Anyone been a victim of an equipment scam?

Has anyone on here been the victim of a scam when trying to purchase a machine? Curious how you made out and what actions you took. I was unfortunately the victim of a scam at the end of last year. Found an ad for a skid steer in one of, if not the largest machinery magazines in the US/worldwide. Contacted the seller, discussed shipping, etc., did as much homework as I could think of to verify the location and dealer, and unfortunately was taken for just shy of $25k. Looking for any help/input.

I haven't been took, but I recommend that anyone even considering buyin a machine, that ain't local, post a thread, on a forum, like this, and ask to have a dis-interested party (forum member volunteer) verify machine location, and general condition. I did this several years ago, looked at a tree chipper fer a feller, from down south, who was suspicious... Machine was only 15 mins away from me, and I was able to verify for him...

Theres a thread over on TBN about PayPal scams also..
Seems a fella "bought" a piece of equip. & got scammed using PP..
& by the responses, its NOT uncommon..
Sorry for your loss..

Sorry to read about your loss.
Could you post a few more details ?
$25K is a huge amount of money to transfer to anybody.

If I cant see the equipment in person or the person im buying from face to face, no money is going anywhere, and you may say you cant always see the person or equipment as its too much trouble then when you lose both you cant complain....there are a ton of these scams on craigslist and probably any equipment sales place, they want you to wire the money and now PP is used for the scam and your money is gone in a flash..

sorry for your loss. see those all the time on craigslist. if you have a wife it makes it harder to get over.

Hobbytime said:

If I cant see the equipment in person or the person im buying from face to face, no money is going anywhere, and you may say you cant always see the person or equipment as its too much trouble then when you lose both you cant complain....there are a ton of these scams on craigslist and probably any equipment sales place, they want you to wire the money and now PP is used for the scam and your money is gone in a flash..

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Preach it Brother !

I'm the same way .... Generally buy equipment from people I know ...

Know the history on the people and the equipment ... Might have to pay them what it's worth but no scams or bad deals ...

It's worth it in the long run

So this person used the identity of an equipment dealer that used to exist, that no longer exists, with their address, owners name, etc. out of Missoula, Montana. Spoke to him on the phone a few times, agreed on a price and delivery, he sent me a BS invoice. Turns out, he never owned any of the equipment he was selling, stole all the info from Purple Wave Auctions and used it as his own. I was one of 8 victims in this particular scam. I am working with the FBI and a special wire fraud task force as I paid via wire transfer. I never would have done this deal had I not found the ad in Machinery Trader magazine. I thought they were reputable.

as the old famous WC Fields use to say" A sucker born every minute and 2 to take em"....................

05f150fx4 said:

So this person used the identity of an equipment dealer that used to exist, that no longer exists, with their address, owners name, etc. out of Missoula, Montana. Spoke to him on the phone a few times, agreed on a price and delivery, he sent me a BS invoice. Turns out, he never owned any of the equipment he was selling, stole all the info from Purple Wave Auctions and used it as his own. I was one of 8 victims in this particular scam. I am working with the FBI and a special wire fraud task force as I paid via wire transfer. I never would have done this deal had I not found the ad in Machinery Trader magazine. I thought they were reputable.

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This sucks bigtime but Machinery Trader is only selling add space, I don't think they can check up on their customers to be sure the add is legit. There is another way to get burned on equipment purchases and that is UCC liens filed against the machine from it's previous life. It is well worth having your bank check for this to be sure it's clean.

I too had a similar experience. It took more than eight months to complete the legal procedures.

I buy a lot of equipment off the internet all over the US. But the cash is handled in person after I have made my inspection
If they don’t agree to my terms no deal

05f150fx4 ; Any update on your scam ??? Or are you permanently screwed out of all that money ?
Sterling ; Any details about your unfortunate deal that may help others reading this thread ?

It is a bad a state of affairs! These people have nothing to do but try their program over and over refining it. What I am seeing is they want to buy my product with a certified check. Ask me to pay their hauler. Trying to impress me by sending a certified check overnight and asking me to send a check to their freight company. The numbers on the bottom of the check normally have incorrect amount of numbers and order of check, routing and account numbers. Call the bank to verify if it is good. That is 99% sure with verbal verification.
I am in USA. If they have broken English or speak the Queens English those are both bad signs to me. They do not actually speak it is all on line. Give no more information than necessary. When they figure out they cannot get your account numbers and such everything you shared is used to search for a way to extort money.
Now I tell them to just sent the check to their hauler and their hauler can pay me cash before we load the trailer. They go away.

Theres 1 fella on another site who "plays" w/ them..
He goes along w/ the scam & when they write to ask him if he received the check, he says YES but I'm keeping it AND the equipment.. YOU got scammed.. lol.. & JUST TRY to get it back..
Don't mean to make light of your situation 05f..

Have had three such events try to transpire. Was selling a unit for a old man down the road, got TWO calls on it both with the same style, one from Philly the other from ?SC? but really not certain if either were IN the US. Told them cash and carry one decided to send a third party check which I contacted the moron and got a return address to send it to Caveat with FBI following it, the other would not stop talking sending shipping money in his check, finally told him GTH, find another patsy where he said would come find me. HA!! My response, bring it on big boy, but bring an army we bury scumbags out here in the Hog Lot and they be HUNGRY!! Third was a buy similar to yours, told the ass to get it to a dealer lot where I could fly in and inspect it, he balked, said would be out of town even as no date set, called him a scammer and he hung up.

I just posted a machine on Craigslist. I got 3 text messages all with exactly the same text from 3 different numbers. I just block them all and move on. No sense arguing or even talking to them. Just like telemarketers, their job is to be hung up on, not enough hours in the day to waste an extra word with them. If the sheriff is not interested in tracking them down neither should we be.

Have purchased several machines out of state. Coordinated with seller to have a local cat dealer come and inspect the item and instruct the mechanic to only give me the report. After any price negotiation I’ve always used a third party escrow agent of my choosing where the money is not released until it is on the shippers lowboy. Sometimes the seller will pay for half the escrow fee and sometimes I have to eat it but Ive always slept well after wiring the money.

http://www.ner.net/solutions/ironcheck/ - This is where you can verify ownership & clean UCC1 (which is liens or loans against the serial number).

I know we've talked about this before...Mods, can we pin this thread to the top of the page?

A. This is an industry full of crooks and liars. That's not limited to sales reps. : )
B. Because of equipment not having titles, it makes it very hard to track & verify equipment ownership.
C. Verifying a clean ownership can also be difficult. Just because the original lien was paid off doesn't mean the equipment is clear. Many B,C,D credit places use blanket liens...and banks use equipment as collateral for other loans as well.

Some of the things that I've encountered, or my former boss (now retired) have encountered are (BUT not limited to)...

- Stolen Cashiers Check...where they were real...but someone stole a bunch of them from a bank. Came with a 'letter' from the banker as well.
- People using my invoice & wiring instructions to make their own checks...if you send or take wires you need a 'Drop Account' just for that with $10 in it.
- A D8 that a drug addicted nephew sold one of my old bosses buddies. Had same last name as the owner...found out when the truck got sent to get it.
- Tractors that my old boss bought after extensive checks with PD because the deal seemed too good-then the guy stole them after the fact off job sites.
- Tractors that didn't exist.
- Foreign buyers who tried the shipment payment - wire scam.
- Countless others...and the list will grow as these people have free time & balls as big as church bells. Who can blame them because I'm not aware of any arrests or follow through that law enforcement ever completed on any of my situations. The stolen after the fact tractors was a 3 page story & I'm not sure what ever happened to the D8 guy...if I remember correctly, the buyer was screwed.

Machinery Trader & others don't have time or the ability to verify anything...especially with their free ads. Same is true of auctions inspecting equipment for quality & problems. They will typically ensure there is a clear UCC1 or ownership.

I have learned some lessons through all of this, albeit at a very expensive price tag. It appears I am out the money. The FBI and a wire fraud task force is supposedly working the case. No idea when or if I will ever see my money again. I wired it to their account and it was withdrawn shortly thereafter. It was a ring of people involved, some in the US, some not in the US. I keep my fingers crossed that I get some type of restitution but who knows. I am just over 8 months in with no real promising news yet. I did find out they were running multiple other scams on top of the equipment scams.

I did learn that Machinery Trader only verifies a phone number in order to "vet" a seller. This person assumed the identity of someone who used to be a legit seller so he cleared with Machinery Trader. I contacted them and they basically said "have your lawyer contact our lawyer" so I am working that route as well and have no issue slamming them as they could care less and to this day have never posted about this scam, so who knows how many other scams have been run through their magazine/web site that they have no interest in notifying their customers about. Had this ad been on craigslist, I never would have done the deal, I thought Machinery Trader was legit, lesson learned.

I tried to do my homework, I called CAT with the serial number to get as much info as I could from them and to ask if it was stolen. Since the machine was not stolen (guy never had actual possession of the machine, just the photos he stole from Purple Wave Auction) it never came back as stolen or any red flags.