I think these scams work often enough to make it worthwhile for the crooks, I know of a naive 18 yr old, sweet girl, just did not yet know enough of the world who lost $800 for a TOL sewing machin, she sent payment through Western Union and of course never saw the machine & no way to trace the seller, I can't remember if it was eBay or CL. But she did learn a valuable lesson, hopefully she'll never fall for a scam again.

There is a guy that has ads on the CL in Bend,Or. He sells tractors, a very fancy ad but the price is to good to be true.

Years ago when our son was house hunting for a rental. He came across an ad for a 3 bedroom house.
I don't recall the exact rent payment but it was cheap. We went by the house because the address was listed in the ad.
And on the door was a notice that said.......

I am the OWNER of this house, I live here. The ad on Craigslist is a SCAM.

They send counterfeit cashiers checks, I have one sitting in my drawer at work, was trying to sell an older vintage singer, it was made out for more than I asked, would I please send overage back to them by western union, of course before cashing I called the bank it was on, one clerk told me "its a cashiers check, of course its good", informed the young lady that no they are not always good, asked to talk to an officer, and after checking of course it was a forgery, It was delivered by UPS by a dark skinned man, in a Fed Ex envelope, with coke's account number out of CA, I let FBI know and I let Coke know, FBI said keep the check and they would get back to me, well that was 4 years ago. I led the man on by days, just for meaness, before I finally told him off. We have had several customers that this has happened to. Just last week a bank customer wanted to cash a money order and he mentioned that someone in someother state wanted to purchase his coffee table, I asked him whats so special about this coffee table, he said it was just a plain ole coffee table, I told the customer that I would not cash the money order, but that he could deposit it and wait a week before issuing funds and that it was probably a scam, sure enough it was. customer said, "but he was so nice over the phone". Also, Guard you checking accounts, check them often, people are stealing checks out of mail boxes, making their own with your account number, wiping your account out over the weekend at places such as walmart, because they use Check system which will allow a check to be cashed as long as there are funds in the account. Be Alert there is UGLINESS out there.

When you buy from ebay, as the buyer you are protected, as long as you pay through Paypal. As the seller, fuhgeddaboutit!! The scammers on ebay are mostly the buyers, who know how to work the system and get things for free.

I think you are likely to find stolen goods on either, although if I was a crook I would pick CL, quick and no paper trail. meet somewhere, get cash, hand over stolen goods. Hope it is not the person you stole from!! This has happened!!

http://consumerist.com/2012/05/man-s...-from-him.html

When I saw that "stolen embroidery machine" thing on here, I thought (before reading all of it) that the ladies in my quilting group had sent it in! I got such a bargain on a used emb. machine a couple weeks ago, they accused me of stealing it! I got a Janome memory craft 8000 (about 10 yrs old, but works great) along with a box of 56 spools of Janome emb. thread, 32 spools reg thread, and 16 "cards", each with dozens of emb. designs -- for at total of $40!! This couple was selling things from "Granny's" estate. My friends say I stole it. Mine was not a scam, but hope people are forewarned about the real scam.

Hmmm. Are you sure? I have a 9000 and my machine is a newer model than yours and it's 14 years old.... Good price, but I would say the 8000 has to be at least 15-17 years old?