A St. Albert resident looking to sell his Jeep didn’t realize he would have to navigate a minefield of fraud attempts throughout the process.
This past summer, Don Allan took to platforms such as Facebook and Kijiji in the hopes of making a quick sale. Within the first five inquiries he received, Allan had fielded three scam attempts.
“The scammers basically came out in full force and tried to take advantage of me,” Allan said. “The amount of inquiries I got that ended up being bogus astounded me.”
Allan noticed a pattern in the scam inquiries: many came from the United States, and none of them questioned the price he had set for the Jeep.
“They just said, your vehicle looks good, I’d like to buy it,” Allan said. “Send me your email address and I’ll send you the money.”
One email Allan received said his asking price for the Jeep had been sent to him, but he would need to pay $950 in shipping prices for the money to go into his account.
“I was born at night, just not last night,” Allan said. “The bottom of the email also said they do not accept any phone calls or inquiries, so right off the bat [I interpreted that as], ’Don’t phone us because you’ll figure out very quickly this is fraud.’”
Jeff Horncastle, a fraud specialist with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, said the type of scam Allan faced isn’t uncommon. In fact, Horncastle said in 2021 the centre is seeing a higher dollar value loss for victims of fraud looking to sell their items, as opposed to looking to buy.
Data Horncastle shared with The Gazette said though there were a comparable number of would-be sellers who became fraud victims in 2019 and 2020 (1,574 and 1,536 respectively), the total amount lost jumped from around $3 million to more than $4 million in a year’s time.
In the first six months of 2021 alone, the fraud centre received reports identifying 925 victims who lost money through trying to sell merchandise online, totalling around $4.5 million in losses.
One other scam Horncastle said is quite common follows a similar pattern: the seller will receive what looks like a payment transfer saying a shipping number is required before payment can be transferred to their account.
“The victim will go to the post office, return home to try to put the tracking number in, and realize the email didn’t actually come from Interac or PayPal,” Horncastle said. “The victim has to scramble around trying to intercept the package through Canada Post, which can be challenging.”
Alberta RCMP sent out a warning of a similar recurring scam via press release on Oct. 26. In this scheme, sellers are sent what appears to be a money request in a different language, but is actually a payment request. Sellers will input their payment information and have the funds pulled from their account.
“As a result, sellers are being cheated out of their money instead of receiving payment for their listed items,” Cpl. Sean Milne said in the press release.
There is no trend in the type of listings or sellers being targeted by this scam, the press release stated.
Avoiding the scams
Horncastle said there are several things people looking to sell their items can do to avoid scams.
“If you’re able to, always meet the buyer in person,” Horncastle said. “Always take the time to verify if the email is claiming to come from Interac or PayPal by taking your mouse and hovering around the address.”
He said concerned buyers or sellers can always reach out to the Canadian Anti-Fraud centre or the payment company directly to verify something. In terms of scams buyers should watch out for, Horncastle said there are a lot of counterfeit stores on social media selling fake products they claim are name brand.
Allan said his past work experience in the security industry helped prepare him for dealing with scammers, but added he noticed some patterns sellers could use to identify a scam. For example, scam messages are often generic.
“They didn’t say, ‘Hey, I’m interested in your 2015 Jeep,’ they just said, ‘I’m interested in your vehicle,’” Allan said. “Then they had this canned response, and I would even get the same response messages from different scammers.”
Even though it took a month longer than he planned — and involved weeding out more illegitimate interest than he anticipated — Allan did eventually find someone to purchase his truck. He said he doesn’t want to dissuade people from using outlets such as Facebook and Kijiji, because of their opportunity for success.
“I’ve sold lots of stuff there,” Allan said. “But if it sounds too good to be true, usually it is.”
