Criminals are using eBay to sell stolen and cloned cars, a BBC investigation has revealed.
The vehicles were being sold in Greater Manchester via at least three accounts after having their details switched with legitimate cars.
Among the victims was a retired police officer who lost £17,000 buying a Mercedes from a seller in Rochdale.
He said he reported the incident to the police, but no action was taken. Police said the decision is being reviewed.
Former police officer Graham Murray lost his money after buying a Mercedes C-class in Rochdale two months ago, leaving him "devastated".
He said he reported the case to police and has questioned why the fraudulent eBay sellers have not yet been caught.
It's safer to buy used Yugos.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Cloned Cars Sold in Greater Manchester Ebay Scam
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 34 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
(1)
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday May 09 2017, @12:52PM (6 children)
Someone who sells a car on eBay and asks for cash on delivery is a huge red flag to me.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:39PM (5 children)
In Europe it's still very common to pay in cash for used cars.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by ledow on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:54PM (4 children)
Common or not, it's stupid.
And it's not that common to drop £17k (a year's wages for some people) in cash.
Hell, you can't even WITHDRAW that amount of cash from a bank in one transaction without prior appointments and security checks (and now they warn you if they think what you're withdrawing for may be a scam, according to a BBC News article about the elderly being scammed).
If nothing else, meeting a stranger on a road with £17k in cash on an arranged meeting is likely to see you mugged. You'd have to be a damn idiot.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:05PM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by inertnet on Tuesday May 09 2017, @03:42PM
Right, what I do i when I want to buy a used car after initial inspection, is make a small down payment and agree to have the car inspected by a specialized organization (e.g. DEKRA in Germany). The agreement is written down and signed by both parties. If the inspection is successful, I return to the seller (not alone) to transfer the car to my name and make the payment. This process can take several weeks. This also gives me time to let the bank know that I'm planning a sizable withdrawal.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @05:20PM
£17k ($21,980) in cash could also easily get "civil forfeited" in the USA. All the cop has to do is get some weed from the evidence locker and claim he found it in your car.
If I had that much cash on me, I'd be more paranoid of civil forfeiture than any mugger. I can at least use force to defend myself from a mugger if necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:49PM
Some people don't let all their money go through some rat ass den of thieves (banks). i can also protect myself from mugging like a grown man. Not some pig calling slave. You try to mug me and i'll turn your head into a pink cloud.
(Score: 2) by BenJeremy on Tuesday May 09 2017, @12:53PM (3 children)
The problem is paying cash on collection. It preys on marks who expect to get something at a steep discount - the victim should know better, and do due diligence to confirm the legitimacy of the purchase.
It's still wrong to defraud people, but at this point, these scams are well known. I'm not going to feel too sorry for them.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by ledow on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:13PM (1 child)
Don't pay £17,000 to a random guy you meet on eBay in cash (which is inherently outside of eBay's control).
It's got nothing to do with cars, eBay or anything else. And retired police officers should know better too.
At the very least, if you'd used a credit card you could have claimed it back. And who the hell takes £17k in cash but won't accept credit cards? Scammers, that's who.
A retired police officer reads "£17k, cash on collection" and doesn't think "Hold on a mo. That seems like a large, dodgy cash enterprise with little to no comeback."
Sorry, but I judge the scammees far more than the scammers in this case.
Up next: What kind of pillock pays £17k for a second-hand car anyway. You can get a brand-new car for that kind of money, or not far off.
(Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:39PM
If you read TFA, you'll find the that the £17k car was a Mercedes C-Class. Presuming it was a late-model version, there's a good chance it was actually worth that much - at least to the kind of people that would want to drive a Mercedes C-Class, a group that I am not a member of.
If I were you, I'd be more concerned about the BBC reporter who spent £9900 on a Vauxhall Mokka being sold by an account described as "suspicious".
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:51PM
Paying cash usually means going outside eBay, cutting them out of the transaction. It also, on a big ticket item like a car, means being able to declare a much smaller amount of money changed hands for tax purposes. In other words the buyer was looking to scam and was scammed. Most scams involve leveraging the mark's own dishonesty. Had the payment went through eBay, odds are they would have made sure they had a solid grasp of exactly who they were transferring that much money to because they know they need to be able to claw it back to resolve a complaint. Of course they charge for this service along with the listing, which is why eBay and Paypal want a taste of the transactions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @12:56PM
...the IMEI?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by VLM on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:22PM (15 children)
Its a weird but interesting window into a different culture separated by a mostly common language.
First of all you'd never see an anti-ebay infotainment article unless some local dealership bought a huge advertisement package or there was an outright bribe or something.
Secondly they can't talk about the perp or even look into the crime because of obviously political reasons, clearly the scammer is arab/muslim. Any other ethnic group they would have gone full on "Redcoats suppressing the Irish Rebellion". Let this be a lesson to anyone in the UK, if you KNOW the cops will not enforce the law for racial reasons, then never voluntarily do business with that race, ever.
Thirdly in the USA this would probably be a scam. The ex cop has an idiot meth head nephew and his sister calls crying the idiot kid stole a car to buy meth and she's kicked his ass and hes at inpatient treatment but now theres a stolen car sitting in my garage and you're my brother the ex-cop please save me, you know, pull all the familial heartstrings. So the cop withdraws 18 grand in cash, making sure to keep the receipt, fakes the whole damn thing with a burner cellphone and everything, carefully rehearses his story, puts 18 grand in cash in a box buried in the crawlspace or WTF, and starts his acting career. The cops nephew is not going to jail (maybe he made a deal, you go to rehab and me and my old work friends "take care of it" or you go to prison, kid...). The car owner gets his car back. The cop gets a $18K income tax deduction as a legally documented crime victim. The cop doesn't lose a penny because his $18K of cash is in the back yard and nobody gonna know nothing he can spend one K of cash on blackjack and hookers and waste the rest, or hire illegal aliens in six months cash on the barrel to do some landscaping or WTF it don't matter. Alternately if the (ex)cop is slightly crooked maybe he owes someone $18K for busting the wrong team's drug mule when he was still on the force or maybe he has a drug habit or gambling problem, maybe owes some guys who knows, just saying he might not be spending his $18K on something as legal as 2000 trips thru the McDonalds drivethru window. Anyway thats how the story really works in the USA.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ledow on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:37PM (12 children)
Fuck off with your casual racism.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:47PM (3 children)
casual?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 09 2017, @05:09PM
For those who don't know UK culture we're dueling some pretty esoteric memes here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casual_(subculture) [wikipedia.org]
No I'm not in Casuals United although I'd buy them a beer at the bar. Translated into UK speak that line is something like "Argh minted todah so gon drink plonk till legless or pavement pizza or subject to her majesties pleasure" or some BS like that. (insert insensitive American tourist voice) Why can't you people all speak like a goddamn James Bond movie because at least we can understand him, also our chicks think he's hot, but the drunken slang accent not so much, sounds like a pack of large bellowing hounds. "Bar bar ar barbar ba argh ba argh!" WTF was that, are you buying me a beer or was I just propositioned or are you talking about soccer, or all of the above? At least drunken Americans have the common decency to slink into a corner and pee or vomit into a potted plant while staying out of the way. If you're gonna get drunk and spout Klingon proverbs at least learn Klingon language first you can't just make that shit up on the fly. (end insensitive American tourist voice)
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:09PM (1 child)
VLM is a well-known Nazi who has endorsed concentration camps for immigrants, and various other not-so-casual racist positions. Remember, the only solution to fake news is filtering by reputation.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:02PM
concentration camps for immigrants
Close not quite, the legals are fine plus or minus some weirdness in the regulations that needs fine tuning, the illegals simply need to go home, the camps are for the real troublemakers virtually all are domestic terrorists.
I'm definitely not anti-white like most on the left. I'd say that's my residual libertarianism speaking in that in my set of people I'm more "not anti-white" and live and let live. There are more hardline people, although I'd never punch right-ward there are some interesting aspects I'd not endorse. "white sharia" uh ...
There's a lot of pithy political sayings about someone with a heart under 30 is a liberal and someone with a brain over 40 is a conservative and all that and my pithy saying of the day is a natsoc is just a former libertarian who no longer worships the false god of unregulated capitalism. Capitalism is kind of like sex, for most people its better without government regulation and intervention but the guy yelling loudest about how we need to get the government out is exactly the guy we need to regulate the most because unlike 99% of the population he wants to rape your pet goat, or your kids or your wife. So yeah that's kind of how it is with capitalism, and libertarianism, and natsoc.
The meta issue is the whole point is, news at 11, cops are racist, try not to act all surprised, so when they do something racist try not to act all surprised. Somehow noticing that makes me casually racist, LOL.
The meta meta issue is you want to intimidate a leftist or a normie or neocon you call them a racist. You call a natsoc a casual racist and its like, uh, yeah, and the sun rises in the east ya got a point there or something?
Internally natsoc don't call themselves racist the more common phrase is race realism which fairly accurately reflects beliefs and behaviors.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:00PM (4 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:21PM (1 child)
I think ledow was being ironic.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by Arik on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:58PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 09 2017, @05:11PM (1 child)
How do you figure he was racist?
The part where he advocates not doing business with people based solely on their race.
The part where he claims police are letting brown people off without investigation and instead harassing white people isn't racist. It's just incredibly stupid and completely divorced from reality.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday May 09 2017, @05:32PM
That's not exactly what he said.
"The part where he claims police are letting brown people off without investigation and instead harassing white people isn't racist. It's just incredibly stupid and completely divorced from reality."
Really?
Are you claiming that police NEVER treat people differently because of 'race?' I'm really curious as to your logic here.
I do think what he said is probably exaggerated (for comedy) and perhaps a bit baitish, but it's not actually racist, or completely divorced from reality. It's not like cops have NEVER been caught doing exactly what he posits. This has happened several times, one example that leaps to mind is the recent scandal in Rotherham UK which has resulted in several independent inquiries and the resignation in disgrace of top officials.
It's a fair bet that there is at least one or two other areas in the world where the same thing is happening currently and yes, as a matter of self-defense, someone who is in such an area and aware of the fact would naturally try to limit their contact with the group the police favor. That wouldn't necessarily indicate any racist beliefs or feelings on their part - it's a simple reaction to the racism of the police.
Of course, that doesn't mean that someone who IS racist wouldn't be predisposed to see such treatment, even where it is not happening.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 09 2017, @03:11PM (2 children)
It's a well known fact that different races/religions are treated differently by the cops - regardless of the victim's or the public's view of the matter. In the EU and UK, the cops have been directed to go easy on some certain minorities, because treating them just like everyone else will result in racism charges.
If you hate white, or English, or European, or Christian people, just come out and say it. Meanwhile, those people are being systematically exploited by "immigrants". And, it's past time to put a stop to the exploitation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @05:27PM
What would you ever do without AM talk radio telling you what to think?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:04PM
It's a well known fact that. . .
Says Runaway! Ha ha ha! Racist!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @03:37PM (1 child)
Wow, a paragraph with 301 words!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 09 2017, @04:52PM
How about this for brief, "superfans, so devoted..."
(Score: 3, Funny) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:13PM
You wouldn't download a car, would you?
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:08PM (2 children)
Seriously?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:53PM
all you seek is but a click away. ohh, the details you'll find there.
(Score: 3, Informative) by etherscythe on Tuesday May 09 2017, @07:56PM
FTA:
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:08PM
The article is content free when it comes to any actual details of the crime. What exactly was 'cloned?'
License plates? Ok, I can see that. VIN? Harder but if you just replace the little metal plate visible in the windshield (at least on U.S. cars) that is doable. But do they also replace the other places it is stamped into the metal of the frame? I assume they either swap the paperwork for forge it? Do these high end cars expose the ID numbers via OBDC or CAN ports and can they also be changed? With all the bother they go to these days to DRM the parts to prevent chop shops parting out stolen vehicles one would hope so. We need to know what the criminals are doing so we can know what to check for that isn't clonable.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:08PM
I've tried selling my cars online several times, First 2 times, it worked great. But the last time, the "buyer" tried to pass me a fraudulent check, from some bank 2 states away, for the wrong amount. I asked for $1500, and the check was for $5100. Probably expected me to give him the difference in cash. I contacted the person whose name was on the check and he confirmed his account had been cracked.
I reported the matter to the local police. An officer came to the house, but said no crime had been committed so there was nothing they could do. I guess passing a fraudulent check isn't a crime, if it's to a private party? But try that at a retail store, and you're in Big Trouble! The officer suggested the way to get their help was to go ahead with the sale and lose my money, so that a crime would have been committed. Has to be one of the all time stupidest suggestions I've ever received, and my estimation of police intelligence has been plummeting ever since. Was there no other law enforcement organization they could recommend to me? No. And that was that. I didn't try anything more. The "buyer" tried one more time, threatened to sic the FBI on me if I refused to sell to him. I told him to bring it and hung up.