There is a scam where someone poses as a buyer and asks you to go to a website that sells vehicle history reports. They have no intention of ever buying your car. The scam is in getting you to pay $28 for a needless “report.” That sounds like small potatoes until you realize that the internet makes it easy to do that to hundreds of people a day, from behind a computer in perhaps another country even. Most people don’t ever realize they’ve even been scammed.

Another scam is to pay you with a cheque that’s “accidentally” too much, and asking you to wire them the difference. “Oops this cheque is for $10,000 instead of the $7,000 we agreed on, please send me $3,000 back after you cash it.” Of course it’s a fake cheque but your bank doesn’t realize this until a few weeks after you’ve cashed it, and you’re out $3,000 (and possibly a car) plus the bank comes after you for the $10,000 fraudulent deposit.