Would you be suspicious of this???

[JimC]

I suspect you are better off letting that one pass.

 

[Sammy]

Hey, thanks for all the replies. I guess at times, it's a good thing I am suspicious by nature. As multiple posters have said, "if it seems too good to be true......"

Makes me want to pull my listings from the timeshare sites, though.....

 

[Cruelladeville]

What about eBay? If you have to send the money to eBay to hold for a timeshare purchase, is that a scam? I did one from there, and the money was sent to the closing company, which makes sense. But I wondered about sending several thousand to eBay, even if it's insured. Everything looked legal, but sending them money thru Western Union within a week? I'm just not sure.

 

[JimMIA]

What about eBay? If you have to send the money to eBay to hold for a timeshare purchase, is that a scam? I did one from there, and the money was sent to the closing company, which makes sense. But I wondered about sending several thousand to eBay, even if it's insured. Everything looked legal, but sending them money thru Western Union within a week? I'm just not sure.

That's a deposit, not an advanced fee.

An advanced fee is prepayment for a service someone is going to render. Advanced fees are legal in some states, illegal in others, and limited in others. In Florida, for example, it is legal for a financial institution to charge up-front, non-refundable fees with loan applications. However, that is limited to certain licensed institutions -- not everyone is allowed to do it. A common scam is to charge a business or individual an advanced fee for selling an assset, arranging a loan, obtaining employment, etc, and then nothing is actually done. With businesses, the losses are often very large.

There is nothing wrong with requesting a deposit that's going to be applied to the purchase price, although most states have stringent requirements to safeguard deposits.

 

[drakethib]

Tell him to send the check and you will deposit it.

Them tell him you have deposited it but will not give him the timeshare as you have spent the money and can't give it back to him.

have fun

 

[canda]

As a real estate agent, I have seen things like this before. You are not allowed to have an undisclosed source of money. Their has to be a money trail. I would call the banking commission and the real estate commission of the state the timeshare is in. THe FBI won't hurt, but unless it is a terriost or gangster you are most likely to get a response from the state banking commission.

A fellow agent called the Banking commission on something he thought was fishy, and they told him to go ahead and close. At closing, the SBI comes in and arrested the buyer, the attorney and had already picked up the money man.

 

[byoung]

They are always out there trying to get you.

 

[brandip22]

Yep, I manage a bank and we see it a good bit. In the smaller towns, some of the customers aren't wuite as "educated" and really think they won some lottery they never entered and make us deposit the check. We place holds when we can (law prevent it in some cases) but a hold won't guarantee it's good. These things take over 30 days at times to come back and the customer is left holding the bag- or I guess empty bag. We've had to do several "workout" loans for this case. I wish we could just send the checks for collection as that would solve the problem with the holds, but laws prevent it.