Not So Exciting News...

I probably shouldn't have posted anything about the car before we had it, because now I have to post about how we're not actually getting a car because it was a scam. Yeah, we got scammed out of $1600. The guy who was selling the car said he was having MSN Autos handle the transaction and we would wire money to them and they'd send us the car, and then if we liked it, we'd tell them and they'd send the money to the seller. Well we sent the money to MSN Autos, and we didn't get an email saying they'd shipped the car, so Andrew started to worry. Andrew especially started to worry when he saw an article on KSL.com (where we found the car) talking about scammers and the signs to watch out for: the seller is in a different country (our seller claimed to have just moved to Greece), emails are poorly written (you decide if this even makes sense: Dear customer, We have to announce you that the shipping has been started but we wait for the shipping department to send us the documents and papers faxed in order to provide a tracking number, Anyway the car must be delivered in about 48 hours. Keep in touch.), the deal sounds too good to be true ($1600 for a Toyota 4Runner with less miles than it should have had at its age and a bunch of stuff that had been recently replaced? yeah definitely too good to be true) the transaction is handled by a third party with a "protection plan" (Andrew got an email from "MSN Autos" saying that our transaction was protected under a protection plan that doesn't even exist). There were other signs, but those were the ones that especially applied. So Andrew started to worry, and went to the MSN Autos website to look for a phone number, and couldn't find one. He found one for MSN instead, but it was already closed. So the next day he called and talked to a guy from MSN who said their Auto department didn't have a protection plan and it was probably a scam. Andrew also googled the address of the bank in Greece that the seller gave us and found something that this lady had posted who fell for this same scam (but with a different car). So Andrew went to the police department to file a report, but they said since the seller was in Greece they couldn't do anything about it. They did tell him to file a report with the FBI's cyber crime department, so he did. And unfortunately, we're not gonna get our money back. Andrew called his bank and they're pretty sure the criminals can't get any more money out of his account, but when we go back to Kansas for Christmas he's gonna close that account. Needless to say, Andrew was really upset about it. He was so excited ("Look! That's the kind of car we're getting!"). I'm kind of upset, but hey, these things happen. There are bad people out there, and people fall for their scams. It sucks when it's you, but now we've learned our lesson. At least the money we sent was from Andrew's FAFSA, so it wasn't money that we had saved up. And the worst part about all this is that now I actually have to learn how to drive stick. Just kidding, that's not the worst part, but I was so looking forward to not having to learn. Oh well. So anyway, watch out for cyber criminals, cause they're out there.
*Wrap*