Car Buyer Victims

How to check a seller

Almost every report on this site follows the same shape. These checks catch it before the money moves.

The pattern to recognise

A vehicle priced meaningfully below anything comparable. A seller who answers quickly and sends more photographs happily. A reason the vehicle cannot be seen today — it is at a storage lot, at a transport depot, with an inspector. Then a deposit request, by a method that cannot be reversed, with a deadline attached and another buyer supposedly ready to pay.

The deadline is not incidental. It exists to stop you spending ten minutes on the checks below.

Six checks, about ten minutes

  1. Search the phone number on its own. Operations change business names far more often than they change numbers. Search it here and on a general search engine, in quotes, with and without formatting.
  2. Check when the domain was registered. A dealership trading for fifteen years does not usually have a domain registered three weeks ago. A public WHOIS lookup shows the date.
  3. Reverse image search the listing photographs. Stolen inventory pictures are the single most common tell. If the same vehicle is on another dealer's site in another state, you have your answer.
  4. Look at the address on a street-level map. Check it is a commercial lot with vehicles on it and that the suite number exists. A mailbox store or a house is decisive.
  5. Verify the dealer licence with the state. Every state publishes a licensed dealer lookup. The licence number, the business name and the address should all match.
  6. Insist on a reversible payment. A card, or an escrow service you found yourself. Never a link the seller sent you.

Payment methods that end the conversation

Bank wires, Zelle, Cash App, Venmo, cryptocurrency, gift cards and money orders are all effectively final once the recipient has the funds. That is why they appear in nearly every report here. A seller who will accept nothing else is telling you what the transaction is.

If you have already paid

  1. Call your bank now and ask for a wire recall or a chargeback. Wires can sometimes be stopped within hours, and the window is short.
  2. File with reportfraud.ftc.gov and ic3.gov. IC3 runs a recovery team that can act on wires inside a limited window.
  3. Keep every screenshot, message and receipt, even if the seller's account vanishes.
  4. File a report here so the next person who searches that number finds it.