Craigs List Scams

A minor hobby of mine is to look for obvious scams on CL. I look at cars from 2500 to 3500 and it seems that roughly 50% of cars in that range are obvious scams. Can CL not be in any way responsible for enabling these thieves? Yeah, I know that a fool and his money will soon be separated, but this is a huge problem, with fraud squads being organized here in SoFla, Does anybody have a suggestion for bringing this into control? CL places all kinds of warnings, but the scammers keep on posting. Arrgghh.

have you reported the listing? its the only thing you can do.

I always like to ones that list the car with only a bill of sale, not the title.

What galls me are the ones with really slick looking ads with prices half what they should be. Contact them, they tell you they will ship for free ( Oh, no you can't see the car), E-Bay will handle the sale so you are protected, yada yada yada.. Even with all the warnings CL shows, the fools still send their money by Western Union to absolutely nowhere. Like this-http://miami.craigslist.org/pbc/ctd/2309870661.html, or http://miami.craigslist.org/mdc/ctd/2309885555.html. The ones that really amuse me are the ones that show South Florida, and the picture shows snow in the background. Nothing we can do? Is CL an innocent? Arrggh.

Yes, the $3500 FD RX-7 is too good to be true.

They also like to throw in a blurb about being deployed soon or doing missions work or donating the proceeds to charity etc.

If you look at the CAUTIONS in the beginning of the car classified ads, THE very first thing CL tells folks is that it is most likely a scam when the price is a fraction of the Blue Book value....so folks are warned upfront.

That said, I flag those obvious ads when I can, but in any one day they are as much as 10-15% of the ads, and CL doesn't punish folks who post these ads. Afterall, it's possible that some customer(s?) of these dealers (a lot of these ads are placed by dealers) may just be a tad disgruntled....at least that is how CL explains it away.

At the very least, CL should make it impossible for the EXACT same ad to appear EVERYWHERE. I often see the same ad for a '59 Chevy being offered by the same woman (what is up with all the female "dealers"?) in several locations. CL should also refuse to post ads where a valid city is not listed as "location". Allowing the using of no location or "here" or "everywhere" is flat stupid on CL's part

I wish I had computer skills that allowed me to send these scammers viruses or worms.