The Story:
You found a car online for a bargain. Apparently, the owner had brought his/her car back along to his/her home country, but for whatever reason, decided to sell the car back to Malaysia. On top of that and most important of all, the price is at a huge bargain.
Since you can't check the car out physically and bring it back, the owner suggest that using a shipping and escrow company to carry out the deal. The shipping and escrow service will verify the car and make the delivery to you, after receiving your payment so that no one will suffer from a scam.
You went ahead with the deal by sending your money to the escrow service, and waited faithfully for the arrival of your new car.
The Catch:
The car never arrive and you were unable to contact the owner nor the escrow company.
After some internet searching, you realised that you had been scammed.
You found out that the escrow service is actually a scam. Of course, it is now conspicuous that the car owner is a scammer in their same league.
The Shield:
Never buy a car from overseas online. 1) Without checking the car's physical condition, it is hard to determine the condition of the car and there might be many problems that cannot be known just by looking at the photos. 2) Importing a car from overseas is a tedious procedure and may incur more cost than it seems, costing more than buying a car from your local dealer.
Never use an unknown escrow service, especially if suggested by the owner. Although the companies suggested will sounds reputable and a Google search will easily reveal them as large and reliable companies, the scammers will also provide with their own website link, which will lead you to their fraud website. This is a very common tactics employed in online scams in order to direct their scam victims attention.
Insist on a arbitrator you trust to inspect the car and insist on using a reputable escrow service, if you must buy a car from overseas although it will be much safer to make your purchase from the local dealer.
Additional Information:
The following conversation is conducted between the ScamBusters and the scammer.
We hope that this will provide you with more information on this type of scam.
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