jayely1

It was in Cali, but somehow in the string of emails with the dealer the scammer was also writing me as the Porsche dealer.. And he was writing to them as me as well... All in the SAME string of email.. He was emailing the dealer as me with 1 letter different as well too..Somehow Gmail doesn't know the difference???
Long story short, I ended up wiring him 72k instead... It's a LONG story that I don't care to type out right now, but these scammers were incredibly good..I'm still confused with how some of it worked and how they did it.. I don't have millions of dollars like many Porsche owners have so this hurts a lot..
Went from being a very very good to day to one of the worst..

jayely1

The dealer was writing him and thought it was me as well.. I don't know how he got involved in any of our emails back and forth?? I hope I can do something if this is somehow the dealers fault. I don't know what to do.. The FBI and banks are working on it.. But I have my doubts that anything can be done..

trayvon

You said the car is in Cali but it was listed on McKenna Porsche? That doesn't make much sense to me...

Regardless, Gmail is typically extremely good at this type of thing. I work in technology, and we typically advise users (at smaller companies, where it doesn't make sense to have an in-house setup) to use the Gmail web client. It is very good at detecting not only spam, but email address spoofing.

Nonetheless, again, assuming this is a true story, the bank almost certainly cannot do jack **** because they have already completed the wire transfer and there's no way for them to "reverse" it. The FBI almost certainly cannot do jack **** if the person lives in another country.

Whether the story is true or not, anyone reading this should use it as a warning to be extremely careful when wiring large amounts of money, as you cannot get it back if someone outside of the country scams you.

rasetsu

There is a very popular McKenna Porsche in Norwalk, CA.
https://www.mckennaporsche.com/

michael818

All in all, I'm just a bit skeptical about the story. I've looked at your prior posts and something just doesn't seem right to me. If I'm wrong, you have my apologies and I feel bad for you. No one should be wiring large sums of money without due diligence.

CaymanSinAR

First of all, you are calling out the wrong person.

Second, I can’t speak to the veracity of this whole story, but the car in question did exist. It was on Cars.com, Porsche’s pre-owned locator, and McKenna Porsche’s website. It was manual, GT Silver, and had the Black/Bordeaux interior. Price was around $76K CPO.

Here is another car I looked at from McKenna Porsche in California. $72K CPO with 6K miles.

https://nationalpreownedporsche.com/...allic+22398077

rasetsu

I'm not coming here to stand up for OP. Just stating a fact that there is a large and well known McKenna Porsche in CA.

I nearly bought a low mileage GTS in Lava Orange for $73K from Autonation Porsche in Irvine, CA so there's nothing suspicious about the pricing in that region.

I never spoke with my sales guy until after the deal was made when he called to make sure delivery went well. Everything was over email and text. He did have his finance manager call me to confirm my info and discuss payment and I put him in touch with my CU loan manager because I wasn't dealing with the logistics of the payment. My point is, I could see someone falling into a trap like this especially if the sales person doesn't reply to their emails quickly.

I may be naive but I don't know why someone would make up a story like this. This isn't 4Chan or Reddit.

Noah Fect

Unfortunately I've heard of this type of thing happening at the multi-million dollar level (with 100% credibility). This was a few years ago, but as I recall, someone at the realtor's office (or title company?) was successfully phished around the time my friend's home purchase was closing. They lost control of their email long enough to allow the scammer to impersonate them and provide bogus payment details to the mortgage lender. Something similar to this scam, if I remember correctly.

My friend barely caught on to what was happening in time to stop the wire. And yes, GMail was involved, in a How-can-Google-be-such-dumbasses? way that made us both slap our foreheads. I wish I could remember what the vulnerability was, but it was a big one, and it's (presumably) unthinkable that they haven't fixed it by now.

Assuming the OP's on the level, you can bet that they are EXTREMELY upset at the moment, and I don't see much point in playing Walter Sobchak to their Big Lebowski. These aren't dumbass 419 operators sitting in a boiler room in Lagos. At this level of play the scammers are extremely sophisticated. The destination account would not have been in Africa or some other place that would throw up red flags. It would have been a domestic account set up for this exact purpose.

jayely1

Yeah... No joke. I'm referring to the Mckenna in California.. I've been watching the car for months and emailing back and forth about it.. Somehow he/they/scammers intercepted our emails and starting writing me saying "they accepted my offer". Which is in the SAME email as the correct dealers email.. I'm still unsure how gmail didn't separate the emails and need to figure that out... I guess gmail couldn't tell the difference?? JDitch@mckennacars.com & JDitch@rnckennacars.com.. Spot the difference??
Also, I was receiving emails from the correct email address as well from the scammer, so i'm assuming he hacked the dealers email as well.. The car even was taken off the website yesterday, the day that I told them I was paying.. There's much much more to the story but somehow everything fell perfectly into place for these POS scammers and they got away with it. And trust me, I did some things to avoid it and it all coincidentally worked out just right for them.. Still in disbelief...

michael818

I guess I stand corrected. I’m still a bit skeptical but I’ll take you at your word. Good luck and hope it ends well for you.

michael818

I’m not doubting you but $72k is far from an amount that sophisticated hackers would be investing time into. It is what it is, if true, I’m sorry for the OP but sending large sums of money on the basis of an email exchange is foolish. I don’t see how some telephone calls would not have been made.

.2PDK

Trust but verify.

Noah Fect

Sure enough, registered 3 days ago...

No doubt using a stolen credit card to pay the registration fee at GoDaddy.


Telephone calls are not an ironclad guarantee these days. Once you have control of someone's email, chances are good that you have access to the information needed to launch a port-out scam.

Think about the last time you dealt with a realtor's office or a bank or any other company full of non-tech-savvy employees. The scammer can try an arbitrary number of attacks, in parallel, against an arbitrary number of financial-services companies full of these types of people, at almost no cost in time or resources to themselves. They only have to succeed once in order for someone to have a really bad day.

jayely1

I called to verify RIGHT before the transfer and texting the scammer the same time. I told him to give me a call and he said he was in a meeting so give him a few minutes. I then called the dealer and said I need to speak with John (the sales manager I thought I was texting). I said, he told me he's at a meeting right now.. And the salesman said "yeah, I don't see him in his office". I said you know the silver GTS?? He said "oh the manual one right", I said yeah that one.. I'm buying it today and just wanted to confirm this wasn't some Nigerian scam (Ha Ha)... He laughed and said no he told me it was sold today...I then said well here's the number he's been texting me on, can you confirm that's his?? I proceeded with stating the number that I've been texting... The salesman then said, "oh ok, we text with the computer system too" and then sent me a text from there..I then said, ya that's not the number i've been texting.... I've been texting this number... And said the number YET AGAIN VERY SLOWLY!!! And he then brushed it off and said, I will have him call you back whenever he's done in the meeting..... So that all lined up just enough... Not to mention the car went off the website THAT day he said it was sold to me... I figured there was no way someone hacked their website, deleted the car and everything else lined up the way it did.. Turns out the car was sold 5 days ago and was taken off the day I thought I was buying it... If the salesman knew anything about the missing car in the showroom or if John (the sales manager I thought I was speaking with) answered the phone or if he was able to get on the phone I would have figured it all out! It just made so much sense... Obviously now looking back there are signs.. And you guys likely think i'm an idiot i'm sure... But when you're emailing the dealer for 2-3 months you never think that the day or two before you plan on buying it some Nigerian hacker has taken over and is the person you're talking too... Everything lined up absolutely perfectly for them.

jayely1

I'll gladly attached a photo of my bank for those that think this is made up, not sure why someone would make this up. I WISH it was made up..