Scams We Have Known

Scammers are constantly finding new ways to separate us from our money, and they’re getting increasingly sophisticated and creative in the process. The Federal Trade Commission reported that Americans lost a staggering $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025—and those are only the scams people actually reported. The real number is undoubtedly much higher. There’s rarely a day goes by that we don’t read about some retiree who just got scammed out of their lifesavings.

I’m sure everyone reading this blog has has their share of scam attempts - hopefully unsuccessful. We’ve certainly had our share of encounters with scammers over the years. Fortunately, most of them have been unsuccessful.

Most of our experiences have come from buying and selling vehicles. Over the years, we’ve successfully bought and sold perhaps a dozen cars, trucks, and vans through Craigslist, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace. Nevada doesn’t charge sales tax on vehicles purchased from private parties, which makes shopping on those sites especially attractive.

It also apparently makes us attractive to scammers. For every legitimate buyer or seller we encountered, it sometimes seemed as though there were ten people trying to separate us from either our money or our vehicle. Here are a few of the scams we’ve run across.

The Safe Sale

When selling a vehicle, we’d receive an offer at full asking price. The buyer would explain that he was out of town but was eager to buy the car, and suggests using a legitimate escrow company—something like escrow.com—to hold the money until the vehicle and title are transferred. It sounds safe enough.

You create an account and wait for the money to be deposited into escrow. A few hours later, an official-looking email arrives saying that the funds have been transferred. Everything appears to be in order. You notify the buyer that the car and title are ready for pickup.

Only after the vehicle is gone do you discover that the email was fake. The money was never deposited.

The scammer didn’t need to compromise the escrow company. He simply needed to create an email convincing enough to make you believe that he had.

The Sob Story

When shopping for a vehicle, we would occasionally come across what appeared to be a great bargain: a great-looking car priced well below market value. Naturally, we’d contact the seller, and there was always a story.

Perhaps it was a single mother of four who had just lost her job, was being evicted, and needed to sell her car immediately. Or maybe it was a reservist who had suddenly been called to active duty and had to get rid of the vehicle before shipping out.

The car was usually located somewhere inconvenient—perhaps a tiny town in Montana where there were supposedly no interested buyers—so the seller had advertised it in larger cities.

He would provide the VIN. There might even be photographs of the title. The seller suggests using a safe, independent third-party escrow company. We should wire the money into an escrow account, and she would have the car shipped as soon as the money was wired. The escrow company would hold the money until we got the car, and only release the money to her when we were satisfied that the car was as advertised.

She has used a company with a reassuring name—something that sounds remarkably similar to a legitimate escrow service—in the past and found it reliable, secure, and less expensive than some of the larger online companies.

You visit the website and it looks professional, complete with testimonials and dozens of glowing reviews. So you wire the money to the escrow account. Unfortunately, the escrow company is as imaginary as the bargain-priced car. The seller gets your money, closes up shop, and disappears.

The CARFAX Scam

This appears to be the latest and greatest Craigslist vehicle scam.

We recently listed our Promaster van for sale, and within an hour or so, we received an inquiry. The potential buyer asked several reasonable questions about the van’s condition and options, whether the price was negotiable, and where he could see it. In other words, he sounded exactly like a legitimate buyer.

Then he asked if we could provide a vehicle history report. “No problem,” we told him. We were happy to provide the CARFAX report. But that wasn’t what he wanted.

He preferred a report from another website—one he said was more detailed than CARFAX and considerably less expensive. By this point, after all our previous experiences with Craigslist scammers, we’ve developed something of a suspicious nature. We did a little research.

The website looked legitimate. It had a professional design and even included dozens of glowing reviews. But the whole operation appeared to exist for one purpose: getting unsuspecting people to enter their credit card information.

Over the next two days, we received four more inquiries from alleged buyers. Each followed roughly the same script, although each wanted a report from a different website.

Apparently, a successful scam catches on quickly. Do you suppose they have meetings and seminars where they exchange ideas? Maybe a scammer’s convention?

The Fake Website

Of course, online scams aren’t limited to Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. This one actually got us.

We were shopping for Darn Tough socks when a Google search turned up a website offering several styles on clearance. The site looked completely legitimate and the prices were good enough that we put several pairs into our shopping cart.

When we tried to check out, however, the website said there was a problem with our credit card. So we tried another card which didn’t work either. Fortunately, that was enough to make us suspicious. We backed out of the site and started watching both credit cards carefully.

Sure enough, a few days later, small charges began appearing that weren’t ours. A quick call to the credit card companies got both cards canceled and replacements issued.

Not that I want to give the bad guys any ideas, but they could probably have done even better. Had the website simply told us that our order had been completed—and then sent us a couple of reassuring emails saying that our socks were being processed and shipped—we probably wouldn’t have been watching the credit cards quite so closely and they might have had considerably more time to help themselves.

The Bench Warrant

Marcie recently received a call that appeared on caller ID to be from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office. The caller identified himself as a deputy sheriff and gave both his name and badge number. He informed Marcie that a bench warrant had been issued for her arrest because she had failed to appear for jury duty.

Marcie told him she had never received a jury summons. The deputy seemed sympathetic. Perhaps the notice had been lost in the mail, he suggested, or accidentally thrown out with the junk mail. Unfortunately, that didn’t change the fact that there was a warrant for her arrest.

Fortunately, however, there was a solution. She could immediately pay a fine or post a bond until her hearing - in cash. Or she could take her chances with being arrested.

The caller sounded sincere. In fact, he seemed genuinely concerned that Marcie was about to be hauled off to jail because of a piece of mail that had disappeared somewhere between the courthouse and our mailbox.

A quick online search revealed that it was just another scam. Apparently, government agencies have many important things to do, but calling people to demand cash payments to avoid immediate arrest is not one of them.

“Grandma, I’ve Been Arrested”

This is one of my favorite stories. Marcie’s mother, Bea, received a phone call from someone who sounded exactly like our nephew Nick.

He was in trouble. He had been arrested and had tried calling his parents, but couldn’t reach them. He was frightened and needed money to bail himself out. Could she help?

Somehow, the scammers knew enough about Nick—and apparently enough about what he sounded like—to convince Bea that she was talking to her grandson. But they had picked the wrong grandmother.

Bea told him that he needed to take responsibility for whatever it was he had done, and he could sit there in his cell until she managed to get hold of his parents. Then she hung up.

Unfortunately, Bea was so convinced that the caller really was Nick that she remained angry with him for months—even after it was explained that the entire episode had been a scam and that poor Nick had been sitting peacefully somewhere else, completely unaware that he had supposedly been arrested.

And the Next One…

Unfortunately, the scammers are getting better. Fake emails already look convincing. Caller IDs can be spoofed. Websites can be created overnight. And with artificial intelligence making it easier to imitate voices and create realistic messages, the next scam will undoubtedly be better than the last one.

So we’ll keep doing what we’ve learned to do: slow down, verify things independently, and become immediately suspicious whenever the deal is too good or something requires immediate attention.

Or pay cash to avoid arrest.

Or buy a vehicle history report from a website we’ve never heard of.

Or buy Darn Tough socks at 35 percent off.

Actually, forget that last one. I’m still a little bitter about the socks.