Common sense goes a long way in protecting farmers!
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com
Classified ads are a great way to connect with other producers looking for the equipment you’re selling.
However, on occasion, professional con artists may contact farmers to take advantage of them. Fortunately, the farmers we spoke to were pretty savvy and were too smart for the swindlers.
“I was contacted by someone that I believe is scamming farmers,” Clark McPheerers, who is selling a tractor for his father, told Farms.com in an email. “He claimed to be affiliated with your {the Farms.com/classifieds} website and said he would help me sell and transport a tractor for a $399 deposit.” According to McPheeters, the scammer said Farms.com would also charge him 10 per cent of the tractor’s sale price. He said the scammer was calling from a 308 area code.
Listing classified ads on Farms.com is 100% free and no commission or finder’s fee is ever charged. McPheeters said he wanted to know if he’d be refunded if the tractor wasn’t sold, but the scammer couldn’t provide an answer.
“I asked him what would become of the deposit if the tractor didn’t sell and he basically dodged the question.”
Despite the scammer’s best efforts, McPheeters didn’t send any money.
Paul Harder, a dairy farmer from Sunderland, Ontario, also had an encounter with a dishonest person trying to get money out of him.
Harder said someone sent him a text message inquiring about an International tractor he was selling for parts.
“It was an American number from Atlanta, Georgia,” he said. “Nobody in Atlanta, Georgia is going to buy a parts tractor in Ontario and ship it to Georgia.”
The text message came from a 404 are code. Unless your item is unusually rare, being contacted from a buyer who is not in your local buying area, should be a red flag.
Harder said another person contacted him about a threshing machine he was selling for parts. He and the scammer texted back and forth until the subject of payment came up.
“He wanted me to ship it,” Harder said. “He was going to pay for the shipping and wanted to know where to deposit the money. I told him he can come pick it up and it’ll be cash on the kitchen table.”
Harder said the potential buyer identified themselves as from either Wisconsin or Minnesota.
Farms.com would like to take this time to remind farmers not to share banking information with anyone, and to be do their due diligence when buying or selling farm equipment.
A number of the farmers Farms.com spoke to indicated that the con artists identified themselves as a farmer, but when the farmers asked the scammers about their crops, etc, they couldn’t answer appropriately.
For more information about protecting yourself from classifieds ad scams visit:
http://www.farms.com/classifieds/protecting-yourself-from-classified-ad-scams.aspx