Since at least 2018, scammers have targeted online car sellers with what has become known as a vehicle history report scam. If you’re looking to sell a car in the near future, listen up.
Here’s how the scam works. Pretend that you’re selling your car online, whether on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, AutoTrader, AutoNation, or any other well-known website. After your listing goes live, you receive a message from someone who sounds like an interested buyer. They tell you that they want to be sure they aren’t getting ripped off and request that you provide them with a vehicle history report. However, they will only accept the report from a specific website that you’ve never heard of. Even stranger, that website that they tell you to visit says it’s going to cost somewhere around $25 to obtain the report.
This is the vehicle history report scam. The potential buyer, who really is just scammer that has no interest in your vehicle, owns the website that they directed you to. Once you submit the $25 or other similar dollar amount through the website to purchase a report, whether through Paypal or other means, you’ll likely never hear from the scammer again.
In 2018, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission published an advisory titled, “Steering clear of vehicle history report scams.” At the time, the FTC referred to the vehicle history report scam as new and said that the scam websites often ended in the suffix .vin, rather than something more traditional like…
