Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

I've been looking for a car recently and in the process came across a Silver 04 Model BA XR6, 123,000k's horrid chrome wheels but with an attractive sale price of $7600 - the cheapest 04 XR6 going around. I'm assuming it's stuffed or dodgy but thought what the hell can't hurt to enquire.

The seller, Jasin Derrington ([email protected]) explains that while the car is listed as for sale in QLD, it's actually stored in TAS at present as he has recently moved to Spain for work. Alarm bells are already ringing. I also negotitate on the price as I'd already bought a car, he knocks off $1K in an instant for a "quick sale".

He sends a link to a valid eBay webpage explaining how their buyer protection policy works and ensures you that it's all above board, you send eBay the $$, he sends the car, you accept the car if you are happy with it, they release the money. That part is all well and true excpet that eBay do not protect buyers when one party is overseas.

Scam detected. I contact carsales, they pull the ad and send me a legit email saying we are investigating. Shortly after I receive a reasonably legit looking email from "carsales" saying they have investigated and that the ad is all above board and that the seller has verfied ownership and vehicle details (shown below).

I search for the car on carsales, it doesn't exist anymore, I search the name on the email of the supposed carsales employee and the body of text and find numerous references to this exact message and scam setup on the net.

I also note the ebay account has only been active for less than a month, has zero feedback and is not listing the car as a sale item.

Buyers beware of this scam! I've been around long enough to pick up on the signs but I'm sure not everyone out there has been round the block enough to know the differences between a great deal and a scam.

This is purely a public service announcement, I haven't sent any money etc.

The seller also asked for my eBay user ID to initiate the transaction. I did provide it (I have enough strong password) to see what the response would be, they're attached below also. Note the address it comes from. eBay confirm this has NOTHING to do with them. I've also included the details he has put in for payment... notice the name Jason doesn't appear...

So there you have it, tell your friends, tell your mum and dad, partner etc.

Don't let these scumbags get away with this crap!

post-23873-1287054602_thumb.pngpost-23873-1287054618_thumb.png

post-23873-1287054710_thumb.pngpost-23873-1287054951_thumb.png

Edited by ActionDan
Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/340490-online-scam-detected-on-car-sales/
Share on other sites

I offered to have RACV inspect the car at my expense. Unsurprisingly he declined explaining that he didn't want someone else testing it while he wasn't there.

Yet he's happy to just freight it to someone no worries..

Further more... I thought I might at least waste some of his time :devil:

From: Dan Fewster [mailto:[email protected]]

Sent: Thursday, 14 October 2010 10:18 PM

To: 'Jason Derrington'

Subject: RE: XR6

No worries Jas,

I got it too.

I’m making payment now, can’t wait!

Cheers

Dan

From: Jason Derrington [mailto:[email protected]]

Sent: Thursday, 14 October 2010 10:13 PM

To: [email protected]

Subject: RE: XR6

Dan,

I got a letter from Ebay that they have sent you the invoice for the car. Just wanted to be sure that you've received it and that you understood how to make the payment and how to confirm it. Now I will wait for the confirmation from ebay that you have made the payment and I will start the shipping immediately.

Alongside the car you will receive all the papers,title,bill of sale signed by me,owner's manual and two set of keys so it will be no problem to register the car into your name.

Kind regards,

Jason Derrington

Pretty much same story with another car on carsales. The guy moved to Spain for work and the car was in Oz. Ad said it was in NSW Regional, then he emails me saying the car is in Derby WA. Dodgy! I even emailed Carsales to ask them to investigate and they still haven't gotten back to me.

Here are the emails.

Hi,

No. The payment method will be bank transfer after you receive and inspect the car into ebay`s trust account.

Cheers,

Ben

From: xkxk

To: [email protected]

Subject: RE: Nissan Skyline GTR R33 SR 3 V-SPECT

Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2010 16:56:53 +1000

.ExternalClass .ecxhmmessage P{padding:0px;}.ExternalClass body.ecxhmmessage{font-size:10pt;font-family:Tahoma;}Sounds good where is the car? Can I see it? Would you like me to send a direct deposit to Western Money Union??

From: [email protected]

To: xkjsdjkds

Subject: RE: Nissan Skyline GTR R33 SR 3 V-SPECT

Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2010 02:32:58 +1030

.ExternalClass .ecxhmmessage P{padding:0px;}.ExternalClass body.ecxhmmessage{font-size:10pt;font-family:Tahoma;}Thanks for the enquiry,

The car is in excellent condition, the bodywork is immaculate, no dents or hidden defects and there is no outstanding finance on the car, also the car comes with a full service history. The price, including door to door delivery, is only $16,500 negotiable.

This is a very good price because I want a quick sale.

I must sell the car because I've just moved in Barcelona, Spain with my job (2 years contract :devil: ... so I'm forced to sell it because I can't afford to keep it and I need the money fast.

The car was advertised on eBay as well and prefer to close this transaction only though eBay for our own protection, because carsales doesn't provide us any purchase protection.

The payment method will be bank transfer because this type of payment is very safe. In this way both of us will start the deal with good faith so we can take it to a smooth end.

Hope to hear from you asap.

Warmly,

Ben McCaffrey

Do scams like these attract to you Dan; or do you gravitate to them?

Wrong car seats being sent to you... > and now this? You've certainly become an expert on smelling rats!!!!!

Cheers, Terry

Hah thanks Terry - I knew you'd poke your head in here. Or should I call you Poirot :D

The seats was clearly my fault, in a rush, sick of searching around and didn't pay enough attention to my "spider senses"

This time I was paying attention as I normally do.

The seats will be the first and last time I don't pay attention to what's going on!

In addition, The VIN supplied by the seller is legit and does not show any finance or theft etc. Nice touch to use details on a clean car.

At this stage he's waiting for my payment. I'm going to drag it on a bit and extract as much info as possible to pass on appropriate authorities. Yes I'm wasting my own time but this type of thing burns me up.

Hah thanks Terry - I knew you'd poke your head in here. Or should I call you Poirot :D

The seats was clearly my fault, in a rush, sick of searching around and didn't pay enough attention to my "spider senses"

This time I was paying attention as I normally do.

The seats will be the first and last time I don't pay attention to what's going on!

In addition, The VIN supplied by the seller is legit and does not show any finance or theft etc. Nice touch to use details on a clean car.

At this stage he's waiting for my payment. I'm going to drag it on a bit and extract as much info as possible to pass on appropriate authorities. Yes I'm wasting my own time but this type of thing burns me up.

What usually happens is the scammer will pose as a buyer to elicit as much information as they can from the real seller. I had the same thing happen to me about 5 years ago, and I sent a whole stack of info to the person inquiring, who then used that info to bait other people!

Ironically enough, the scammer advertised my car on carsales with a fake phone number, but I had my real number stuck on the car itself (in the pics in the ad), so a buyer rang me on my real number from the fake ad and ended up buying it!

419eater is an awesome site, highly recommended.

Edited by Iron Chef

dude, the emails he sent are so obviously fake. in the one supposedly from ebay it says:

"next step to be taken:

read the invoice carefully and make payment to the ebay"

since when do emails from ebay sound like they are written by a nigerian ESL student?

the one from carsales is also very obviously bullshit. for starters he repeatedly abbreviates advertisement to "add" which is wrong. the abbreviation of advertisement is "ad". The other thing that marks it as bullshit is no way would any organisation like car sales or ebay for anyone for that matter would ever 'verify' a person as being legitimate. they would never risk that kind of liability exposure. It's so bad it's almost funny. "our staff verified both the seller and the vehicle". lol. "it's a genuine sale". double lol.

and if anyone was stupid enough to get through all of that, surely they would not be dumb enough to send money to an 'ebay account' with the account name benjiman ester in spain? I mean it went from "you send the money to ebay" to now "you send the money to an ebay verified agent". again you can see the bloke is obsessed with the word verified. with his limited vocabulary 'verified' is probably the most official sounding word he knows.

I honestly don't know how you even got that far. as soon as the bloke said, car is in TAS but I'm in spain, that's what you just delete his mails and walk away. there was no chance it was ever going to be legitimate. I don't understand how they successfully scam anyone as it's so half arsed and clearly bullshit. actually I do know how. greed. people really want to get that awesome deal so they push on in blind hope when even the slowest individual should be able to see it's a scam. sad. i guess it's like natural selection for your wallet.

That's my point Baron, When I reported it to carsales and had the ad pulled then started getting "carsales" emails etc I thought wow that is some effort to go to and to the untrained eye some of those emails might look legit. You and I can see that it's obviously fake, not everybody can pick it so I'm sharing it around so that perhaps others can be better prepared. Don't shoot the messenger :D

If there weren't people who fell for this then ACA would run out of stories to run pretty quickly.

Just trying to spread the word.

dude, the emails he sent are so obviously fake. in the one supposedly from ebay it says:

"next step to be taken:

read the invoice carefully and make payment to the ebay"

since when do emails from ebay sound like they are written by a nigerian ESL student?

the one from carsales is also very obviously bullshit. for starters he repeatedly abbreviates advertisement to "add" which is wrong. the abbreviation of advertisement is "ad". The other thing that marks it as bullshit is no way would any organisation like car sales or ebay for anyone for that matter would ever 'verify' a person as being legitimate. they would never risk that kind of liability exposure. It's so bad it's almost funny. "our staff verified both the seller and the vehicle". lol. "it's a genuine sale". double lol.

and if anyone was stupid enough to get through all of that, surely they would not be dumb enough to send money to an 'ebay account' with the account name benjiman ester in spain? I mean it went from "you send the money to ebay" to now "you send the money to an ebay verified agent". again you can see the bloke is obsessed with the word verified. with his limited vocabulary 'verified' is probably the most official sounding word he knows.

I honestly don't know how you even got that far. as soon as the bloke said, car is in TAS but I'm in spain, that's what you just delete his mails and walk away. there was no chance it was ever going to be legitimate. I don't understand how they successfully scam anyone as it's so half arsed and clearly bullshit. actually I do know how. greed. people really want to get that awesome deal so they push on in blind hope when even the slowest individual should be able to see it's a scam. sad. i guess it's like natural selection for your wallet.

The interesting thing is the guy that was trying to scam me had really poor English, until I started baiting him and it actually started improving....hmmm...

I'm gonna start having some fun maybe...

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 11:21 PM, Jason Derrington <[email protected]> wrote:

Dan,

Great. Don't forget to confirm the payment by sending a scanned copy of the transfer receipt from your bank at ebay at the following email : [email protected] so they can see that the payment has been made and send me the shipping instructions.

thanks,

Jas

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 11:26 AM, Dan Fewster <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Jas,

My bank said the account details did not exist, can you confirm what account I should be using? I must have made a mistake. It's been a very long week at work and I've been having problems with my other new car, the mechanic told me "This R2 unit has a bad motivator" which sounded expensive. Oh well.

Cheers

Dan

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Did this end up working? Did you take some pictures?
    • And finally, the front lower mount. It was doubly weird. Firstly, the lower mount is held in with a bracket that has 3 bolts (it also acts as the steering lock stop), and then a nut on the shock lower mount itself. So, remove the 3x 14mm head bolts , then the 17mm nut that holds the shock in. From there, you can't actually remove the shock from the lower mount bolt (took me a while to work that out....) Sadly I don't have a pic of the other side, but the swaybar mounts to the same bolt that holds the shock in. You need to push that swaybar mount/bolt back so the shock can be pulled out past the lower control arm.  In this pic you can see the bolt partly pushed back, but it had to go further than that to release the shock. Once the shock is out, putting the new one in is "reverse of disassembly". Put the top of the shock through at least one hole and put a nut on loosely to hold it in place. Put the lower end in place and push the swaybar mount / shock bolt back in place, then loosely attach the other 2 top nuts. Bolt the bracket back in place with the 14mm head bolts and finally put the nut onto the lower bolt. Done....you have new suspension on your v37!
    • And now to the front.  No pics of the 3 nuts holding the front struts on, they are easy to spot. Undo 2 and leave the closest one on loosely. Underneath we have to deal with the wiring again, but this time its worse because the plug is behind the guard liner. You'll have to decide how much of the guard liner to remove, I undid the lower liner's top, inside and lower clips, but didn't pull it full off the guard. Same issue undoing the plug as at the rear, you need to firmly push the release clip from below while equally firmly gripping the plug body and pulling it out of  the socket. I used my fancy electrical disconnect pliers to get in there There is also one clip for the wiring, unlike at the rear I could not get behind it so just had to lever it up and out.....not in great condition to re-use in future.
    • Onto the rear lower shock mount. It's worth starting with a decent degrease to remove 10+ years of road grime, and perhaps also spray a penetrating oil on the shock lower nut. Don't forget to include the shock wiring and plug in the clean.... Deal with the wiring first; you need to release 2 clips where the wiring goes into the bracket (use long nose pliers behind the bracket to compress the clip so you can reuse it), and the rubber mount slides out, then release the plug.  I found it very hard to unplug, from underneath you can compress the tab with a screwdriver or similar, and gently but firmly pull the plug out of the socket (regular pliers may help but don't put too much pressure on the plastic. The lower mount is straightforward, 17mm nut and you can pull the shock out. As I wasn't putting a standard shock back in, I gave the car side wiring socket a generous gob of dialectric grease to keep crap out in the future. Putting the new shock in is straightforward, feed it into at least 1 of the bolt holes at the top and reach around to put a nut on it to hold it up. Then put on the other 2 top nuts loosely and put the shock onto the lower mounting bolt (you may need to lift the hub a little if the new shock is shorter). Tighten the lower nut and 3 upper nuts and you are done. In my case the BC Racing shocks came assembled for the fronts, but the rears needed to re-use the factory strut tops. For that you need spring compressors to take the pressure off the top nut (they are compressed enough when the spring can move between the top and bottom spring seats. Then a 17mm ring spanner to undo the nut while using an 8mm open spanner to stop the shaft turning (or, if you are really lucky you might get it off with a rattle gun).
    • You will now be able to lift the parcel shelf trim enough to get to the shock cover bolts; if you need to full remove the parcel shelf trim for some reason you also remove the escutcheons around the rear seat release and you will have to unplug the high stop light wiring from the boot. Next up is removal of the bracket; 6 nuts and a bolt Good news, you've finally got to the strut top! Remove the dust cover and the 3 shock mount nuts (perhaps leave 1 on lightly for now....) Same on the other side, but easier now you've done it all before
×
×
  • Create New...