Payment fraud when selling: how to spot it

A car is mobile, instantly resaleable and, once gone, practically untraceable. Money leaves a trail — but only if it actually moved. That asymmetry is the whole business: the fraudster needs no forgery that survives scrutiny, only one that looks plausible for twenty minutes.

On top comes the social pressure of the situation. You are standing in a car park, the buyer has driven a long way, it is Friday evening, the bank is shut, and the polite response to “the transfer is already sent, look, here's the receipt” would be to hand the car over. Politeness is the attack surface here, not technology.

And finally, there is nobody between you. Carvexia settles no payments, holds no money in escrow and is not a party to the contract — the marketplace brings listing and prospect together, nothing more. Payment is therefore entirely your affair, and that is why the rules below are so plain and so unbending.

The most common variant needs nothing but a phone. The buyer shows you a screenshot from his banking app, a confirmation email, or an SMS that looks as if it came from your bank. All of it can be produced in minutes; the screenshot is an image, the email names any sender it likes, and the SMS lands in the same thread as genuine messages from your bank, because the sender name is freely chosen.

The second stage is the explanation for why the money is not there yet: weekend, daily limit, cross-border payment, “my bank only posts it tomorrow”. Each of those sounds right, because sometimes it is. The difference is that an honest buyer is happy to wait and a dishonest one is not.

The only confirmation that counts is the credit on your account, seen in your own app or at your own bank counter, with the full amount and the right sender. Not the buyer's app, not an email, not a call from someone claiming to be a bank employee.

Not every credit is final, and that is the part most sellers underestimate. An amount can sit in your account and vanish weeks later — and then both the car and the money are gone. The list below runs from final to reversible.

The difference lies neither in the amount nor in the bank but in the payment method. Methods where the payer initiates are safe for the recipient; methods where the recipient initiates, or where a third party promises buyer protection, are not. Know that one distinction and the list below is only a confirmation.

Cash is final, but only if it is genuine. Forged notes turn up regularly in car sales, often in bundles where only the top and bottom notes are real. The fraudster pushes time pressure, talks while you count, shows you documents, takes a call — anything that stops you counting calmly.

The countermeasure is not a UV lamp but a location. Count the money at your bank counter and have it checked and deposited there. That single step neutralises counterfeits, counting tricks and the entire time pressure at once, and it costs the two of you half an hour.

A buyer who will not go to the bank while the branch is open always has a reason. The reason is not the point. A serious buyer with real money loses nothing by it, and anyone who sees a loss is telling you something about his money.

This one starts with an enquiry in broken German or formal English, asking nothing about the car but committing to buy at the full price. The buyer cannot come himself, is sending a shipping agent, and payment supposedly runs through a service he names. Then comes the decisive step: too much was transferred by mistake, would you kindly send the difference back — to the agent, to a third party, anywhere.

The payment that supposedly arrived does not exist or is reversed later; the money you send back is your own. The car has stopped mattering at all by then — it is only the pretext. The same scam runs with furniture, machinery and flats.

Warning signs that together almost never mislead: not a single question about the car, a commitment to buy unseen, willingness to pay the asking price, a payment service chosen by the buyer, a shipper as intermediary and some form of refund. A genuine foreign buyer asks about the service history and negotiates.

A whole family of scams revolves around an intermediary that supposedly holds the money until the car is handed over. You get an email with a logo, a case number and a link to a page that looks convincingly real, and it says the money is on deposit and will be released once you confirm shipment. None of it exists.

The rule against it is simple and needs no case-by-case checking: you decide the payment route, not the buyer. Anyone insisting on a particular service whose name you are hearing for the first time has an interest in that service, and the interest is not yours.

The same goes for links in messages, even ones carrying the marketplace's name. Carvexia offers no payment processing, no escrow and no reservation; a message offering you any of those in the platform's name did not come from the platform.

The scams are many; the defences are not. Anyone who keeps to the following three sentences is protected against every variant above, without having to recognise them individually.

What matters is that they hold without exception. Every one of these scams lives on the seller accepting a single deviation because the circumstances seem to justify it — late evening, a long journey, a likeable buyer. Decide in advance and you do not have to weigh anything up in the moment, and that is precisely the protection.

The biggest factor is time. Call your bank first and have the payment stopped or recalled while it is still unexecuted; with an instant transfer that route is usually closed, with an ordinary one sometimes not. Then report it to the police with everything you have: listing number, chat history, phone number, account details, ID photo, the plate of the car the buyer arrived in.

If the car is gone and was still registered to you, tell the registration authority and your insurer at once. Otherwise fines, fees and premiums keep running in your name while the car is on the road.

And report the listing and the contact on the marketplace. The same person usually writes to several sellers at once, and the pattern is more conspicuous than any single case — it will not help you any more, but it will help the next person.