AN AIRSTREAM INTERSTATE SALES SCAM

Imagine our astonishment when, quite by chance, we found our own Airstream Interstate for sale on the internet.  Not just a vehicle of the same make, model, and year, but our vehicle.  The one for which we bought and paid and now have clear title.

I cannot link to this ad because it was pulled down a matter of hours after we found it, but this is a screengrab of how it appeared in our local Pennysaver.  

Another posting from a free ad site.  We have no idea how many of these repeater listings are out there right now.  The original URL for this one was located here and it was still active as of this blog post.  

How to we know this is our Interstate?

All of the photos used in the scam ads we have seen to date are the same as those in our original sales listing.  I have an elderly family member who does not use the internet.  For that reason, back in September I had saved a few of the seller's photos so that I could get them printed at Walgreens for snail-mailing to my family member.  I still have them for comparison now.

This process of taking photographs and other content from legitimate websites is sometimes called "web scraping".  In this case, some of the narrative description was also taken from the original sales ad.   

How did we, the legal owners of the vehicle, possibly discover this, you might wonder??  Well, my husband was shopping for back-up cameras, because our vehicle does not yet have one.  During this process, he went image-surfing for photos of the rear end of a 2007 Interstate, so that he could evaluate different possible camera fits.  He found the Pennysaver sales listing screengrabbed above, noted the artificially-low price (less than half of true market value), and forwarded the link to the guy who had sold it to us, suggesting that this newly-listed vehicle might be another good flip opportunity for him.  Our seller, instantly recognizing his own photos used without his permission, then alerted my husband to the fact that it was a scam and that the Interstate being offered for sale was actually our own Interstate (!).  

Following an Air Forums discussion (see thread here), I reported this issue to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) via their Internet Crime Complaint Center.  I also sent an email to Pennysaver alerting them to this.  

Meanwhile, my husband decided that he would try to contact this scammer, to further constrain who they are.  He sent an email expressing interest in buying this (our) Interstate, and this is a screengrab of what he received in the way of first contact:

Following the receipt of this email, my husband sent a request for additional photographs of the vehicle, hoping to perpetuate the conversation so that we could get as much identifying information as possible for the authorities. 

Once we had a name of the business that was representing itself as offering our vehicle for sale to us, I went trolling for information on the internet, and this is what I found:

Screengrabbed from social media, posted just three days before we found our vehicle's sales listing, and four days before we received the scam email given above.  

This social media poster appeared to be referencing activities by the same scammer.  Apparently there had been a legitimate business by the name of Midlantic RV Center, and after it closed, the scammer(s) lifted the name and began using it in what appears to be fraudulent activity.  

This legitimate sales listing featured a similar American Dream RV but two years older than the mentioned by this poster, for an asking price of $74,900 - about twice what was reported for the Canadian scammer ad.  

Here are a few pointers on how to protect yourself from this kind of scam:  

(1) Be careful with obscure sales methods.  To our knowledge, our vehicle was not fraudulently listed for sale in any of the mainstream internet sites such as eBay or RVTrader, only in less-controlled publications.  Legitimate sellers tend to use sites where their honest sales activities have been independently confirmed through a validation process.  

(2) Look for inconsistencies in the representations.   In this case, the following were red flags:

• The Pennysaver ad provided a Houston, Texas contact person with a local phone number, but the email rolled to a Delaware source, an alleged dealership that was not referenced in the original ads.  This is an obvious and unexplained disconnect.  Legitimate sellers will disclose true, coherent identities up front.  
• The masthead on the email did not even remotely match the masthead on the referenced website.  

Website screengrab.  Whereas the email masthead appeared professionally designed, this website appears to have been thrown together hastily.  Furthermore, our Interstate was not listed on this website as being in inventory for sale as of November 15, 2014.  It was only listed on third-party sites that had no discernible connection to this site.  Very suspicious.  

• The Google aerial photograph did not suggest that the address given in the email contains an active RV sales site.

Not an RV in sight.  Just some small watercraft.

Screengrabbed from Google.  

(3) Beware of impersonal contacts.  If you contact a legitimate seller, you will most likely get a personal reply, not a boilerplate email reply as we got above.  The seller's first objective will be to reassure you of their authenticity.  You should expect a request for a phone number and a return phone call from an identifiable number (i.e., not caller ID-blocked).  

(4)  If it looks too good to be true, then it is not true.  The scammer is counting on your "secret" knowledge that the vehicle is offered at a price substantially below market value.  They are hoping you will act quickly and impulsively, being driven by your own greed to take illogical risks in supplying them with your money and/or your identity information.  They are then hoping that, if you do fall for a scam involving an unrealistically low sales price, you will be too embarrassed retrospectively by your own greed and gullibility to report the results of your transaction to the authorities.  Therefore, the scammer's chances of getting prosecuted are reduced.    

(5) Inappropriate references to money are a dead give-away of fraud.   Note in our first email received above that the scammer uses the phrase "if you like this vehicle and have the money".  No legitimate seller is going to open the sales conversation by making coy references to your money.  That is not how we do proper business in America.   

(6)  Bad grammar in a stock communication is a red flag.  Most scammers are uneducated, not to mention too dumb to get someone smarter to proofread for them.  Notice in the email above the use of the term "alot".  There is no such word in the English language.  The sentence structure is also atrocious.  

(7) Have a video conference before providing any personal information or money.  Before we purchased our Interstate in September 2014, one of the first things we did was to have several Facetime sessions with the seller.  He walked me through the vehicle, opening and closing different compartments, starting up the engine, etc.  It was clear that, at the very least, he had physical possession of the exact vehicle he was advertising, and that its condition was consistent with what was advertised (including the odometer reading).  Retrospectively, knowing now what I did not know then, I would have asked the seller to show government identification and I would have screengrabbed an image of it from the video chat.  

Additional fraud avoidance tips can be found at this Consumers League website and this FBI press release, which includes perspective on the scale of this problem as follows:

 "From 2008 through 2010, IC3 has received nearly 14,000 complaints from consumers who have been victimized, or at least targeted, by these scams. Of the victims who actually lost money, the total dollar amount is staggering: nearly $44.5 million."

Update December 15, 2014:  We are still seeing new fraudulent listings appearing, such as this one:

Screengrabbed from this site:
http://rvsell.com/RV_For_Sale/2007-airstream-interstate-mercedes-sprinter/ 

And this one:  http://houston-tx.americanlisted.com/77077/other-vehicles/2007-airstream-interstate_29105267.html

As my husband suggested last night when we saw this one, "Don't ever put a vehicle picture on the internet without adding a watermark."  I wish Picasa had more options in that regard.

There she is - Miss America!!  Not on a sales lot somewhere in Delaware, but right here where she belongs.  Fingers crossed that no innocent people continue to be scammed out of their money in her name.