Warning for online car sellers
If you're planning on selling a vehicle via a classifieds site, you need to read this so you don't fall victim to con-artists.
Krystyn put a vehicle on Gumtree to sell and not long after, got a response via SMS with an email address from a woman named Beverly Harrison. She said she was in Dubai on business but wanted the car so she would have to pay via PayPal. She added that the car was a gift for a client. Krystyn asked her to rather do an EFT, saying she was battling to set up a PayPal account, but never received an email back. She then sent this supposed buyer an email earlier saying she'd managed to open that PayPal account and asking if she still wanted the car. The 'buyer' jumped at the chance but said Krystyn needed to sign over ownership and some paperwork when a company she had hired came to collect the car as it had to be shipped to the US.
Our listener then received emails, supposedly from PayPal, saying the funds had been deposited but to release them, Krystyn needed to go to Western Union to pay the shipping fee of, wait for it, R7000 - and then send proof of payment and then the funds would be released to her. This is when alarm bells started ringing in her head and she called PayPal directly and they confirmed this was definitely not the way they operated and that this was a scam and an attempt at phishing. They advised Krystyn not to send any money anywhere as Paypal doesn't deal with Rands as they don't have approval yet and that their emails would only come from a dot com address whereas all her emails came from a dot uk.
We're relieved Krystyn caught on to this fairly common scam - happening on all free classifieds sites - before any funds were transferred, or any car was lost.
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