Reply #18: Unless you are really nonchalant about buying a car, you should be able to cut through any scams.

[cemaphonic]

Check the vin against Carfax - arrange for a test drive and mechanic's inspection - make sure the title is clear before handing over any money.

If you do these three things, a scammer would have to be pretty creative to cheat you.

The scammy things I've noticed both on Craigslist and sites like Autotrader, and even the sites that individual dealers maintain (I just bought a car a few weeks ago) is that a lot of dealers will leave an especially good-looking deal up for weeks or months after the car has been sold, presumably to attract people to look at their other cars.

I had one dealer even tell me that a car was still on their lot the day before I was going to go look at it. It showed up a few days later in my Carfax search history as having been sold almost a month before.