Scam? I think so.

[Hoho223]

If it sounds to good to be true, it is. There are multiple clues…
Dead relative. Lawyer will transact purchase. Almost free give away price. Any sob story. 3rd party will deliver the goods.
I sold a couple dozen guns my bil inherited. I got several scam offers that included a fake FFL document. Also “my lawyer will send you the money“ and “a friend of mine will pick up the gun”. I strung one along to the point where the fake FFL license came out. Did a little googling and found the fake license.
Be aware and alert and treat everything as a scam until you can verify fully.

 

[Edstir]

In another thread I was complaining about a listing on Craig's list that sounded too good to be true and that the person who listed it replied back to me once and then not again.

Well, today I got a reply with a name and the pictures I requested. The tractor looks fantastic. The location of the tractor, according to Craig's list is about 2 hours from me. I sent the seller, who says she is selling her recently deceased husband's tractor, a list of dates that I could come and pay cash for the tractor. This is the reply I got:

As I mentioned before, I'm a widow and now I'm here in *******, ** staying with my parents. [That is not the location listed on Craig's list].
The tractor is already at the shipping company in Roanoke sealed and ready for shipping. My presence won't be necessary because I prearranged the deal with Continental Freight Shippers. The deal includes free delivery and it will arrive at your address in 3-4 days. You will have 5 days to try out prior to making any purchase and if by any reason you find something you don't like about it you can send it back at my expense. If you are interested in knowing more info about how it works, I can ask Continental Freight Shippers to send you an email with more information on how to purchase it. Continental Freight Shippers will contact you shortly after they have the details with all the confirmation that you need to complete this deal and you will also have proof that I am covered by them and a legitimate seller.
If you would like to receive the email from Continental Freight Shippers with all the transaction information please reply with your full name, shipping address and phone # and they will call you right away.
Hope to hear from you soon.

So, this obviously looks fishy. I cannot find a company with the exact name of Continental Freight Shippers but there are a few with very similar names. My wife, who is an excellent researcher, could not find a person by the name the seller gave me in the area that the Craig's list posting originated from except for someone who is deceased. Craig's list also says only to buy face-to-face. The part about trying it for 5 days and sending it back at the seller's expense sounds ridiculous too.

I sent her my work number and address. I'll play along and try to be an optimist just because I want it to be real (the pictures show a sweet tractor!). I'm normally a realist....pessimist according to my wife.

It makes me sad and angry that we live in this kind of world. It also makes me disappointed in myself that I'm still hoping this might be legit.

Curious if others have seen this sort of thing?

The few times I sold used lawn equipment on Craig's list I got a crazy contact saying they will send someone to pick up the item and odd ways to pay for it. I always say I just sold it. There usually the first one to make contact like they watch for new listing. I know it's a scam and dangerous to deal with these crooks. If I'm buying something I'm cautious when people want to meet in strange places. It's a sorry world we live in today. There's all kinds of warnings on the internet and tv that educate one to these scams.

 

[Edstir]

There are tons just like this on craigslist. Here's how it works..
1) somebody died, and somebody else is in posession.
2) it's an unbelievably good price (typically $1000-$3000)
3) the location that they say that the tractor is at is very different from the location where the post came from. (I had one tell me it was at an airforce base in AZ.. yeah right)
4) they want to put you in contact with the "shipping company"
5) they want you to pay in store gift cards (like lowes, home depot, Target, amazon, etc.) And they want you to send you a picture of the cards as proof before they ship it.
6) the numbers in the pictures are all they need to claim the gift card value, and then they are gone like the wind.

I used to report them at about 10/month. They tend to target Kubota and John Deere because there are plenty of pictures of these.
Another way you can typically tell is that the picture clearly doesn't match the forsale location listed. Like, I saw one that was supposed to be in Kearny, NJ, which is super urban. It had trees in the background and was on about 10 acres of land.. Yeah right.
Another said east coast location but was clearly taken from an arrid climate zone.
(Sometimes you can also download the pictures and look at the geographic tagging information in the picture that was left by the camera that took it, Lat/Lon to corroborate things.

I was in a new General Dollar store a few years ago and in line to pay. The guy in front of me said I could go ahead of him. We talked and it turns out he was buying $1500 dollars of gift cards. He was getting a fancy golf cart from a female soldier who was being sent overseas. She had free shipping as part of the move. I'm thinking now this was a scam. At the time I knew nothing about these dishonest deals. Today I could have warned him. This post brought up the old memory.

 

[Edmiester]

It IS a SCAM. It almost sounds like the one I was interested in. The widow wanted me to send her payment through Ebay gift cards. So many scams today.

 

[wploetz]

In another thread I was complaining about a listing on Craig's list that sounded too good to be true and that the person who listed it replied back to me once and then not again.

Well, today I got a reply with a name and the pictures I requested. The tractor looks fantastic. The location of the tractor, according to Craig's list is about 2 hours from me. I sent the seller, who says she is selling her recently deceased husband's tractor, a list of dates that I could come and pay cash for the tractor. This is the reply I got:

As I mentioned before, I'm a widow and now I'm here in *******, ** staying with my parents. [That is not the location listed on Craig's list].
The tractor is already at the shipping company in Roanoke sealed and ready for shipping. My presence won't be necessary because I prearranged the deal with Continental Freight Shippers. The deal includes free delivery and it will arrive at your address in 3-4 days. You will have 5 days to try out prior to making any purchase and if by any reason you find something you don't like about it you can send it back at my expense. If you are interested in knowing more info about how it works, I can ask Continental Freight Shippers to send you an email with more information on how to purchase it. Continental Freight Shippers will contact you shortly after they have the details with all the confirmation that you need to complete this deal and you will also have proof that I am covered by them and a legitimate seller.
If you would like to receive the email from Continental Freight Shippers with all the transaction information please reply with your full name, shipping address and phone # and they will call you right away.
Hope to hear from you soon.

So, this obviously looks fishy. I cannot find a company with the exact name of Continental Freight Shippers but there are a few with very similar names. My wife, who is an excellent researcher, could not find a person by the name the seller gave me in the area that the Craig's list posting originated from except for someone who is deceased. Craig's list also says only to buy face-to-face. The part about trying it for 5 days and sending it back at the seller's expense sounds ridiculous too.

I sent her my work number and address. I'll play along and try to be an optimist just because I want it to be real (the pictures show a sweet tractor!). I'm normally a realist....pessimist according to my wife.

It makes me sad and angry that we live in this kind of world. It also makes me disappointed in myself that I'm still hoping this might be legit.

Curious if others have seen this sort of thing?

This is the typical ruse used to hijack your info. Don’t be surprised if you pop up as a seller on Facebook or Craigslist of all kinds of desirable items at ridiculously low prices.

 

[Williy]

My question is: Since when do you
register a tractor???? car or truck yes
but a tractor???

willy

 

[California]

My question is: Since when do you
register a tractor???? car or truck yes
but a tractor???

willy

When you are going to drive it job to job, on the road.

Guy who dug a septic tank excavation for me said he had to add turn signals, brake lights, etc to his backhoe then license it and put plates on it when he didn't want to trailer it around a medium-size town. Around 1970, I assume that's still the case.

 

[Scottkozak]

In another thread I was complaining about a listing on Craig's list that sounded too good to be true and that the person who listed it replied back to me once and then not again.

Well, today I got a reply with a name and the pictures I requested. The tractor looks fantastic. The location of the tractor, according to Craig's list is about 2 hours from me. I sent the seller, who says she is selling her recently deceased husband's tractor, a list of dates that I could come and pay cash for the tractor. This is the reply I got:

As I mentioned before, I'm a widow and now I'm here in *******, ** staying with my parents. [That is not the location listed on Craig's list].
The tractor is already at the shipping company in Roanoke sealed and ready for shipping. My presence won't be necessary because I prearranged the deal with Continental Freight Shippers. The deal includes free delivery and it will arrive at your address in 3-4 days. You will have 5 days to try out prior to making any purchase and if by any reason you find something you don't like about it you can send it back at my expense. If you are interested in knowing more info about how it works, I can ask Continental Freight Shippers to send you an email with more information on how to purchase it. Continental Freight Shippers will contact you shortly after they have the details with all the confirmation that you need to complete this deal and you will also have proof that I am covered by them and a legitimate seller.
If you would like to receive the email from Continental Freight Shippers with all the transaction information please reply with your full name, shipping address and phone # and they will call you right away.
Hope to hear from you soon.

So, this obviously looks fishy. I cannot find a company with the exact name of Continental Freight Shippers but there are a few with very similar names. My wife, who is an excellent researcher, could not find a person by the name the seller gave me in the area that the Craig's list posting originated from except for someone who is deceased. Craig's list also says only to buy face-to-face. The part about trying it for 5 days and sending it back at the seller's expense sounds ridiculous too.

I sent her my work number and address. I'll play along and try to be an optimist just because I want it to be real (the pictures show a sweet tractor!). I'm normally a realist....pessimist according to my wife.

It makes me sad and angry that we live in this kind of world. It also makes me disappointed in myself that I'm still hoping this might be legit.

Curious if others have seen this sort of thing?

This is 100% total scam I saw this one almost Word for Word a year and a half ago. I tried to play with them but they wouldn’t reply after the second email

 

[N80]

This is the typical ruse used to hijack your info. Don’t be surprised if you pop up as a seller on Facebook or Craigslist of all kinds of desirable items at ridiculously low prices.

Again, the only info I gave them is readily available without having exchanged emails with me. But if I pop up on CL with a great tractor at low low prices I'll just keep it. Problem solved.

 

[TimberFarm]

Strongly disagree with the last statement.

Craigslist, for all of its flaws, could have cashed in and morphed into something like FB. Craig Newmark purposely avoided pretty much every negative thing about social media, foregoing billions. He kept it simple. It remains what it always has been: Classified ads. Scammable? Of course. So are newspaper classifieds.

FB marketplace carries the negative debris of all things FB: Next time you look at a bogus ad, look at the seller's profile. I just looked at a FB marketplace ad for a utility sized Kubota that looked brand new, and listed at $2000. The seller was an upstate NY restaurant, located more than 1000 miles from me. Bogus, of course. Another series of bogus tractor equipment ads, the seller's FB account was named "Unicornity." Thought that was pretty funny. In these cases, the accounts are fake, hacked, or used for other FB purposes.

That's exactly what I was getting at.
Both sites full of scammers. No difference.