Ambient Auto Centre, a fake U.S. dealership that targets Canadian car buyers, has reportedly scammed five people so far and stolen $200,000 from them.
Vehicles for sale were listed at ridiculously low prices on various car classifieds websites such as AutoTrader, Wheels, eBay, Craigslist, and Kijiji. As it turns out, they were never delivered to the victims of this scam, and those people haven't been able to get their money back.
Soon after the Ontario Motor Vehicle Industry Council published a fraud warning last month, Ambient Auto Centre's website vanished and the phone number went dead.
However, according to the Council's Terry O'Keefe, another dealership called Sprint Luxury Autos started advertising on the same websites just two weeks later and its homepage looked eerily similar to the former Ambient site.
That's not even the end of the story, though. The Council now believes that a company called Husen Original Autos may be related, with a nearly identical website and the same too-good-to-be-true car deals.
''No one is going to sell a $135,000 vehicle for $90,000,'' added O'Keefe, who urges anyone who thinks they may have fallen prey to such a scam to contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
Source: Global News
Vehicles for sale were listed at ridiculously low prices on various car classifieds websites such as AutoTrader, Wheels, eBay, Craigslist, and Kijiji. As it turns out, they were never delivered to the victims of this scam, and those people haven't been able to get their money back.
Soon after the Ontario Motor Vehicle Industry Council published a fraud warning last month, Ambient Auto Centre's website vanished and the phone number went dead.
However, according to the Council's Terry O'Keefe, another dealership called Sprint Luxury Autos started advertising on the same websites just two weeks later and its homepage looked eerily similar to the former Ambient site.
That's not even the end of the story, though. The Council now believes that a company called Husen Original Autos may be related, with a nearly identical website and the same too-good-to-be-true car deals.
''No one is going to sell a $135,000 vehicle for $90,000,'' added O'Keefe, who urges anyone who thinks they may have fallen prey to such a scam to contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
Source: Global News
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| Photo: Sébastien D'Amour |