Questions buyers ask before they wire

Four checks catch almost everything. Reverse image search the machine photographs, because a seller who does not own the machine had to take the pictures from somewhere. Look up the domain registration date, because a dealership with twenty years of history does not run on a domain registered in March. Search the legal name in the secretary of state register for the state claimed. And look at the yard address in satellite and street imagery — a dealer selling excavators has a lot with machines on it.

Then force one interaction they cannot fake: a walk-around video of the machine filmed today, with today's date written on cardboard held against the data plate, and a clear shot of the hour meter and serial number. Real sellers do this in four minutes. Nobody else can do it at all.

Not always, but it is the single most reliable indicator in this trade, and every legitimate explanation for a deep discount can be checked in a way a fraudulent one cannot. A real estate dispersal has an auctioneer and a catalogue. A real bank repossession has a bank you can telephone. A real dealer clearing floorplan has a lot you can drive to.

What you should never accept is a discount plus distance plus urgency. The price pulls you in, the impossibility of seeing the machine is presented as a logistics detail, and the second buyer who is about to commit stops you from thinking about either.

No, and this is the most important limit to understand. An absence means nobody has reported them yet, which is exactly the state every new operation is in. These sites are built to be abandoned within weeks, so the most dangerous one is usually the one nobody has documented.

Treat a clear search as the absence of a warning, not the presence of a clearance, and run the checks anyway.

Confirmed Scam — Yes — this is a scam. Buyers paid, no machine was delivered, and the payment trail is documented. Treat every contact point as hostile.

High Risk — Do not send money. Multiple objective indicators and reported payments, with verification still running. No safe way to transact.

Under Review — Unresolved — proceed only in person. Reported and published for transparency while checks continue. No confirmed loss on record yet.

Cleared — No — this seller checks out. Checked and found to be a real, traceable business, or the complaint was resolved by the seller.

Because the website is the cheapest part. Inventory pages, serial numbers, hour meters, inspection reports, financing calculators, staff photographs, and a twenty-year company history can all be copied from a real dealership in an afternoon. Many of these sites are near-exact clones of a genuine business, running a domain one word or one suffix away from the real one, reprinting that company's licence number verbatim.

Design quality carries almost no signal. Domain age, whether the beneficiary on the invoice matches the business name, and whether anyone can stand in the yard carry nearly all of it.

No. The padlock means the connection to that server is encrypted. It says nothing about who runs the server or whether a machine exists. Domain-validated certificates are issued free and automatically within minutes, which is why every site in this list had one.

The same goes for trust badges, accreditation seals, dealer association logos, and reviews shown on the site itself. Those are images the operator uploaded. Verify an accreditation on the accrediting body's own website, never on the site claiming it.

Only if you chose it. An escrow, transport, or inspection company introduced by the seller is the seller. The websites are days old, the phone rings back to the same person, and the portal showing your deposit received and held is a page on their own server. This is the core of nearly every RV, camper, and collector car scam on this site.

If you want escrow, appoint a licensed agent you found independently and confirm the licence in your state's register. And note that no marketplace anywhere operates a vehicle purchase protection programme funded by wire transfer, gift cards, or cryptocurrency — an invoice carrying a marketplace logo asking for any of those is fabricated.

Because the fees are the business. Once a deposit lands, the operator has established that you will pay, and what follows is a sequence designed to extract as much as possible before you stop: a transport bond, insurance on the load, a customs or permit charge, a storage fee because delivery slipped, an inspection fee, and a final balance to release the machine at a depot.

Each one is framed as the last obstacle between you and the machine. There is no machine. Every payment after the first is pure loss, and stopping immediately is the only thing that limits the damage.

Telephone your bank — voice, not the app — ask for a wire recall, and use the words fraud and unauthorised beneficiary. A wire that has not been withdrawn from the receiving account can sometimes be stopped the same day and almost never after that. Ask them to freeze further scheduled payments and to log the case in writing with a reference number.

Then send nothing more, screenshot the listing, site, invoice, bank details, and message history before they disappear, and file with IC3. Full sequence on the recovery page.

Sometimes, and speed is almost the whole of it. A wire reported the same day can occasionally be recalled or frozen through IC3's Recovery Asset Team. Zelle and Cash App have no reversal mechanism, and because you authorised the payment yourself, reimbursement is discretionary — report it in writing anyway, through the app and the bank, and escalate past the first representative.

Card and PayPal goods-and-services payments are your strongest position, because a chargeback for goods not received is a defined process with a defined timetable. Cryptocurrency cannot be reversed at all.

No. Treat it as fraud without exception. They know the amount and the dealer name because victim lists are compiled and traded, and that knowledge is evidence they bought the list, not evidence they are genuine. Recovery agencies, asset tracers, and lawyers holding a settlement all charge a fee before anything is released, and nothing is ever released.

Recovery runs through your bank, your card issuer, and law enforcement. None of them ask you to pay to get your money back, and neither do we.

No. Published buyer accounts carry a first name or initials and a general location only — never an email address, phone number, home address, or banking detail. Ask to appear anonymously and that is honoured.

Someone may email you for clarification. Your contact details are used for that and nothing else, and never form part of the published report.

Neither. Nothing here sits behind a fee, a login, or a paywall, and nobody working on this site will ever contact you offering recovery. A warning nobody can reach protects nobody, and charging people who were just defrauded is indistinguishable from the trade we document.

Corrections are published. Write from an email address on the domain in question with documentation: state business registration, a dealer licence number that can be confirmed with the issuing board, photographs of the premises, and records showing the disputed transactions were completed.

Where the documentation holds up, the report is re-graded as cleared or withdrawn with a dated note explaining what changed. Nothing is ever altered silently.

Yes, with a link back. Write to press@equipmentscamreport.com and we will share the underlying evidence we can lawfully disclose, including overlaps between reports — shared bank beneficiaries, reused phone numbers, identical photographs — that are not published in full. Bulk scraping is not permitted.