Following the simple steps of this how-to will help you avoid Craigslist scams. Craigslist provides a venue for users to post their free ads and other users to read and respond to those ads, including personal ads, jobs ads, housing ads, etc. These ads are moderated by the user community, as Craigslist does not have the personnel nor the interest to moderate the ads themselves. While this makes the service tremendously popular and useful, it also provides an easy target for scammers of all sorts. These scammers use Craigslist to bring in victims, using both well known and new tactics, including fake checks, fake ads, misleading details, etc. Scammers can hit both users who post ads, and users who respond to the scammers’ fake ads. http://www.craigslist.org/about/factsheet

Craigslist has over 700 regional bulletin-board type websites covering cities and regions around the world. It is the seventh highest-traffic English language website in the world. Each month over 50 million users in the United States alone post over 50 million ads, which are viewed over 20 billion times. http://www.craigslist.org/about/factsheet Craigslist has only 30 employees in their San Francisco offices, which makes it clear the company has no way of policing all the ads on their hundreds of sites. The Craigslist Terms of Use (TOU) make it clear they have no intention to even try to do so, leaving the responsibility solely on the users.http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use

Whether you’re looking for a used car, a house for sale, a rental place, textbooks, or even a job scammers can lure you into handing them your hard-earned cash, leaving you empty-handed. If you’re looking to sell stuff such as computers on Craigslist, scammers may pay you with convincing checks which turn out to be fakes, but only after they’re long gone with your goods.

Craigslist takes no part in any transaction resulting from ads on its site. They do not provide financial guarantees, they do not vet sellers or buyers. They do not handle the financial details or the shipping of any items or transactions. Anyone offering anything that claims to be proof of any of these is simply proving to you that s/he is a scammer. Simply walk away from the deal.http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams

A person mails you a check, even a very official looking cashiers check. The check may be for the amount agreed to, or more likely (see featured video) for substantially more. You may be tempted to accept this check, especially when you deposit it and the money posts to your account. You then send a wire or your own check for the difference between the agreed amount and the higher amount the buyer sent you. This money may even be sent to a third party, which later turns out to be an associate of the scammer.

Only several days after your money has been sent, your bank lets you know the check from the buyer was a fake, so the bank removes the funds from your account. However, your money, be it via check or wire, was legitimate, and is now legitimately gone. If you shipped your goods to the buyer, s/he may turn around and sell those goods for extra profit, or may simply let it go where it may. In any case, you lose that too.http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams

Scammers will try to lure you with too-good-to-be-true prices, difficult-to-find rarities, whatever it takes to hook you. The scammer may ask for a partial payment before shipping you’re the goods. They will then ask you to wire the money to them. Perhaps they claim to be on travel, or simply too busy to meet. In all these cases, once you wire the money, they can step into a Western Union office, collect your money, and before you know it, they’re gone with it. Needless to say you never get the goods or the apartment lease you expected. Another variant is for a so-called foreign company asking you to receive and cash checks for them, wiring them the money. The checks will be fake, but the money you lose will be very real.http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams

Online escrow companies, which will supposedly hold your money until you release it after receiving the promised goods will most likely be part of the scam. As soon as you send them your money, the scammer will get it, and you will never see the promised goods.http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams

Craigslist is an Internet site. As such, the person responding to your ad, or the person posting the ad you’re responding to, may be half a world away and you would have no way of knowing this. Insisting on only carrying out transactions in person will prevent an overwhelming majority of scammers from fleecing you. Accepting only cash for your goods will assure you that you will not be handed a bad or even fake check.