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When selling classic cars: 80-year-old almost becomes a victim of fraudsters

2020-05-08T14:27:15.255Z


An 80-year-old had offered his classic car for sale online. He almost fell for fraudsters and lost almost thousands of euros.


An 80-year-old had offered his classic car for sale online. He almost fell for fraudsters and lost almost thousands of euros.

  • Vintage cars can be very valuable.
  • An 80-year-old man wanted to sell his 45-year-old VW Beetle online and was almost the victim of fraud.
  • However, some things made him puzzled and saved him from the expensive misfortune.

If a car was built 30 years ago, it counts as a classic car *. Technically, these models are not up to date, but depending on the model, they can still be very valuable . Accordingly, a sale can very well be worth it if the owner brings it to his heart.

Siegfried Fanter from Elsen also wanted to sell his classic car. For this, the 80-year-old placed advertisements on various auction platforms on the Internet - but that prompted fraudsters .

Classic cars offered on the Internet: attempted fraud exposed in time

The VW Beetle Cabrio  is already 45 years old and, due to its good condition, is therefore a very valuable classic car. Fanter explains to the Neuss-Grevenboicher Zeitung (NGZ) that he should not drive the Beetle for health reasons. For this reason, the 80-year-old offered his car  for sale online .

A prospect then reported who wanted to buy the beetle. Fanter and the man agreed on a price of 26,000 euros . After that, only the vehicle had to be handed over. Fanter received an email shortly afterwards, however , stating that the buyer from abroad could not come to pick up the beetle due to work-related reasons. Instead, a shipping agent should do this for him. That seemed a little suspicious to Siegfried Fanter .

Another email followed , this time from a bank . It said that the buyer's payment of 29,150 euros was "temporarily held". In addition to the sales price for the beetle of EUR 26,000, the sum also includes the costs of transport . So that he could get the money for the classic car, Fanter should transfer the 3,150 euros for the transport to the bank. But from then on, the alarm bells rang for the 80-year-old, whereupon he informed the police.

Read also : Buy used cars on the Internet: How to recognize fake advertisements.

How to identify fraudulent emails

Fanter wondered what the bank had to do with the transportation costs. "I probably would never have seen my money," he explains. The bank was allegedly "ING-DiBa AG", which noted this accordingly in the e-mail and on an account statement with a logo.

The press spokesman for the real ING-DiBa AG Patrick Herwarth explained to the NGZ that this was clearly a counterfeit . On the one hand, spelling and grammar are incorrect, on the other hand, such sensitive customer data would never be sent in emails . This attempted fraud is a typical advance trick .

The police know this too. Such attempts at fraud could be recognized primarily from the typing errors. One should be particularly careful when an advance payment is required for a service .

Also interesting : Rare vintage car with a million dollar value: Found in the garage after 40 years.

ec

These cars will become classic cars in 2020 - is yours with them?

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* tz.de is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital editors network.

Source: merkur

All tech articles on 2020-05-08

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