Fraud in a car purchase: the recurring patterns

Fraud in car sales is organised with a division of labour and run at scale. The stories are swapped out as soon as they become known — the soldier posted abroad became a nurse relocating, and she will shortly become something else. The structure underneath stays the same, and it can be caught in three questions.

First: why can I not see the car the way I want to see it? Second: why should money move before I have the car in my hands? Third: why does the money take a route other than the usual one? Every scam needs at least one of those three departures, and no legitimate sale needs a single one.

The second sentence that helps: a price well below the market is not an opportunity but a piece of information. Either the car has a fault you do not yet know about, or it does not exist. The third possibility — somebody accidentally giving away several thousand euros — does occur, but not in someone who is in a hurry and abroad at the same time.

The commonest pattern needs no car at all, only photographs from somebody else's advert. The seller is unreachably far away — posted, emigrated, deployed — the car is supposedly already with a shipping company, and the handover is to run through a service that holds the money in escrow and releases it only once you are satisfied.

That service is the heart of the scam. It sends emails with a logo you recognise, from an address resembling the real one; it has a website that has existed for three weeks; it gives bank details in the name of a private individual. Payment goes to that account, or in gift card codes, or in cryptocurrency — three routes with one thing in common: once sent, they are final.

The feature that is always present: the story explains why you cannot see the car. That is exactly how you recognise it. A seller who really is selling has no interest in keeping you away from the vehicle — quite the opposite, he wants you to come, because then you buy.

The second variant is more insidious, because the car really exists and you can even go and see it. After the appointment you are told there are other interested parties; a deposit or a reservation fee will hold the car until tomorrow. You pay at once, and after that nobody answers — or the car has been sold to someone else who also paid a deposit.

One sentence covers it: nobody reserves a car for you, and you do not need a reservation. Carvexia has no reservation feature, no escrow and no payment handling; the marketplace is not a party to the sale. Anyone offering you a reservation in a platform's name is offering something that does not exist.

If a deposit is agreed by way of exception — because the seller is deregistering the car for you, say, or having something repaired — then in writing, with date, amount, chassis number and what happens if the deal falls through, and always to an account in the name shown in the registration document.

Only somebody entitled to dispose of a car can sell it. The third pattern works exactly there: the seller is not the registered keeper but is selling “for my brother-in-law”, “for my aunt”, “for a customer”. Sometimes that is true. Often it is not, and the car comes from a rental fleet, from a lease agreement, or from a burglary in which the documents were taken as well.

The check is unspectacular and effective: ask to see the person's identity document and compare the name with the one in the registration document. If they differ, you need a written power of attorney from the keeper with a copy of their identity document — and a phone call to them. The address on the document should also fit the area you are standing in.

Two further oddities speak the same language: somebody selling a car he does not know cannot tell its story — no anecdote, no workshop name, no explanation for a scratch. And somebody disposing of a car that is not his would rather meet in a car park than outside his own front door.

A special case is the car with finance still running. Here the seller really is the keeper, and still cannot simply transfer ownership: the financing bank has retained title or taken the car as security, and in several countries holds the part of the paperwork that records it.

So the tell is usually a missing document — with an explanation that sounds a little too good: at the registration office, mislaid, in the parents' safe, to follow shortly. Pay in that situation and you may well pay twice: once to the seller, and later to the bank that comes for its car.

A clean route exists and is no imposition: the bank states the settlement figure, that part of the purchase price goes directly to it, the rest to the seller, and the documents come from the bank. A seller who refuses that wants something other than a sale.

The fourth pattern is not theft but a circumvention: a commercial seller advertises as a private individual in order to exclude the liability he could not exclude as a business. The contract then contains the usual exclusion, and in a dispute it is your word against his.

Legally that exclusion is void if the seller is in fact acting commercially — but you have to prove it, and after the purchase, when the advert has long since been deleted. That is why prevention is cheap and cure is expensive: secure the evidence you might need before you buy.

Almost every fraud comes to a head in the same place: the route the money takes. So it pays to know these patterns individually — they turn up in deals that were unremarkable until then, and often only shortly before the close, when you have mentally finished.

The counter-measure is always the same and takes no courage: the route the money takes is settled before the appointment and not changed at it. Anyone who wants to change it at short notice gets a postponement — not a different route.

A contract of sale is not a formality but the only version of the truth that still exists after handover. It needs both parties' details exactly as they appear on their identity documents, the chassis number, the mileage as read, the price actually paid, the date, and everything that was promised verbally.

What matters is the difference between a description and an assurance. “No accident damage” as an express assurance in the contract is a warranted property the seller stands behind; the same phrase in the advert is weaker. The usual exclusion of liability in a private contract covers neither a false assurance nor deliberate concealment — so it does not make the seller untouchable.

And the price in the contract is the price paid. A lower figure “for the tax” costs you exactly the difference the moment you ever need the contract: with an insurer, at the border, in court.

The first hours matter more than anything that follows. Call your bank at once and ask about recalling the transfer — where a payment has not yet been credited, that sometimes works. Then to the police, with everything you have.

Secure the evidence first, because it disappears first: dated captures of the advert, the full message history, the phone number, the email addresses with complete headers, the transfer receipt, the recipient's account details and every photograph you took of the car or the documents.

Be honest about the prospects: money that has gone abroad or ended up in gift cards rarely comes back. The promising case is the one where you know who stood in front of you — which is exactly why a copy of the identity document before payment is worth more than any precaution afterwards. Report the advert to the platform carrying it as well; that no longer helps you, but it helps the next person.