Fraud Warning

[POORCARDEALER]

Peoples greed that make them victim of this type of thing sadly.

[Mephistofleas]

Obvious shenanigans is obvious.

[tomjol]

djdestiny said:

Post the URL's for any sites you used to make the transactions and the email addresses.
I bet they have the word pistonheads in it, but are a subdomain eg. pistonheads.buyourcar.co.uk might look genuine at a glance but in reality its just a made up page originating from buyourcar.co.uk

Felt so compelled to respond to this that I bothered to stop lurking and finally register!

Do not under any circumstances place any value in the address an email appears to originate from, they are exceedingly easy to spoof.

As for the OP...there are no words...

[folos]

you can see here my picture it says i official car seller of PH representative of the UK. please wire me $10,000 to my account and i will arrange for ship aston martin to ur door within 7 days of working.

my condolences,

John

[jgtv]

t400ble said:

Always wondered what Garlic looked like.

(that is of course a joke, I know this scam is nothing to do with Garlic, Piston heads or anyone else associated in any way)

Considering the warning is under every advert with a picture as far as I am aware I cant believe people still fall for this.

[CAPP0]

POORCARDEALER said:

Peoples greed that make them victim of this type of thing sadly.

Never a truer word….

[Sump]

Jesus, didn't realise anyone who could find their way onto the internet could ever fall for this type of ste.

[Stu78]

Busso GTA said:

Wait ! You actually paid money into the escrow account ?

This = minds blown. I can't get my head round it, surely got to be a wind up?

[rehab71]

ging84 said:

oh come on why are people responding to this thread
doesn't everyone know it's school holidays?

THIS!

FFS you lot, the OP's first post is this? Obvious troll, come on!

[Matt UK]

Idiot for falling for it or idiot for trolling.

[S0 What]

SlideyJoe said:

Hi Guys

I want to send a warning message to all members and potential car buyers, about using the piston heads website when buying cars.

Over the weekend of 19/20th July 2014 I came across an advert for a 2009 Alfa 159 1.9 JTDm Limited Edition for £4200. I initially thought there was a mistake due to the low price, but also thinking I had lucked out so I followed up.

Following the exchange of a few emails with the seller directly a process was started whereby i was requested by what looked like authentic piston heads email chain, (authentic looking banners etc) to deposit the money into an escrow account owned by piston heads, who would hold the money on behalf of the seller. The seller claimed to want a quick sale in order to work abroad and that piston heads would handle the sale.

The process was that Piston heads would send me the car for me to review within 48hrs following receipt of my monies into their third party account, after which time I could keep it, they would then send the money on to the seller, or if i changed my mind within this time I could send it back and have my money returned to me. This sounded ok and I felt confident that the process was legitimate. Suspicions were raised when I tried to get an update from piston heads themselves as to whether they had received my latest email regarding delivery of the car.

I called the website and they informed me that its likely that I have been the subject of online fraud. They told me they are well aware of the scam (amongst others) and that they have a fraud warning on each advert. Looking back, I admit my mistake was not doing what I normally do before parting with good money to buy a car, and that is to see it and inspect it personally before parting with funds. I guess my enthusiasm for a 'good deal' got the better of me.

My warning to you is that piston heads have known about this sort of thing for some time now (at least 5 or 6 years) and despite having put a warning on each classified ad, I missed this 'fraud warning link', I believe it is easy to miss. They also believe the scammers access their email system/website to continually carry out this scam.

After begin scammed I strongly suggested to piston heads to put the warning as a link on their home page under 'Resources or Classifieds' for example, so that it is more easily accessible and can give people clear warning and advice about car buying over the internet.

My guess why they don't want to do this is so that they don't want to scare off potential visitors and give the wrong impression of their site. I'm as angry with piston heads as I am with the scammers (and myself to be honest). For PH they have known about this for a number of years and seem to do the bare minimum to counter it in terms of their system security and easily accessible fraud warnings.

Having looked into this further, I'm not the only one to have been caught out. So please be aware when buying from piston heads (and it appears auto trader, ebay, and other sites) that you could be scammed. Piston heads don't seem to want to put in the necessary security or safeguards to assist people to avoid being scammed and conduct a sensible buying procedure. So BUYER BEWARE !!!!

Thanks

SlideyJoe

Your a fukcwit and scammers love fukcwits, or at least fukcwits with more money than sense.

[backwoodsman]

School holidays started today.

Obvious troll is obvious.

[Joeguard1990]

I get similar scam emails sent to me EVERY week from my "bank" copying the normal template and telling me to log in and change my password/type in my details.

Also the same from "ebay", "paypal", etc.

Difference is OP I don't fall for them. Learn from your mistake and be more aware next time. Pistonheads are hardly to blame for scammers they are everywhere in life...

[Centurion07]

Joeguard1990 said:

I get similar scam emails sent to me EVERY week from my "bank" copying the normal template and telling me to log in and change my password/type in my details.

Also the same from "ebay", "paypal", etc.

Difference is OP I don't fall for them. Learn from your mistake and be more aware next time. Pistonheads are hardly to blame for scammers they are everywhere in life...

The Ebay one might be genuine.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27503290

[Little Lofty]

These scams have been going for years, they obviously work and make money for the scammers or they wouldn't waster their time and would have moved onto a different scam by now. There is seemingly an endless stream of gullible buyers looking for a bargain and the scammers know it.

[dxg]

hora said:

OP are you serious? Who buys a car privately unseen escrow?

What the fk. Go away.

There's a Freakonomics theory that says the scammers only try these approaches to identify those who are so far off the scale in terms of gullibility, that they'll fall for anything. Literally anything.

The logic goes that everyone - bar everyone - knows that these sorts of things are scams, yet there's always one next more gullible person to find. Ads and junk emails just serve to search those people out.

[edgyedgy]

tomjol said:

Felt so compelled to respond to this that I bothered to stop lurking and finally register!

Do not under any circumstances place any value in the address an email appears to originate from, they are exceedingly easy to spoof.

As for the OP...there are no words...

I was thinking same thing regarding email addresses. as for op words fail me.top lurking fella anyway

[Likes Fast Cars]

Now I'm gonna have to think of a new approach to take when selling my car

[medieval]

Who was it that said you cannot con an honest man............

[t400ble]

I think people really need to do some sort of test, prior to using the internet.