Military Guys, is this a scam...

timwinters

timwinters

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...or does it ring true? Does the military actually ship your junk for free?

I'm looking to buy a decent truck, I need a second one now that I'm back to work. I found a good looking older F-250 on Craigslist and asked some questions. This is the response I got, seems awfully suspicious to me. I did Google the person's name and they are indeed a CMSgt in the airforce.

Whaddaya think?

Hi

Thank you for being interested in buying my Ford F-250. It has been extremely well maintained with a full service history and has not been involved in an accident. It has exactly 108,980 miles, the truck comes with a 8 Cylinder, 7.3 liter engine. The automatic transmission shifts smoothly and the engine runs great. Title is clean. I bought it when I was serving in McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas but I was promoted and transferred to Elmendorf-Richardson AFB in Anchorage, Alaska for a 3 years period so I do not want to let it ruin in my backyard, therefore I need a fast and reliable buyer.

The truck is still in Kansas crated and sealed ready to go. The shipping will be free because I will transport it using the Internal Logistic Department! The Logistic Department will deliver the truck to the nearest US Air Force Base in your area and at that point you can pick it up or I can hire a tow truck in our network to have it delivered at your door. The whole shipping process will take 2-3 days. The financial part will be managed by eBay which means you will have a 5 days inspection period before committing to buy the truck. This way both, buyer and seller are 100% covered during the steps of this transaction.

My bottom line would be $xxxx so if you are interested to conclude this purchase in a timely manner please provide me your full name, shipping address and phone number so I can inform eBay that I have a buyer!

Hope to hear from you soon!
Thanks
 
Run Forest run! They're just using a CMSgt's name. Only way Air Force will ship a vehicle is overseas when that person has orders. Transferring from base to base in the USA they will pay mileage.
 
That truck would sell fine in Alaska. Probably even a premium.

That's too common of a truck to even consider non-local. But what do I know. Of course back in the day when we used telephones to speak with sellers we could figure out whether the seller was legit pretty quickly.
 
mscard88 said:
Run Forest run! They're just using a CMSgt's name. Only way Air Force will ship a vehicle is overseas when that person has orders. Transferring from base to base in the USA they will pay mileage.
Click to expand...

That's what I thought. Plus the email was just too much of a production. It smelled from start to finish.
 
Play his game a bit.
You should reply with something like this:

"Please deliver the truck to (insert fake address) so I may inspect it before I submit an offer."

Chances are you'll not get a reply to that.
 
Unless they changed the regs in the last couple of years, no, you can't ship a vehicle stateside on the govt dime. In CONUS they pay to ship your goods and pay for mileage on your vehicle.

Overseas or Alaska / Hawaii, you can ship a POV but it goes to the nearest vehicle processing station by your duty station (orders). Never heard of anyone just shipping a vehicle other than where their orders send them. You can do that on retirement from OCONUS but I don't believe while on active duty.
 
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mscard88 said:
Run Forest run! They're just using a CMSgt's name. Only way Air Force will ship a vehicle is overseas when that person has orders. Transferring from base to base in the USA they will pay mileage.
Click to expand...
He says he's being transferred to Alaska which is treated like an overseas assignment. DoD doesn't usually have vehicles delivered to bases; the owner has to collect the vehicle at the nearest port and drive it to his duty station. If this were a legitimate deal, he'd probably get more for the truck in Alaska than selling it in the lower 48.
 
Yeah, doesn't quite work that way in my experience. Uncle Sam will ship one vehicle overseas when you have orders overseas, obviously. When I received orders to MCAS Kaneohe, many moons ago, I had to deliver my car to a pier in Long Beach a few weeks in advance of my actual PCS date. Once in Hawaii, I had to wait a few weeks before my car showed up. It definitely wasn't delivered, I had to go to the pier and pick it up. Things may have changed since then, that was back in the late '80's.
EDIT: PCS=Permanent Change of Station
 
I recently encountered something similar to this in Texas. My wife's cousin was looking at a RV they found on Craigslist and the seller was offering free shipping from military and free return if they didn't like it. The seller was at FT Hood, so I told wife's cousin tell the seller they will pick it up. He gave them the run around, how civilians cannot access the base, etc. so I said that's fine, we will still go get it, as I'm active duty. They seller has not returned any emails there after.

So I would run, as I thought it wasn't right from the beginning.
 
I've seen similar ads here on Craigslist, always worded the same. You would think people could see thru this fraud.

Hey have 'em deliver it to your local PD!
 
timwinters said:
...or does it ring true? Does the military actually ship your junk for free?

I'm looking to buy a decent truck, I need a second one now that I'm back to work. I found a good looking older F-250 on Craigslist and asked some questions. This is the response I got, seems awfully suspicious to me. I did Google the person's name and they are indeed a CMSgt in the airforce.

Whaddaya think?

Hi

Thank you for being interested in buying my Ford F-250. It has been extremely well maintained with a full service history and has not been involved in an accident. It has exactly 108,980 miles, the truck comes with a 8 Cylinder, 7.3 liter engine. The automatic transmission shifts smoothly and the engine runs great. Title is clean. I bought it when I was serving in McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas but I was promoted and transferred to Elmendorf-Richardson AFB in Anchorage, Alaska for a 3 years period so I do not want to let it ruin in my backyard, therefore I need a fast and reliable buyer.

The truck is still in Kansas crated and sealed ready to go. The shipping will be free because I will transport it using the Internal Logistic Department! The Logistic Department will deliver the truck to the nearest US Air Force Base in your area and at that point you can pick it up or I can hire a tow truck in our network to have it delivered at your door. The whole shipping process will take 2-3 days. The financial part will be managed by eBay which means you will have a 5 days inspection period before committing to buy the truck. This way both, buyer and seller are 100% covered during the steps of this transaction.

My bottom line would be $xxxx so if you are interested to conclude this purchase in a timely manner please provide me your full name, shipping address and phone number so I can inform eBay that I have a buyer!

Hope to hear from you soon!
Thanks
Click to expand...
Military will pay millage on a change of station orders. from your old station to the new.
 
My brother almost fell prey to this scam, but that case it was a jet ski the deployed person was supposedly selling. Of course it was a screaming deal and the pictures looked great. Similar story, "Just got deployed to Afghanistan, I can have the army send this to you. Just can't store it and I have to go."

The tip off to me was boat was used, but it had no registration stickers on it, or the trailer. I know that some states don't register trailers, but watercraft are in every state I believe and nobody takes the stickers off to sell it. In addition, the deal was so good, why couldn't he sell it locally??

I passed on it, but my brother was seriously going to send this guy the money, so I did some snooping around Craigslist and sure enough, I found the exact same boat for sale supposedly located in several different states with the same story. I forwarded links and my brother didn't send the money.

This is a common Craigslist scam. Why these guys can't be caught and arrested is beyond me.
 
This is a standard scam script that gets varied with occupation / location / circumstances. Interestingly, the last two times I happened upon it, I actually had connections to some of the fake information:

"... I am a flight attendant with Podunk Airlines so am unable to ..." Really, my wife works for Podunk, what's your employee number and we can continue the conversation on the company messaging system.

"... I am transferring from Naval Air Station Podunk where the vehicle is currently located ..." Awesome, my old roomie is the CO of NAS Podunk, I can have him look the car over for me.

Their "standard reply #2" did not even address my connections and proposals. Shocker.

Great deals on CL are mostly scams, but I still play the game because you occasionally stumble on a valid one, scored a set of 4 OEM fine German automobile rims with usable nice tires for $400 yesterday, most commercial recyclers wanted $1000 or more. Some curb rash, but will work fine for my first foray into swapping out summer and winter tires instead of year round all-seasons.
 
I've helped guys who were returning from EUR get their cars. Yep, I had to drive them over to whatever freight terminal their car ended up at to retrieve it.
 
As an aside, you might consider trying to contact the real CMSgt and let him know that someone is using his name in a scam. Obviously I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming this service member is not in fact the scammer.
 
timwinters said:
Actually, it's a real HER! CMSgt Kathleen McCool.
Click to expand...

...and she's cool! :rolleyes: I know I know....

Looks like she was stationed at Hanscom AFB. Wonder if Cajun knows her?
 
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Total fraud.

If you want,have some fun with him. Lead him on, tell him you will be out for a couple days for a funeral, ask for a phone number for internal logistics, tell him you want x base, then change to y base, etc. flood him with requests and watch how fast he runs.
 
Definitely a scam. The AF is broke like every other government agency. Nothing is for free.
 
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