New CL scam
 

Thtis is kind of a rant but not really. I hesitate to even say I was considering a Harley but alas, I was. Anyway I saw a very nice 2005 softail deluxe with only 3800 miles on CL for $4200. That bordered on too good to be true but it was just enough to intrigue me. There was only an email so I figured what's the harm in emailing them. Heard back after several hours from a beleivable email address with a somewhat likely story. Lady said she was granted the bike in a divorce settlement and wanted to sell it for the payoff amount. She went on to say that she never had any interest in riding but took the bike to spite her ex. She had lots of info about the bike but kind of dodged the VIN question (I keep saying she because the name was supposedly Denise) The big hitch was that she wanted to use pay pal for the payment.....I figured pay pal is pretty iron clad and even did some research and the arrangement she wanted to make was actually a service that pay pal offered. I couldn't make up my mind on whether or not its a scam, and to boot the person emailed back and forth with me for about 8-9 emails, usually scammers don't waste that much time on chit chat. Finally tonight I was looking for the ad again and couldn't find it so I did a search. The search turned up two more 2005 softails one oddly enough in the Athens, GA area just like the first one. The other in Asheville, NC. Same year and same model bike as before, but the pictures were not of the same bike as before. I just happened to take a look at both ads and they were identical. Same pictures, same email, same narrative but one said the location was Athens, the other Asheville....And it was the same kind of ad layout as the one I had seen earlier... that kind of solidified my scam theory.

So in a nut shell, this is news to me. I guess the scam is put a low price on an immaculate looking bike, make up a story about a poor pitiful divorce' and then somehow fake a paypal transaction. Anyone heard of this yeat??

Thanks! Now I can't use that to get rich the easy way. Everybody will use this scam.

yea i had one like this for a pair of atvs said her son was killed by a drunk driver, and just wanted his machines gone. listed in VT but she was in utah and would ship them for free, price was half of the retail of 1 machine and i would get 2. other than that exactly the same as yours

Post the ads I want to see them.

Any purchase that big you gotta make sure you have the bike and paperwork before paying. There seems to be alot of random scams on CL. Whenever I list something for sale I get a few scammers responding.

All the ads have been removed already, the ads themselves didn't look scammish aside from the fact that I found 2 identical ads for the same bike in two diff locations.

after a lot of googling I found a very similar post on another mc forum

Bike Scam on Craigslist : Suzuki GSX-R Motorcycle Forums: Gixxer.com

wording in the email is almost exactly the same as mine along with the sob story about some poor divorced woman stuck with a bike she doesnt want. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.