I just thought I'd post this as a query/heads up. I'm trying to sell my WRX, and I've listed it on craigslist. A "Will Danek" (email address willdanek@gmail.com) has been emailing asking about my "vehicle" and saying that he's from Canada and is "looking to import." His emails are vague -- he hasn't once mentioned any specifics about the "vehicle" he's trying to buy from me. He claims he will be in town on the 21st to take care of any transactions in person.

So, I post this for three reasons. First, anyone else heard from Mr. Danek? Second, on the off chance he's legit and someone wants to vouch for him, let me know! Third, well, the obvious. Watch out.

 

Thanks for the heads up. Craiglist can be a PITA sometimes when it comes to scammers and shady "buyers".

 

Tell him to get specific or pound sand.

 

I let him know that he'd pretty much already missed his chance to get specific.

 

Yeh, there are MANY people on craigslist that are full of crap. They always ask

1. What is the lowest you can go?
2. Can you import the car to Canada?
3. Can I get your full name, number, address, zip code, and city?

And Etc. It's all bull, don't even answer, it's spam.
John

 

If he was at all serious he would have contacted you himself by now,I call bs

 

lol i got that before. on buy and sale cars.

this guy say he is in the army and the car is at iraq right now, he can use the military plane to ship it here so he will take care of the shipping. and blah blah. i dont even reply to it.

 

I got many clones of this email, so many I actually started looking for a place to report the email addresses, with no luck. Almost always they would claim they were from Canada. Craigslist should start something similar to their flagging system that allows you to report the email addresses -- once enough people report them, craigslist could just drop their responses to your ad into a black hole.

 

Canada = Scam = FAIL.

Don't talk to anyone about the car or give them details if they cant provide a phone number in the same state & time zone as you.

 

Sounds like a scam... but whats interesting enough is that i googled his name and it comes up that the name works for a company in canada. and it comes up with a couple of stuff that relates to canada. ;/ hmm dont know.

http://www.balancingpool.ca/contact.html

 

A number for him is posted there...give him a call OP to check the validity!

 

the top clues i see are

pitiful spelling and grammatical errors
weird names

and they always say "best regards" etc at the end

 

Yeah, FXXX Canada!

 

I already sold the car, so I'm not terribly curious about this specific case any more. All the "Canadians" who emailed me had names I could find on the web, so that doesn't tell me much. All used free email providers (like gmail) and there was no trace of their email addresses on the web, which may or may not mean anything (my gmail address also turns up nothing) but it isn't encouraging. None provided any contact information beyond email address and country of origin. None asked about the specific make or model of car, or any model specific features. And the clincher was this: for the ones I did contact (those being the ones who didn't bring up the whole Canada thing right away), as soon as I said anything about being aware of cashiers check scams and indicated a general pickiness about the method of payment, I never heard from them again. That's in stark contrast to serious local buyers, who would respond with things like "I will take you to my bank and withdraw cash if you want."