t have time to shop it around for the best price, so they are willing to let it go at a discounted price. For a comic fan, this is a huge opportunity, and this is what the scammer is counting on. The seller requests that money be forwarded to a specific address or wired by Western Union, but when the money is sent the buyer never gets their comic book. While this is my first time hearing about this scam, it appears that the same person is using this ad across the nation.
