11:14 am, December 5, 2022
Award winning used car dealer Jim Reid Vehicle Sales is furious criminals are pretending to be based at his dealership.
Scammers purporting to be legitimate car dealers have set up another fake car dealership website pretending to be based in Scotland.
JDM Cars says it is based in Kintore, Inverurie – the same location as Jim Reid.
The fake website, a screen shot of the homepage you can see above, even uses a zoomed in Google Map location of Jim Reid’s sales site.
The con appears to be exactly the same as those Car Dealer has previously revealed. Criminals advertise cheap used cars on Facebook Marketplace and direct customers to their site via email.
They use fake customer reviews and point customers to legitimate business details they have cloned from Companies House.
The scammers then try to get customers to pay for their cars over the phone in full and offer to deliver them – but then steal the money.
The website uses the fake telephone number 0131 618 0779, the fake email address [email protected] and the fake website jdm-cars-limited.com.
Reid said: ‘It’s quite cunning what they are doing, trapping a few people at a time, forcing them onto the website and linking it back to Gov.uk listing and false customer reviews to build trust.
‘I spoke to the guy who runs the company they are pretending to be. He knew nothing of the scam, however he said that two guys from London had turned up at his house only a week or so ago looking to buy some cars.
‘Although it’s very obviously a scam to us in the trade it isn’t so obvious to customers especially those who live further away and don’t know the local area.
‘The cars advertised are far too cheap on the website, which is the hook, customers then call and the scammers ask for the money upfront to ensure they don’t miss the bargain of a lifetime.
‘Money gets transferred, then scammers disappear, as if by magic.
‘We have complete empathy for those affected by these scams as it’s thousands of well earned money being scammed from hard working people who are those least likely to afford it.’
Jim Reid’s location has been used by the conmen
The JDM Cars site follows two others Car Dealer previously reported – both supposedly based in Scotland – Millers Car Sales and AD Car Sales. Both those sites have been shut down.
Car Dealer has previously reported these scams to the police, online fraud investigators, Facebook and the website hosting company – but all seem powerless to be able to act.
All the dealerships have been set up to look like they are in Scotland with the adverts then targeted at customers in the south.
The criminals hope that by doing so the customers won’t want to travel to look at the used cars first and make it easier to ask for remote payments for a deposit or even the car in full.
Car Dealer even caught the conmen on the phone, which you can see in the video below.
Sandy Burgess, chief executive of the Scottish Motor Trade Association, said: ‘It is unfortunate that these con men are preying on the general public who are being lured by the cheap prices and then failing to make the basic checks on the dealers concerned which ultimately leads to financial losses.’
Reid said his daughter had contacted the con men and pretended to be a buyer and was sent an email directing her to the fake website.
Reid added: ‘The conned customers seem to have found the cars on Facebook Marketplace and both sets of customers were from south.’
