Car parts scams on Facebook / Instagram etc

Here's another thing we sadly see every single day

You go onto Facebook / Instagram or whatever and ask for a  part for your car or van etc.

Someone immediately pops up having the exact part you need.

However, they either live in the furthest north part of Scotland you can think of, they work on an oil rig or they're away with work at the moment.

Then, they don't have Paypal (or they do, read on) or they only take bank transfer.

They have loads of images of items on their social media pages but every single item has a different background (i.e. some are on grass, some on brick paved driveways, some on concrete) but every single item is in a different location.

Or, they have a Facebook profile that's only just been created, has zero friends and uses a often generic photo of a guy with his girlfriends or kids etc.

***** WARNING - STOP*****

This is a scam, these are nearly always fake accounts using generic images from Google to make them look legit'.

These scammers will send you photos of the item you want (images got from Google again) and then request payment by an insecure method such as:

• Paypal friends and family
• Bank Transfer

Using either of the above two methods means you will 99.9% of the time lose your money.

Paypal friends and family warns you that you should only use it to send money to people you know and trust and bank transfers warn the same thing.

It's very simple to not get scammed

DO NOT PAY FOR THINGS USING THE ABOVE METHODS TO PEOPLE YOU DON'T KNOW.

There's a few things you can do to check if something is real

• First of all ask them to send a video of them stood by the item you want to buy
• Ask them to take a photo of the item you want with a recently dated newspaper
• Tell them you'll pay the Paypal fees and pay with normal Paypal payments

They'll normally just block you and move on to the next person if you stick to the above.

If you don't, you are very very likely to lose your money.