Airplane Buyer Scam - Feb 2024

We have a guy on our aerodrome selling a run-out 172 for around $40K...

So, he gets a check written from a legit business for $80K (double the sales amount) in the mail instructing him to CASH it and provide the "ferry pilot" with the additional $40K in cash. Hmmm.

Instead of doing that, my buddy wisely called the FBI. The guy disappeared, the check was a FAKE check from a legitimate business than MIGHT have been cashed (unlikely, but possible) and the FBI is now too busy to do anything about it.

Lesson to All: Scammers are out there using very creative and tempting tactics. While no one here reading this would ever fall for this, it happens to people in other sales and acquisitions ALL THE TIME.

We used to say "BUYER BEWARE." Now we have to say BUYER AND SELLER BEWARE."

Those crooks are getting more and more creative. A few months ago, a small cafe shop in Topeka received a call about an hour before closing from a guy claiming to be with the Secret Service investigating counterfeit money. The guy asked the shop owner which dollar denominations were in the cash drawer at that time and how many of each. Then the guy said he would come by to inspect the dollar bills, and since he was wokring undercover he wouldn't be wearing a uniform. The shop owner wisely called the Topeka Police Department. TPD staked out at the shop and arrested the guy when he showed up, for impersonating a law enforcement officer.

The FBI won't investigate unless certain thresholds are met. It's about spreading their thin resources wisely.

My IT business has a contact at the local field office who we can call when we are aware of cybersecurity issues. But the sums/losses that we are reporting have to be a lot more than the check Mike's story reports.

It can get very frustrating when we have a "live" crime going down and we know that the big picture NATIONALLY meets the threshold but our LOCAL piece of it doesn't so all the agent can advise is to call local law enforcement. Who on hearing it involves crossing state lines - tell us to call the FBI.....

It's crazy how creative people get to scam money from other people

Sad part is that they wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work.

I still have a very authentic looking cashier's check for $10,000. The instructions were cash it and just send me $2,000 and keep the rest. Needless to say.....!

The tragic part is law-enforcement is spread so thin nothing will come of this...the bad guys will just keep doing it...

It's amazing they even picked up the phone for it!

I live in a relatively SAFE small town in rural PA.

We have TWO police cars in our township....maybe 6 officers? That is thin.

We have a volunteer Fire Dept - we pass the hat, attend chicken dinners and buy raffle tickets...and we have a private ambulance. (you get the bill later, and hopefully people pay)

We are basically "on our own" out here as that is all we can afford...

For all of that, we still have it pretty good here. There is a good "social contract" here in place where people come to the aid of each other, as we know very little is coming from anywhere else!

Do you really want law enforcement wasting time and resources (read, taxpayer money) on these pathetic civil fraud schemes? I'm sorry, there's much bigger fish to fry.

Life requires a certain amount of personal responsibility. If one is too ignorant to not fall for a completely unrealistic scam (hmm, somebody wants to pay me 4x my ask price for my plane>?????!!!), it's not the duty of society to protect them.

Even a Financial Pro fell for a scam News [cnn.com]

While I hear you - there is also an element of "look out for the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves".

Meaning if it is unacceptable at a small level - people are less inclined to try it at a bigger level.

And while the big guys are happy to arrange that the small guys take the hit. If you keep taking out small guys early on - there will be fewer turn into big guys.

--

Like graffiti - immediately remove the first bit and more of it is less likely to appear to mimic the first bit. You actually spend less cleaning up.

If it sounds too good to be true ,it’s usually not. When buying or selling a plane it’s wise to you an escrow service.

My wife occasionally asks me if an email is legit. I simply look carefully at the sender’s email address at first. That eliminates most of the guessing immediately. Then I dissect the email and look for urgency, misspelling, and other tells..People will not stop scamming because there will always be someone who falls for it!

I don't think it really works that way. The big guys are smart and don't get caught.........only the dumb criminals get caught......


.....

.....

and the rest just become politicians LOL

Within the last month, there's been a rash of fake social security scams the elderly around here are falling for - it's tragic as once their life saving is gone, it's gone for good...I am constantly warning my folks in their late-80's to PLEASE not respond to anything without consultation. Culturally, they are from a different era and are more susceptible to this time of malfeasance.

We have 7 nursing homes and retirement centers in our small town of 16,500 - people tend to "warehouse" their relatives here as the cost of care is substantially less expensive than NY, NJ, MD or DE, so they gently "dump" relatives here, promise to visit and then never do. Carlisle is becoming "God's Waiting Room."

The criminals keep getting smarter - I don't want to 7700 this thread, but recently a scammer got into my friend's USAA account and changed all his personal security questions, passwords and codes so that after the criminal scammed money, the REAL owner could not get into the account to shut it down, and even CALLING was nearly futile. He finally worked it out but had to miss several DAYS of work to stay home and work through it with their top security people. It was a complex phishing attack...that is troubling for regular people like me.

In the last week, I have had two RANSOMEWARE threats that said they broke into my home computer system and filmed "....my family doing things and I better pay up." I knew it was BS and blocked the sender, but I could see how folks with "wired houses" and computers with cameras everywhere might fall for this scam. If they weren't successful, they would not be doing it.

Having worked with computers my entire career, I don't want to store anything "in the clouds" if I have a choice. Everything (photos. documents, passwords, etc) are stored on my computers and each requires a password at power-up.

And backed up I'm sure.

Yes, backed up incrementally every 3 months to a USB stick, and full backups every 6 months to external portable hard drives.

I’m trying to sell my first airplane and avoid scams. Does anyone have experience/recommendations on how to accept payment (especially from an out of state buyer) without giving sensitive personal information, or risk fraudulent transactions?

Use an escrow service.
I think AOPA might help if you happen to be a member.

https://www.aopa.org/go-fly/aircraf...craft/aircraft-title-and-escrow-services

Cash

I am a member. They quoted me $550 for their recommended escrow service. Do they take care of making absolutely sure the funds clear before completing the transaction? I ask because “I know a guy”, who took a fraud report from the bank I happen to use where they took a “certified” cashier’s check, said it was legit, cashed it, then 3 weeks later said it turned out to be fraudulent and withdrew the funds from their client’s account after the merchandise and buyer were long gone. Obviously, I want to keep this from even being a possibility.

That’s my preferred method, but understandably people don’t want to carry around that much cash, especially for dealing with an out of state seller they don’t know. I also want a cash transaction to occur at my local bank so I don’t get any counterfeit money.

Some may call me paranoid. I prefer to think of myself as prepared and aware of the world.

Counterfeit money is certainly a thing, I have a friend that got paid in funny money on a Craigslist deal once and he only figured it out when he when to Walmart and they checked it with the pen.almost got arrested, and he had to go back to every business he visited with the detective.

There are probably better ways to test, but I always use the counterfeit pen when I get paid at my shop.

You can accept a cashier's check after you call the bank that issued that check to make sure it is legit.

In God we trust.

All others pay cash.

We did a wire transfer when I sold the 150 out of the buyers bank account . Will the buyer be present? The buyer was here and we made sure the funds cleared before they took off. I did a wire transfer when I bought the Champ out of escrow. On a funny cash note a potential buyer for the 150 flew up with his CFI and a bag of cash with a handgun for protection of course. You can't make this stuff up. They took the plane for a test flight and he wouldn't leave the cash with me. I was like - you have my airplane, I'm not going anywhere. He said that someone could come by and steal it. Realize, we are at a completely backwoods private strip. Long story short the sale didn't happen and he took his bag of money and flew away. Now I have a story.

Pete

How did you know the guy had a gun? If you’re carrying properly, it shouldn’t be noticeable to everyone.

I’m more surprised that you let them take the airplane for a test flight without you right seat or cash in your hand.

Pete,

Great story!

Wow, how MUCH ca$h was he carrying that he had to be armed with a pistol...and a CFI?

I mean, we all think our 150's are worth the world, but seriously....

Some people we all meet do have "security issues" (trust) with belongings or themselves...it is exhausting working with them.

$15,000.00 (Of course it was $1,000 less than the asking price). This was pre-covid before the prices went through the roof. Had the handgun in the bag of cash, which he opened to show me. The CFI met the open pilot conditions on the insurance policy, and seemed more than qualified and mentally stable, so I let her sit right seat. Anyway, I had their 172 in the event they absconded.

Pete

Wire transfer is by far the safest way to transfer money.

A cashiers check is usually good but even those can be stopped so it's not risk free at all......any banker worth his salt will tell you that (mine included).


Cash is a red flag the way things are today and who wants to risk carrying more than a coupe hundred dollars in their wallet these day??

Sounds like something out of a movie, definitely not the correct way to carry.


How is cash a red flag?

I think most "honest" persons don't travel around with large amounts of cash in a bag.
Some states think the same way and will confiscate the large amounts of $$ if you happen to get pulled over for whatever reason and there is no getting it back.

Even if the buyer was carrying only $20K in cash, that's still a large cash amount which is unusual. A typical person doesn't keep that much amount in cash, unless he totally doesn't trust the banking system or deals in shady/illegal business which uses only cash so it's untraceable. When you deposit $10K+ in cash (all at once or in a short period of time) into a PERSONAL bank account, the bank is required to report it to the IRS. Do it repeately and you'll be on some government watchlists. Deposting more than $10K in cash ? [nasdaq.com]

FUNNY story about CA$H...

So, many years ago we decided to place my young daughter into a private Catholic school because we felt she needed a bit more TLC in the classroom...nothing against public schools - we love them also, and my wife is a teacher in one now, but back then, our daughter had moved so much with me in the military that she needed a bit of stability we felt the school could provide...so the tuition was something like $10,000.00!

To impress on my kids the VALUE OF EDUCATION we decided to get the money out of the bank and show her what it meant to us that she get a good education...so we asked for the amount in CA$H from my local bank -- IN SINGLES!

Well, the bank agreed to do it but it wasn't easy. They needed a WEEK to do it and had to bring in several people to count it all in front of me. The manager came out and said, "Mr. Marra, we aren't supposed to ask you this and you don't have to tell us, but why on earth do you need $10,000 in....SINGLES?!"

Told him the story - they laughed.

So, I put it all in a black suitcase like Tony Soprano and go home...stack in up on the table.

WOW - that is a lot of DOUGH!

My kids (and frankly my wife and I) had it stacked on the dinner table. We told Molly how much she meant to us and that ALL OF THIS was for her education.

I told her:

"The price of education is high, but the cost of ignorance is incalculable."

She got it - turned it around - got great grades, and now is a pediatric delivery nurse in Nashville.

So, I was about to turn it BACK into the back (lesson over) when I called the principal of the school and just for fun, ask if I can PAY IN CA$H. He loves the idea and....put the money out in the gym and had EVERY KID come by and take a good hard look at it - and told them the PILE represents EACH CHILD in the school and THAT is what someone is PAYING for your education!

BOOM! Lesson for the week complete!

Photos below!

I would have told him that I was going to a strip joint...

+1

Plus, in the last two places I've lived, banks no longer issue "cashier's checks." When I hear that phrase, I think fraud.

When we sold our ancient boat for just a few bucks north of $10,000 last fall, it was wire transfer.

That's a GREAT story, Mike. A somewhat realated story....(I didn't witness in person)...I used to work for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas which is a health insurance company and has a lot of old people as customers. The insurance premium keeps going up each year due to inflation and rising medical costs, and the old people on fixed income really hate that. One time, an old farmer drove his pickup truck to the front office and hauled in buckets after buckets of pennies to pay his monthly premium (as in "you took my last penny"). We had no choice but to accept the pennies because they are legal money. We had to send the pennies with the armored truck that picked up money each night and got them counted at the bank because nobody wanted to spend time counting them.

At my branch of Bank of America, they no longer accept ANY cash without producing a government issued ID. Yup, even one cent that is being deposited requires an ID. I don't know if it's a Bank of America thing or a government thing, but that is crazy. The bank claims it's to prevent money laundering. I don't know if they do it for regular customers, or just commercial clients. Doesn't really apply to me as virtually all my deposits do not contain cash.

Without a government ID, how would they know who to tax?

To make a deposit at the bank you must have an account, and a S.S. number or TIN was required to open the account. They already had your number.

My understanding that the $10,000 cash reporting limit was set in the 1970's for various crime reasons, and it never has been raised. 10k in the 70's was worth a lot more than 10k in 2024

Once money is seized, it is VERY HARD to get the USG to give it back.

We had a guy in the Army who was, for some reason, moving across country and instead of electronically switching banks - decided to travel with $26K in cash.

I do not know why but he got pulled over and the cash was seized as the state troopers assumed he was up to no good. The man was NOT arrested and was not charged with any crimes.

It took a lawsuit and 10 months of a hired lawyer to wrest the $$$ back to him. He did get it all back, but no interest and had to eat the lawyer fees per-hour + the massive inconvenience and anxiety of having all his money tied-up. This is shocking to me. Seems like a bit of "over-governance" but that's just me. That being said, I am a fan of our thin-blue-line and appreciate all they do to keep us safe. This was definitely an isolated incident.

Lesson for me: I have the right to carry large amounts of cash, but it comes with a modicum of risk.

If the money was seized by some sheriff deputies in a dinky little county, it'd be a long road to get the money back.

That's exactly what I would have said too!!! LOL!

C'mon, that is a LOT of dance coupons! 26,000! HMPHF!

55F is in the AOPA recommended escrow service. We will have to see how it goes. A new experience for me, but the buyer has wired them the funds already.

We used an escrow service (Aerospace Reports) when my partner and I sold our C172. Very professional with excellent communication. I would highly recommend them. They do a full title search, handle all the financial escrow through wired funds and electronically file all FAA paperwork. They issue a very complete closing statement and will not disperse funds until all parties sign off of the pre buy inspection etc.

In general, that's not the case. As the Federal Reserve states:


For example, many convenience stores and gas stations have signs saying they'll not accept $50 or $100 bills due to counterfeiting. They're free to do that. If a business wants to only accept chickens in payment, they can do that, too. They may not stay in business long (unless most of their customers are chicken farmers).

That being said, there may be local laws that say otherwise (hence the last part of the US Fed quote that I italicized). In 2020, New York City passed a law that said businesses must accept cash. This was in response to a number of places (primarily restaurants, coffee shops, small grocers, etc.) that were going cashless - only credit cards or smartphone apps would be accepted for payment. The non-cash system was considered discriminatory against people who didn't have credit cards, couldn't get them, and/or didn't want them. The law does say the business does not have to accept bills over $20, and if they refuse to transact in cash they have to provide a free means to convert cash to a smart card.

It's called "Civil Asset Forfeiture" and it has become very controversial. In general, the government (i.e. - local/state police, FBI) can immediately seize assets from suspected illegal activity (typically drugs). For example, if a person is seen leaving a drug-lord's hideout with a duffel bag full of cash, they can seize the money to help stop the illegal activity. In that regard it has been very successful.

The kicker is this - the person carrying the cash doesn't have to break any laws to have the money seized. Just the suspicion is sufficient. And, once the money is seized, the owner has to prove the money was 'innocent' before getting it back. People have the protection of 'innocent until proven guilty', but property (i.e. - cash) does not.

Because of this, some unscrupulous police have taken to seizing any large quantities of cash found in ordinary traffic stops on the belief that anyone carrying that much cash is up to no good in some way. And, if uncontested, they get to keep the cash, thus providing a great incentive to continue the behavior.

When I bought 63U, the seller insisted I pay cash. Would not let me wire him the funds. Fortunately, we have a good relationship our banker, so he called the branch in the town where the plane was, set it up for me to cash a check at the branch in front of the seller. In 100's. He counted every bill. He was a strange bird.

At least I did not have to carry a bunch of cash around. The teller handed it to me, and I handed it to him. Also, doing it in the bank added a level of safety. And yes, I had the signed bill of sale, etc before I gave him the cash.

We wire funds for our clients every day. We find it a very good way to transfer large sums of monies. We do not like mailing checks. To slow and chance they get lost.

Wish I had known about the escrow service back then. I probably would have used them.

I have learned a lot from this club. Makes me realize how lucky I was in buying 63U. Fortunately, what I didn't know didn't hurt me.

PS: It is hard to get rid of large sums of cash. I never could figure out why the guy wanted cash.

Escrow services are a very good thing for protecting both sides of an aircraft sale.

Sounds like piracy to me

Update:

The escrow process was very quick and easy in my case. The buyer waived a pre-buy (never saw it in person). The buyer asked if I would ferry it to NC. I said I wasn’t afraid to fly it there, but would prefer someone who ferries professionally did it. Glad I did, the plane arrived by ferry today, the ferry pilot told me the generator light came on during the last leg of the flight. I doubt the buyer would have believed me if that had happened with the seller (me) flying it out. And the buyer is a lawyer, so…

There was something like this on 60 Minutes a few years back where a guy had gotten out of the Air Force and was driving back to the West Coast, got pulled over in Kansas right before the Colorado border... and they took his money... What the poor guy had to go through to get it back.

My own story... I went to go get a car and told the seller I was paying cash as he was adamant about no checks. When I showed up at the location, things we looking a little sketchy. I went through the drill of looking it over etc... but when he asked if I had the money, I asked where the nearest Wells Fargo was and he could bring the car and the pink slip and we'll do the transaction there...

Needless to say, he was not happy and I walked..

Boy, that was pretty smart, John! Good for you!

It's to the point folks are paranoid now...your story about yet ANOTHER veteran having his money taken is very disconcerting.

It's not like we have a huge next egg or pile 'o cash to fall back on!

Kirk's description of the law (see above) is troubling. It creates an incentive to continue doing this and is almost to the point of an extrajudicial effort to create revenue streams in some departments.

I am ALL FOR our 'thin blue line' but think we can and should do better about seizing the savings of the innocent until proven guilty in a court of law unless there are clear and present indications of laws being violated.

What's this I hear about due process...?