Digital Garden

Recently I sold my vehicle. It had been about six years since the last time I sold one, and as I've always done, I opted to try for a private sale to yield a better price than a dealership trade-in. Having used Craigslist successfully for years in the past, I figured I would go that route again.

Unfortunately, I had a terrible experience.

Thankfully, I took some precautions to protect myself. Instead of using my real phone number, I purchased a temporary number from an app called Hushed. I am incredibly glad I did because almost immediately, my inbox was flooded, not with eager buyers, but with people trying to scam me.

Through this experience, I learned a harsh truth: Craigslist is dead. No one seriously looks at it anymore (at least not to buy cars), and scammers have completely ruined it, likely because of how easy it is to remain anonymous.

I want to share the most common scam I encountered and break down the messages that went back and forth between me and one of the scammers. I decided to play along with them a bit just to see to what lengths they would go, but I hope sharing this will help you avoid getting scammed yourself.

The "VIN Report" Scam

The most common scam I encountered was the fake VIN report hustle. Here is how the conversation usually goes. The scammer starts by sounding very interested in the vehicle and agrees to meet, usually later the same day. After agreeing to meet and sending a location pin (I always use a public location like a busy shopping center parking lot), the scammer immediately pivots to demanding a specific report:

Scammer: Okay we can meet today but i want to see the logistics vin report first to make sure about the vehicle history and condition.

Me: are you wanting me to go to https://www.carfax.com/ to get you that?

Scammer: www.logisticsvinreport.com Here's the link you can get the fully detailed logistics vin report from here and It shows all of the history like title...

Notice how they completely ignore the legitimate service I suggested and push their own specific link. These websites are often set up by the scammers themselves to steal your credit card information, or they are affiliate links where the scammer gets a kickback for forcing you to buy a useless report.

I decided to play along with them a bit to see how far they would take it.

Me: yeah i will bring that report when we meet

Scammer: Actually if you could send me the logistics vin report now it would be much appreciated as I have to make arrangements onward, hope you understand

Me: yeah no problem, you can generate the report, if you buy the car I will give you a $44.95 discount on the price we agree to.

Scammer: I would love to do that but I don't have the money in the bank right now to pay for the report.

Me: no problem we can meet later this week after you have time to get to the bank and deposit the cash so that you can buy the report, then if you are still interested i can take off $50, so the sale price will be $16,945.

A few days later, the scammer had the audacity to follow up:

Scammer: Any update?

Me: i should be asking you that, i am waiting for you to get to the bank so you can run the report. once you have the report and you are still interested then we can meet.

They gave up after that. They try incredibly hard to create a false sense of urgency, hoping you'll just click the link and pay the fee to secure the sale.

Moving On

After dealing with this barrage of scammers, I pulled my listing from Craigslist.

I then listed the vehicle on Facebook Marketplace and had a much better experience. I was dealing with real people. Granted, some tried to lowball me, which is to be expected—but I saw absolutely none of the scams that I encountered on Craigslist. The lack of total anonymity on Facebook seems to act as a solid filter against these low-effort scams.

So, let it be known: Craigslist is dead, long live Facebook Marketplace.