Help me unpack this scam

Given how many scams are out there, perhaps we can start a thread where the GRM community shares information to help us stay away from, or at least understand the shenanigans that are being attempted on us.

What's going on when the same item is offered for sale, cheap in this instance, from a variety of people? Anyone with an operable synapse can see that there are several identical adverts, the only difference between them being the seller? Then I go on to notice that there are other items (RVs in this case) that have the exact same text for the advert as the other motorhome. Is this just a Phishing operation? And with their vast resources, why doesn't Facebook do something about it? It's tres' annoying to hit the adverts only to find that the first three items you see are all scams.

To me it sounds like they're trying to make sure people see what they're selling by having multiple ads up by different people. Whether they're legit or not, that's another story.

Facebook doesn't seem to care about spam or things like this. After all, it's more views for them, and more views equals more advertising dollars (in the short-term, at least).

I think the fake ads go up faster than FB can take them down which is the reason so many in various markets. 

Further more, what is FB incentive.  Visits, hours, clicks.  None of those things rewards them for "less content."

From the "sellers" perspective, the goal is to get a "buyer" to send some or all the money, site unseen to secure this "good deal."

This is not the sort of advertising that makes money for FB, so they have no reason to care.

Might be fake, might not.   There was a recent Mighty Car Mods episode where they were almost trying to get scammed by one of these multiple adds (for a MINI).  It turns out, after talking to the actual seller (a used car lot), the multiple adds where the result of having contracted various brokers to advertise it also (thus the exact same pictures), to get wider coverage.

I am sure there are scams that use the same pictures also, but there is also the possibility it's legit.

I have a theory that this sort of behavior that cues off savvy people that this is a scam actually makes it *easier* for the them to scam people.

Dealing with people who catch on and back out is a waste of their time. If their scam posts look too legit, they're going to have to fish through a much larger pool in order to find the simple and gullible.

There are plently of people who will miss these clues that seem obvious to us. Those are exactly the kind of marks they want.

Related... watch for FB identity theft.

I have had several "friends" contact me.  People I know. Their profile includes pictures I recognize.  That doesn't mean they aren't scams. 
 

My MiL is in my contacts twice. 1 is her real account, 1 is a fake.  She didn't have her security locked down well, and someone lifted one of her pictures, created a new account, and started contacting people in her contact list to "friend" them. Looks like a couple dozen people forgot they were already friends with her and fell for it (including me).

Once we became friends, it's almost impossible to disconnect. We've blocked them and reported it to FB several times, but the fake account keeps coming back. 

That would be one possible explanation for the OP.  Same ad from different "trusted" users eventually produces results with someone.

It's really common.  We may all have fake accounts like this in our contact list. 

...and soon we will see behavior like this generated by AI.

In reply to SV reX :

Soon? I'll bet it's been automated for a few years already. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I'm sure you're right. 

In reply to Beer Baron 🍺 :

Agreed.

When I used to wonder about the incredibly poor deals for items of dubious value offered on late night TV long ago and why they bothered to make commercials for such obvious ripoffs that exact same conclusion came to me.   They don't want the people with critical thinking skills.  They want the gullible.

As for the same item offered by a multiples of different sellers?

Usually, when a particular grift works, word gets around.   And multiple grifters jump on the bandwagon trying to catch someone unaware until it gets played out.   I have seen this both from the perspective of someone who shops the entire U.S. Marketplace as well as admins several automotive buy and sell groups.    But this sort of behavior goes back all the way through the early days of CL and even the rough and tumble infancy of eBay.

In reply to Russian Warship, Go Berkeley Yourself :

I don't think that the multiple sellers are different people. They're just aliases for the same dude.

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

You have no way of knowing that.

 

In reply to Russian Warship, Go Berkeley Yourself :

No, but the adverts are identical in every way except the name of the seller. - even including the list of items that each of them has for sale - I stopped counting at 160. This does smell of AI. No one person is placing hundreds of vehicles and heavy equipment items up for sale under a variety of names.   

I've noticed this same thing.  There's an RV that keeps getting posted by several different accounts in several different localities each, all with the same description and picture.  I'd buy that it's just an attempt to get the ad out there as much as possible, but it's easily a $60k RV that they're listing at $23k.  And this isn't the only one that I've seen.  I'm somewhat tempted to reach out just to see what the scam is.

The ones that get me are the same thing for sale in lots of different towns, usually for an extremely low price - you see the same nice looking RV for $1200, or a Van for $800, and the location can be towns or even states away. I used to flag them and they would disappear, but I've grown tired of trying to be a FB policeman.