Craigslist Scams and How to Avoid Them

To me, it’s a wonder that Craigslist exists at all. It exists in a space between the real and the virtual – wedged into a gap established in the late 1990s as newspaper advertising gave way to online.

With modern companies, the interaction is simple. For example, visit the polished Amazon site, order what you like, and it will show up on your front porch the next day, magically materializing from the overloaded van of an exhausted driver working the ominously-named Megacycle. Heck, in some cities, it will even arrive on the same day.

Craigslist isn’t like that at all. Its website is as bare bones as it gets and there are no frills, beyond a search function which allows you to locate items for sale in your nearest city and a teeny tiny thumbnail map showing the approximate locale.

There are no delivery drivers, no central authority, no online payment methods, and no safeguards. Once you find what you want to buy, you walk or drive over to a stranger’s house, hand over a greasy wad of notes and depart with whatever it is that you came for.

You don’t need to provide identification to create an account, and a throwaway email address is enough to reply to an advert and arrange to meet up. If adequate precautions are taken (such as using a VPN), it’s entirely possible to keep your Craigslist transaction completely anonymous.

And as much as I respect the privacy afforded by such semi-online deals, criminals love them too and will use the platform to defraud or rob you of your money, goods, or worse.

Here are my top tips for staying safe while using Craigslist.

As a Buyer, You Should…

Check If the Merchandise Is Stolen

How would you feel if you paid thousands for a used car and then the police showed up the next day to drive it away? Or if you paid hundreds for a new phone that stopped working the very next day?

Pretty bummed out, I’m guessing.

If the cops show up to confiscate your wheels, it’s probably because it’s a stolen car that was shifted quickly on Craigslist, and subsequently reported to the authorities. Likewise, stolen phones can be remotely blocked by network providers if they’re reported as lost or missing.

In these cases, you don’t really have any recourse unless the original criminal is apprehended – so it’s best to do your homework before you arrange to meet the seller.

Criminals want to move their ill-gotten merchandise as quickly as possible, so they will often price it far below the market value in the hope of getting it off their hands before it’s reported as stolen.

Ideally, you’ll want to reply to an advert that has been up for a day or more to minimize your chances of accidentally receiving stolen goods. Most people will realize that their car has vanished within a day and everyone I know would notice their phone was absent within minutes.

When you get in touch with the seller, you should ask for the vehicle’s Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) – this should be on the vehicle’s registration document and on the engine block or the windscreen. With this in hand, you can use a free service such as VINCheck to see if the vehicle has been reported stolen or wrecked.

VINCheck is free to use, provided you use it to check fewer than five VINs in a 24-hour period. When you arrive to view the vehicle, you should make sure that the VIN matches the one you were given.

Like cars, phones have a unique number that can identify them individually from the billions at large in the world. This is the International Mobile Equipment Identifier (IMEI) number, which can be found on a phone’s documentation or by typing #06# from the device’s dialler.

Ask the seller to give you the IMEI and then check it against one of the many IMEI databases such as the Stolen Register or SNDeepInfo.

If the seller refuses to give you the numbers to check, you should assume that the item is stolen.

Look After Your Own Safety

Going to an unknown location to meet up with unknown people is pretty dodgy – especially if you’re carrying a pocket full of cash in anticipation of handing it over in exchange for goods and services.

Most people are honest, but some are not, and criminals have a tendency to do criminal things.

Think about this from the point of view of a robber. Mugging people is hard. You have to select a target who looks like they have money, ensure you’re in a place where the crime won’t be seen, and persuade the victim, by threat or force, to hand that money over to you.

It’s difficult, but Craigslist makes it easy.

To ensure their victim has money, criminals will sell an item with a value of hundreds of dollars and specify cash only. To ensure that they’re in a place where the crime won’t be witnessed, they choose a venue where they’re unlikely to be seen; they make sure that they have sufficient means to overpower or intimidate their target.

In a situation like this, the odds are in favor of a criminal, but it’s possible to ameliorate the risks by taking a few simple steps.

• Pay electronically where possible. Using Paypal goods and services protects you against fraud. Avoid cash.
• Meet in a public location such as a cafe with CCTV cameras.
• Bring a friend.

If a situation seems sketchy or you get bad vibes from it, you should just walk away. Your safety is more important than any bargain you might get in a disused underground parking lot.

Buy Face-to-Face

Unlike services such as eBay, Craigslist doesn’t verify its sellers or offer anything in the way of guarantees.

If someone is offering an item for sale, you won’t be 100% sure it even exists until it’s actually in your hands.

Occasionally sellers will advertise a fantastic bargain outside of their area and offer to mail it to buyers. Most will ask for a wire transfer and that’s where problems begin.

But there’s no certainty that the seller will actually mail the item to you. Besides, you don’t want them to have your home address, do you?

You should only ever hand over money to people who you can meet in person, and even then, only after you have verified that the goods exist and are theirs to sell (and that you’re meeting in a public place).

Do Your Research When Renting

Moving home is one of the most traumatic experiences a human being can undergo. It’s right up there along with divorce and childbirth, in my mind.

It’s understandable as the process involves uprooting your entire life, transporting everything you own, and of course, handing over thousands of dollars to your new landlord.

Landlords need cash in advance before they’ll let you move into your swanky new pad – a lot of it.

You’ll need to pay one or two months’ rent in advance. There will be a security deposit in case you trash the place. Do you have pets? There will be a surcharge for them, too.

But there’s no guarantee that the person to whom you’re handing over the money has the authority to rent out the apartment or house to you in the first place.

They could have rented it for a week on AirBnB; they could have waited until the legitimate tenants or owners were out of town, broken in and changed the locks. There are any number of ways an unauthorized “agent” can gain access to a property, advertise it on Craigslist, and then accept cash upfront in exchange for a bogus tenancy agreement.

When the real owners or tenants return to find you occupying their pied-à-terre, they’ll be understandably miffed, you’ll be out on the street, and you’ll never see your various deposits again. Unfortunately, apartment scams are prevalent on Craigslist.

There are a few common-sense steps you can take to avoid this awful scenario.

Check With the Neighbors

Do the neighbors know the landlord of the property? Can they verify that the person you’re dealing with has some connection with the building?

If the real tenant or owner is away, it’s likely that they’ll have left contact details with a neighbor in case of emergency. Get in touch and verify.

Check for Other Adverts

AirBNB is becoming increasingly popular with people who want to make money from their property while they’re away on vacation. Renting out your own home as a vacation spot while you’re down in Tijuana for the week can offset or completely cover the cost of the vacation.

But it may be that the person renting you your new home on a six-month lease may only have access because they rented it as a short-term vacation spot through AirBnB themselves.

Check the AirBnB website. If your new property is listed, the landlord probably isn’t legit.

Get a Signed Receipt

A receipt acts as proof of purchase. It’s documentary evidence that you have paid money and received goods in return.

If something does go wrong with your Craigslist transaction, it’s proof that you acted in good faith, and if the goods turn out to be of questionable origin, it may even save you from a charge of receiving stolen goods.

As a Seller, You Should…

Look After Your Own Safety

The same goes for sellers as it does for buyers. Meeting up with an anonymous person who is aware that you’re carrying valuable goods is a huge risk.

If the goods you’re selling are worth more than a few dollars, you should meet up in a public place where you’re unlikely to be taken advantage of.

You should also make sure that you bring a friend with you.

Don’t Accept Checks

Checks used to be a convenient way of paying for goods, which avoided the need to carry large suitcases of cash with you.

It’s essentially a promise that one person’s bank will pay a certain sum of money into another person’s bank account. Checks are valid if they are signed by the account holder and if there are sufficient funds in the account to cover the transaction.

I have a checkbook somewhere. It came with my bank account and I use it maybe twice a year. If it went missing, I probably wouldn’t know, and even now there could be criminals out there, writing checks in my name, and I wouldn’t even know about it.

But any checks written in my name are invalid unless they’re signed by me with my usual signature.

In accepting a check in exchange for your goods, you are making a number of assumptions – that the checkbook isn’t stolen; that there are sufficient funds in the account; that the buyer won’t cancel the check as soon as they get home. It isn’t worth the risk.

Instead, you should only accept cold, hard cash or Paypal.

Get a Signed Receipt

A receipt is an acknowledgement that the goods you sold were actually handed over to the buyer and that the buyer was satisfied with them at the time of purchase.

Having a signed receipt is armor against any complaints or allegations that may arise from the sale.

Don’t Get Murdered

Theft and robbery aren’t the only crimes you can fall victim to when buying and selling on Craigslist.

Fundamentally, the platform helps two complete strangers to meet each other for the first time and is likely to be in a place which is unfamiliar to at least one of the parties.

It’s probably no surprise to learn that there were 58 murders linked to Craigslist between 2009 and 2014.

Some of these were robberies or thefts gone awry, while others were deliberate attempts to lure victims to their deaths.

You should always let someone know where you’re going, and if possible, bring a friend with you.

Conclusion

Buying and selling on Craigslist is potentially more dangerous than using other platforms such as Amazon or eBay, but that doesn’t mean that bargains can’t be had.

Follow my advice to stay safe when you’re using online classified sites, such as Craigslist.

• Use stolen goods registries to check if the goods are legitimate.
• Don’t carry large amounts of cash with you.
• Meet in an open, neutral location.
• Don’t accept checks.
• Bring a friend if possible.
• Tell people where you’re going.
• If you’re renting a property, make sure that the landlord is legitimate.

Craigslist Scams FAQs