Not True

I already knew it was too good to be true; I was hoping it was too good not to be true. After all, a scammer wouldn't offer such an unreasonably low price for fear of raising a suspicion of fraud, right? Said the scammer, “[T]he car is priced as cheap as it used to belong to my brother and unfortunately he is no longer among us as he had a motorcycle accident.” At this point I fairly well knew it was a scam, but I wanted to see where this would go just in case it was real. He said he’d use Ebay and their escrow service which offers all sorts of buyer protection. It does, but when I then received two spoofed emails purportedly from Ebay it was clear this was an off-Ebay transaction and the money was going not to an escrow service, but being wired directly to an individual. The spoofed emails were very convincing for the uninitiated and I can see how easy it is for people to get scammed. There were other tip-offs as well, but still hoping against hope, I replied with the following email even though I knew I was talking to a scammer.

I have every intention of completing this transaction, but there are several aspects of the proposed transaction that raise security red flags. If we can resolve them I will send payment, but otherwise I cannot.

You are asking me to wire money directly to an individual, not an escrow company and certainly not Ebay's only approved escrow agent Escrow.com http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/accepted-payments-policy.html.

These escrow companies typically do not send payment instructions via email to discourage spoofed emails and fraud: https://escrow.com/FraudWatch.asp

This appears to be an off-Ebay transaction since I have no listing information or confirmation that I am a bidder for that listing. Also, a member search on Ebay returns "The email address [scammer's email address] is used by a valid eBay member with a feedback score of 0 (0% positive). We have not found a transaction between you and this member in the last 60 days."

All the contact links, including Customer Support, in the Ebay emails I received go to a domain registered by a New York individual and not to an Ebay-registered domain and apparently not to Ebay's Customer Support which is reached through a web-based form and not an email address: http://ebay-us.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/ebay_us.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php

For my protection I can only complete the transaction through a verifiable Ebay transaction and using Ebay's approved escrow agent. This is the usal manner for these transactions. Please consider doing it this way. Otherwise, I'm afraid the emails I received look like spoofs and I cannot complete the transaction as currently proposed.