Two distinct car scams are dominating Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace right now, and they target opposite sides of the transaction. The first goes after sellers, dressing up a credit-card-harvesting site as a “vehicle history report” the buyer needs before they’ll commit. The second goes after buyers, using a deceased-spouse-and-military-deployment backstory to justify wiring money for a car that doesn’t exist. Both have been reported widely in 2025 and 2026 — from Fox News coverage of the report scam to thousands of r/Scams threads about the buyer scam — and they show no signs of slowing down.
Here’s how each one works, what gives them away, and why a verified marketplace closes the door on both.
Scam #1 — the fake “vehicle history report” that drains the seller’s wallet
You list a 1985 F-150 on Craigslist. A friendly text rolls in: “Hi, still available? When and where would be good for you?” You reply with availability. Within a few messages, the “buyer” says they’re serious, but they’ll need to see a detailed report first — usually something with an unfamiliar name like an “ASR report,” an “Auto Smart Report,” or a brand you’ve never heard of. They send you a link to a slick-looking site you’ve never visited and tell you to pull the report from there.
The site looks professional. It promises a “Complete Vehicle History at Your Fingertips” for $20 to $50. You enter your name, address, email, phone, and credit card. You wait for the report. It never arrives. The “buyer” goes silent. Within hours or days, fraudulent charges start hitting the card you used, and the personal information you typed in is now on its way to phishing kits and credential-stuffing lists.
The pitch is engineered to feel routine. The scammer often offers more than your asking price (a $7,000 offer on a $6,500 truck is common) to disarm you, and asks “will you accept cash?” to seem like a serious buyer. Both of those are warning signs, not signs of a good deal.
Warning signs of the fake-report scam (sellers)
- A “report” brand you don’t recognize. Real buyers use Carfax, AutoCheck, or NMVTIS. If someone insists on “ASR,” “Auto Smart Report,” or any name you can’t find by searching, it’s a scam.
- An above-asking-price offer. Strangers don’t pay more than you’re asking. That’s social-engineering bait.
- “Will you accept cash?” in the first message. A real buyer asks about the car before payment.
- Generic openings. “Hi dear,” “Hello brother,” or messages that don’t reference anything in your listing.
- Pressure to use a specific site. Especially one they send you a link to. Never enter payment info on a site a stranger pasted into your texts.
If you encounter this, stop replying, screenshot the conversation, and report the listing-side contact to the marketplace and to reportfraud.ftc.gov. If you already paid, call your bank’s fraud line immediately — speed matters.
Scam #2 — the “military deployment” buyer who will never show up
This one runs in the opposite direction. A 2018 Honda Accord EX-L is listed on Facebook Marketplace at $1,950 — thousands below market. The seller’s message reads like a script: husband recently passed away, leaving on military deployment in 15 days, can’t meet in person, the car will ship through “eBay’s buyer protection program” with a five-day inspection period after delivery. You only need to send payment to a designated address (or via wire, gift cards, or crypto) and the car arrives at your door.
None of it is real. There is no eBay buyer-protection program for vehicles sold off-platform — the entire program name is fabricated. The car doesn’t exist, or it’s a stolen photo from another listing on the other side of the country. The seller is operating from outside the US. The money you send is gone the moment it lands, and there’s no escrow, no inspection period, and no car waiting on a truck.
The reason this scam works is that the backstory is overwhelming. A grieving widow heading to a military base in 15 days is hard to question without feeling cruel. That’s the point — the more emotionally loaded the story, the less buyers ask the obvious questions.
Warning signs of the deployment/eBay scam (buyers)
- Price 50% or more below market. A 2018 Honda Accord doesn’t sell for $1,950 anywhere. If the price feels too good to be true, it is.
- Deceased spouse, military deployment, or imminent move overseas. All three are stock backstories in this scam family. One of them in a first message is suspicious; combinations are diagnostic.
- Email-only contact. “Facebook messenger isn’t working, text my email.” That’s to move the conversation off the platform where it can be reported.
- “eBay Buyer Protection” for a car sold outside eBay. Doesn’t exist. Same goes for “Amazon vehicle protection” or “Google Wallet escrow.”
- Shipping the car before you see it in person. Real private sellers want you to come look at the car. Real used-car transactions happen in person, in the same metropolitan area as the seller.
- Wire, gift cards, crypto, or payment to a third party. All four are unrecoverable once sent. No legitimate transaction needs them.
If you’re looking at a listing that ticks two or more of these boxes, don’t engage. Don’t reply asking questions — doing so confirms your phone or email is active and may invite further attempts. Just move on.
What both scams have in common
Look past the surface differences and these two scams share the same skeleton. Neither party’s identity is verified. The platform doesn’t vouch for the vehicle’s existence or ownership. There’s no escrow holding the money. Payment is pushed off the platform to a place the scammer controls — a phishing site for sellers, a wire transfer for buyers. And by the time the victim realizes, the scammer has rotated to a new prepaid phone, a new fake profile, and a new mark.
Open marketplaces like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace are excellent at one thing: connecting strangers cheaply. They were never designed to certify that those strangers are who they say they are, that the car is theirs to sell, or that the money will land safely. That gap is where the scams live.
How a verified marketplace shuts both down
The structural fix is to remove anonymity from both sides and to make the payment rail unavoidable. Zoooom is built on exactly this principle:
- Both buyer and seller pass KYC before they can transact. Driver’s license scan plus selfie match. No anonymous profiles, no “Brianna with no last name,” no prepaid phone numbers behind a deal. What KYC catches and why.
- Vehicle ownership is verified before listing. Sellers can’t list a car they don’t own. VIN, license plate, and title documents are cross-checked against the verified seller identity. A scammer can’t pull the “2018 Accord for $1,950” trick because they don’t own a 2018 Accord.
- Money sits in escrow until both parties confirm in-person handoff. No buyer is asked to wire funds to a third-party shipping company. No seller is asked to pay for a stranger’s “report.” Funds release the moment buyer and seller meet, inspect, and confirm. How Zoooom payments work.
- No one is ever asked to leave the platform. If someone messages you on Zoooom asking you to text them, email them, wire them, or visit a site they sent you a link to — that’s not how the platform works, and it’s how you spot bad actors trying to revert to the open-marketplace playbook.
None of this makes a P2P car sale risk-free — nothing does. But it removes the structural openings that both of these scams depend on. A scammer can’t pass KYC for the dozens of throwaway accounts they cycle through. They can’t list a car they don’t own. They can’t collect payment without going through escrow. The economics of running these scams on a verified marketplace simply don’t work, which is why scammers stay on the platforms that don’t verify anything.
If you’re selling: post your VIN in the ad so genuine buyers can pull their own report from a service they trust, and never click a link a stranger sends you. If you’re buying: refuse to pay anything before an in-person inspection, and refuse any payment path that leaves no recourse. And whichever side you’re on, the cleanest answer is to do the transaction somewhere both sides have been verified before either of you shows up.