How To Avoid A Motorcycle Scam

If you are selling your motorcycle in Cycle Trader, Harley Trader, Pennysaver, Craigslist, or somewhere else, you've probably gotten emails from interested people in other countries. Motorcycles in other countries are very expensive, so it could be a serious buyer trying to get a good deal compared to what he's used to paying. We've seen situations where people pay for the motorcycle plus the shipping costs and still come out ahead. BUT, some of the emails might be from someone trying to scam you. This page is written to expose their tricks so you won't get scammed. There are only a few things the scammers are going to try.

The most common scam we've seen is when someone sends you more money than you are asking for. Then they tell you to send them a refund, or to send the extra money to the "shipping company", or pay an associate the extra money so they can finalize the transaction quickly, or any number of excuses. If you have someone asking you to do this, don't do it. What happens is the check they sent you turns out to be counterfeit, and you find out after you send the extra money, so you get scammed out of the money that you sent them. The scammers can get very creative in giving you a good reason why they are sending you extra money, and why you need to send the extra money to them or to "someone else". Paying for the shipping is the newest reason we've heard.

This scam works only when you send the refund. That's all they will be interested in, not the bike or anything else, just the refund. Consider this - if a shipping company takes your bike to ship it overseas, it's going to take 6 - 8 weeks or more for delivery. There's too much time for you to find out the check is bad and stop the shipment. They are not trying to scam you out of your bike. They are trying to scam you out of the refund or overpayment that they supposedly sent you.

If you get a big check and you wonder if it's legit, you can still prevent the scam from happening. It's easy, just wait 2 - 3 weeks to make sure the cashiers check clears the bank before sending anyone anything. Don't wait for your bank balance to show the deposit, because it will look good the next day in your account. Wait about 2 weeks, or 3 to be sure, because sometimes it takes that long to come back counterfeit. And everyday the scammer is going to be emailing you to send the refund immediately. They won't ask about the motorcycle, only their money. If they can get you to send the refund quickly, then the scam worked. Be aware that your bank will tell you that the check cleared in 2 days and the check is good and everything is okay. Wait anyway.

It happen to me. Got a $14K fake check for a motorcycle and it was "good" 2 days later, but 9 days later it all came charged-back to my account. I knew it was a bad check and didn't send him his refund, so no scamming was done, but everyday this jerk sent me emails saying the most outrageous things to get me to send him his $2K refund immediately, and the entire time my bank balance was $14K higher than it should have been. This scam could have worked if I believed him and fell for it. The solution is simple, just wait to make sure the check is good before sending anything to anyone.

Many times these guys are in Africa scamming people on the internet. It's known as the Nigerian Advance Fee Scam (also known as the Nigerian 419 Scam). They try to scam people out of big ticket items like motorcyles, cars, trucks, SUV's, boats, horses, electronics, etc. Actually they are trying to scam people out of refunds and overpayments in "buying" a big ticket item. We used to get estimate requests to move motorcycles to Africa, and we would give them scam advice with the shipping quote. There are some shipping companies that won't ship any vehicles to Africa or Indonesia because of the high number of scams going on over there. Anyway, the scammers got smarter and stopped telling people what country they are in. We don't get shipping requests to Africa anymore. When we say Africa we are talking about the countries of Nigeria, Niger, Benin, Ghana, Togo, Gabon or any others in that part of Africa. South Africa is different and hasn't been a problem.

Here's the fake cashiers check that someone sent me. The envelope was postmarked in New York City. The check was drawn on a bad account from a real bank in Tennessee. I was supposed to send the $2000.00 overpayment through Western Union Money Transfer to YEKINI ABIODUN MUYIDEEN in Nigeria. Don't know if that's his real name. Before the refund was to be sent to Yekini, he was "Fred John" with the email address of company_client@yahoo.com from the Netherlands. This check sure looks real. When you get one of these checks in your hand, it's easy to believe it's real and deposit it and go about your business. Cashiers checks used to be as good as cash, but not anymore. The number of fake checks that Wells Fargo sees has increased a lot since mid-2005, according to a bank employee that I spoke with in January 2006. And if you get a check like this, the solution is to deposit it and wait about 2 weeks to make sure it doesn't come back. You could even email a scanned copy of the check to the bank it's drawn on. A friend of mine did that and got an answer back the next day whether it was good or not.

A few more things to mention about scams. Be careful of Escrow Companies. I would recommend working with a reputable company like escrow.com, which is owned by eBay and has no affiliation with MoverQuest. If you are unsure about the escrow company, do a search in Google to see what you find. If you find nothing at all, it could be a brand new company. Check out this list of fraud escrow companies http://escrow-fraud.pgardner.net/?page=reported. It's a website made by someone who got scammed and is working hard to stop escrow fraud.

Be careful of fantastic deals, too good to be true, like this one: Let's say you are looking to buy a motorcycle, and you find a seller offering to send you his motorcycle if you pay a deposit. He says "Try it for 5 days. If you like it, pay me the balance due, and if you don't like it, just send it back." It turns out there is no bike for sale. The only thing he's selling is a story to get your deposit. This is a deal that's too good to be true, because no seller is ever going to offer to sell his bike like that.

I hope you find this information helpful for buying or selling a motorcycle.