turning now to a consumer First Alert we're making you aware of another online scam scammers are using popular online marketplaces now to try and trick people looking to buy a car nearly 700 people in Wisconsin told the Better Business Bureau about fake vehicles for sale online and some of those folks have lost thousands of dollars Tammy Elliott joins us now as she always does to preview our first alert story so as we often say it's not new it's not a new scam so how are people trying to make ot
hers out there aware so they don't become someone losing thousands of dollars right well this is something that the Better Business Bureau says really saw a jump during the covid-19 pandemic lots of reports of this kind of dipped after that but again these reports are increasing more people are seeing these fake listings and they're appearing on real sites you know sites that people would go to maybe Facebook marketplace right they're going to uh eBay Craigslist those kind of things looking for
a good deal on a used car all right so you spoke with someone that unfortunately got duped by this or at least ran into it what what what happened with his situation well so he is in omro and he said he was you know looking on Facebook Marketplace saw what he thought was a pretty good deal 1,200 bucks for a Range Rover and said basically that it started with a nephew selling the vehicle for the owner then he starts email Communications with the actual owner who kind of tells this elaborate story
that it was her 26-year-old son who had recently passed away she just didn't want to have the vehicle heartbreak and she also was a military nurse was leaving overseas in 10 days so a lot of this kind of thing but said that he was going to be working with a seller through eBay Motors so there was a little bit of this you know well this doesn't sound legit but then still enough legitimate names the exactly so what happened then is they asked him to pay with gift cards go buy Six $200 gift cards
and he actually said Chris to me he said Tammy I remember hearing you in your reports saying never pay with gift cards still he went to the store picked a gift card up off the shelf and thought about it again looked at the back there was a warning talked to the guy at the store and said yeah that wouldn't do that that's a scam and he ended up reporting this to the Better Business Bureau so he didn't fall for it okay so he did not wind up losing his money on that and so kudos to you and you're re
porting that there's one person we know for sure so other than the gift card part is there anything else that that would stand out to people that they should be on the lookout for yeah the Better Business Bureau really wants you to know if you're seeing a low price you know go check the Blue Book value and if it's extremely low and then again those stories I mean elaborate stories and then moving off of that site and I using any kind of fake phone numbers you really have to check these out becau
se you know you want to believe it because it's a good deal but you do you have to check that out about the VIN number is that the VIN number check that out too and they also are warning about fake VIN number sites like listings for that so you have to be careful make sure you're listing looking at a a accurate listing a legitimate VIN number site as well all right lots of words of advice and we'll have more on this coming up tonight at five Tammy thanks so much
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