Armslist Missing the boat

[Madcap_Magician]

Yeesh.

I was thinking of dipping my toes in the armslist game to try and move a few guns to finance a new .308 AR.

But maybe not.

Eh, the whackos usually identify themselves rapidly, and they can be entertaining. I have bought or sold probably five or six guns on Armslist. Only had one hinky in-person, and two or three e-mails that were clearly scams, readily identifiable by basically what the OP already posted.

 

[mcmurry]

Never tried to sell a gun online, but 2 years back I listed my jeep on a local buy/sell site. I got a text,( I didn't give out my home phone #), from a guy who wanted to buy it. He was gonna send a truck to get it. I told him fine as long as the Money Order cleared the bank. He sent me a text after the m/o had arrived and I reminded him that it had to clear. I didn't try to cash it, but deposited it. I didn't like the fact that the m/o was for about $1,000 more than I was asking and I was supposed to give the extra to the truck driver to pay him. I looked up the area code from the texts and it was from around the Miami Fla area. But the m/o was bad so I kept the Jeep. I have a friend in real estate that told me that anything, check, money order, certified check, etc. can all be printed off from your home computer. As for PayPal, my wife had to use that one year to pay her RN license renewal fee here in Arkansas. A week later while she was at work, I got a call from someone who just barely spoke English claiming that there was a problem with her account. He claimed to be from the Health department. I asked him what state? Instead of Arkansas, he mispronounced the abbreviation AR as Hay horra! I told him that his number was on caller id, and when my wife got off work she'd call, and hung up. So I don't use PayPal.

 

[hk940]

I can see getting scammed as a buyer, but as a seller if you only take a USPS money order and cash is at the post office (not your bank!). and ship from your FFL to the buyers FFL how can you be scammed?
Once your FFL takes possession it's his gun, he books it in then books it out the receiving dealer.
I would hope the sending dealer would be sure of the receiving dealer being properly licensed.
I know there fake USPS money orders out there, My wife got a priority mail envelope with an offer to become a "secret shopper" Included was a USPS money order for $500.00.
The instructions were to cash the mo at our bank keep $250.00 for our job of purchasing 10.00 worth of merchandise reporting on the service, of the seller and sending the balance back to them. Right.
I took the mo to the Post office and it was a fake.

 

[earlthegoat2]

I would hope the sending dealer would be sure of the receiving dealer being properly licensed.

Pretty easy for anybody to figure that out. When I was selling guns online years ago, I never shipped to any FFL without first checking them out here.

https://fflezcheck.atf.gov/fflezcheck/