Free: Crooks You Run into when Selling your Boat

[Hoodsail]

I have had my 1984 Catalina 27 on the market since April, 2014 and have encountered some interesting characters while developing a new found respect for boat brokers. I listed her on Craigslist, Sailboatlistings, and boatsfsbo.com. First, save your $200 and do not list in boatsfsbo - I have not received one lead from this site after 4 months. Craigslist is the winner with sailboatlistings a distant second. This could be due to the price which started at approx. $8000 and now resides at $5800.. Through craigslist I have run into 3 individuals, who are accomplished swindlers. The first, sent me an actual business check via UPS-2day, which was drawn on a closed acct. The second stated he has a hearing disability and his broker would contact me. All 3 had the same ploy...send me a check in an amount greater than the sales price and I was to write a check to a 3rd party to cover shipping or general logistics. The third was unoriginal in that he was going to pay my price, sight unseen, and ship the boat to some other location. Other potential buyers of note, but not crooks: middle-aged woman with 2 college-aged kids who was buying my boat as the kids summer project - upkeep and learn to sail her..after taking the 3 of them out sailing for 2 hours, she wanted me to teach them how to sail. I deferred and found them a pro (they all loved the boat)...when I attempted to collect my check, she sent me an email stating.."my doctor told me not to buy the boat"..curious as he/she was not sailing with us..all-in-all, an interesting study of the human condition. thnks and I hope this minimizes others loss of angst and time in selling your boat when you get to that point...dave

[Cap Erict3]

I bought my boat off Craigslist and am a firm believer in being willing to take a prospective buyer for a sail. I like sailing anyway. If they have the cash it is the best way to makes sale in my my mind.

Good luck on selling your boat.

[Randyonr3]

I've bought and sold a few, and many times odd things arose.. my J22 was sold to a guy that kinda him-hawed around about it. I told him if he was comming over, bring cash.. he did..
And when I bought the boat we have now, I spoke to the dealer over the phone, made him an offer over the phone with him delevering the boat half way across the US, and sent him a certified check.. bought the boat sight unseen..
Fact is I never meet the dealer and all the paperwork (documantation) was done by mail..
So is it odd or out of sorts for someone to send a check for 100K , without even seeing the boat, could be but dont expect that all is Bad as the check I sent was perfectly good..

[sailorboy1]

I would bet experiences of people on a $6k boat are different than those for a $100+k boat are.

In fact I bet the experiences of the $6k boat sellers overall suck.

[onestepcsy37]

When you post on craigslist you attract all the scammers, although its easy to pick them out because they always have the same line - they send you a check and then want you to send a prepaid money order to their "shipper". Your money order is good because you have prepaid it; their check is no good but it may take up to two weeks to find that out.

I ALWAYS accept their offer, receive their check, and wait a few days while they badger me to send the money order to their "shipper". Then I email them the bad news. I tell them I have sent their fraudulent check, the address of their shipper, and a copy of all our correspondence to the sheriffs department in their county (easy to find with google). I never hear from them again.

OTOH, I have sold a boat and other gear on craigslist with no problems.

[socaldmax]

Originally Posted by onestepcsy37

When you post on craigslist you attract all the scammers, although its easy to pick them out because they always have the same line - they send you a check and then want you to send a prepaid money order to their "shipper". Your money order is good because you have prepaid it; their check is no good but it may take up to two weeks to find that out.

I ALWAYS accept their offer, receive their check, and wait a few days while they badger me to send the money order to their "shipper". Then I email them the bad news. I tell them I have sent their fraudulent check, the address of their shipper, and a copy of all our correspondence to the sheriffs department in their county (easy to find with google). I never hear from them again.

OTOH, I have sold a boat and other gear on craigslist with no problems.

That's interesting.
When I contacted the Sheriff's dept. about an internet scammer, they referred me to the FBI's website, which allows you to submit all of the information online. They claimed they had no jurisdiction over internet crimes, but the FBI specializes in it.

[onestepcsy37]

My purpose was more to scare them then to actually prosecute. I guess i get a kick out of letting them know that i know. I recently learned about the online FBI website; just might do that next time.

And there is another reason to always accept their offer. They always send their check by courier, which costs them about five dollars. So in a small way I've scammed them...

[Andrew B.]

Originally Posted by socaldmax

That's interesting.
When I contacted the Sheriff's dept. about an internet scammer, they referred me to the FBI's website, which allows you to submit all of the information online. They claimed they had no jurisdiction over internet crimes, but the FBI specializes in it.

Yes. If it's fraud, or some other crime(I believe it has to be felony ?) and it crosses a state line it's usually the FBI's turf.

fbi.gov has a special link for reporting internet fraud.

Attempted fraud probably isn't going to the top of the huge pile of internet crimes.

[Greenhand]

Luckily, the craigslist scammers aren't particularly creative. As long as you read the warnings when you post, you can avoid falling for them. Now, if only there was a way to avoid hearing from them at all.

Posting on craigslist recently did remind me to tell my mother that cashiers checks aren't what they used to be.

[socaldmax]

There was a guy who was selling a Dish network VIP722K DVR via Ebay. I contacted him and asked for the S/N and he didn't reply. I bid anyway, and told him that if it wasn't "clear" I wouldn't pay for it. I won the bidding at $60, which was dirt cheap. It turns out he lived only 25 mi away, so I told him I'd come to his house to pick it up.

I get there and he says he has another one if I want it for an additional $40. I bargain him down to $25 and write down the S/N on the back of the units and call Dish before I hand over the money. The CSR at Dish tells me both units are clear, go ahead and buy them. I give him $60 via Paypal, $25 cash and headed home.

I call Dish again to get both units added to my account, and they tell me to plug them in and give them the S/N from the menu. It turns out both units were leased from Dish, and the internal S/N is a couple of digits longer than the one on the back, which they claim is why the first CSR didn't flag them as stolen property. Now I'm ready to teach them all of the dirty words I learned in 10 yrs in the Navy!!

I called the guy back and he wouldn't answer the phone. The next day, I contacted Ebay, who really wasn't interested in fixing this until I mentioned that the units were stolen from Dish, at which point they issued an immediate refund of $60. The guy still didn't call me back. Since we were both in the same county, I called the Sheriff's office, which is when I was told to go to the FBI.gov site.

I filed a complaint with the FBI and typed in all of the info, including the guy's full name, his screen name, address and phone number. It's not like they had to do any digging to find this guy. I never got any follow up on it, but I did my part.

As an aside, a very good friend of mine from the Navy took his LSAT, scored very high on it, but really didn't want to be an attorney, despite getting offers from some of the top schools in the US. He joined the FBI instead. One of the interesting things he told me is that the majority of their cases just fall right into their laps. It's almost always a jilted ex-GF or a pissed off wife or ex-wife who's looking to get even and calls the FBI and says, "Guess who's not paying taxes on $13M this yr" or "Guess who had Tony the Nose whacked 2 months ago." Then they just start doing interviews and put the whole puzzle together. He also said if you're in a chat room and a 14 yr old girl says she wants to get together if you bring the wine coolers, chances are about 99% that it's a middle aged FBI agent on the other end of the chat. LOL

[delmarrey]

Here you need to read this thread;

http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...ams-85828.html

[Terra Nova]

Those are very common c/l scams, very transparent.

When you overprice your boat, you must expect it to remain on the market for a loooong time. Buyers see it, over and over, the price dropping, incrementally, but never realistically. So the boat gets stale and buyers skip right over the ad, with only some scammers responding.

Better to price it fairly to begin with.

[denverd0n]

Even if you don't over-price it, you will still--almost always--get scammers. It's just the nature of the thing.

And the scammers actually WANT it to be pretty obvious. Why? As onestepcsy37 pointed out, it costs them a bit (always at least time, if not actual money) to proceed with the scam. So they only want the most gullible and oblivious types to respond. What they do NOT want are people like onestepcsy37 who respond, but then don't go through with it. For them it's a numbers game--they send out thousands of e-mails a day and they really only want to hear back from those who are dumb enough to fall for the scam. (Which is why I like onestepcsy37's approach.)

[Greenhand]

I had one of the "you arrange delivery" scammers try it on me for a $75 couch. And a cashiers check for a $50 table. For the sailboat, I get more "We will list it for you/ arrange financing for your purchaser" calls, although I have gotten at least one scammer.

[K_V_B]

Maybe the US should just stop using cheques :-)



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