Most Facebook Marketplace car scams aren't clever. They're the same handful of stories, told to enough people that a few always pay: a deposit to hold a car that doesn't exist, a seller who's abroad and will ship it to you, a "protected payment" that protects nobody. Once you know the stories, you stop being the audience for them.
This page is the catalogue: what each scam looks like, how it gets your money, and the one move that beats it. If you're looking at a particular listing right now and want to check that car, how to check a Facebook Marketplace car advert is the step-by-step for that.
What are the most common Facebook Marketplace car scams?
The common ones all want your money before you've seen the car, the seller and the paperwork in the same place. Purchase scams, where you pay for something that never turns up, are 71% of all authorised push payment fraud cases in the UK according to UK Finance, and a car is just a big-ticket version of the same thing.
| The scam | What you're told | What actually beats it |
|---|---|---|
| The deposit scam | "Loads of interest, a deposit holds it till the weekend" | Never pay anything before you've seen the car |
| The shipping story | "I'm working away, it's with a transport company, they'll deliver it" | Only buy a car you can see where it lives |
| Fake escrow or buyer protection | "Pay into the protected account and it's released when you're happy" | Pay the seller, in person, at the car, and nobody else |
| The ghost car | A real car's photos, a great price, a seller who goes quiet after you pay | A reverse image search, and a viewing before money |
| The too-cheap price | "Priced to sell, need it gone this week" | Find out why it's cheap before you get excited |
| The car you can see, but shouldn't buy | A real car, a real seller, and a log book that doesn't quite fit | The VIN, the V5C and a records check |
How does the Facebook car deposit scam work?
The seller tells you there's lots of interest and asks for a deposit to hold the car until you can get there. You pay, and then either the car never existed, or the seller stops replying, or there's a reason the viewing can't happen and a second payment that would sort it.
It works because it sounds reasonable, and because the pressure is built in: if you don't pay, someone else will. That's exactly the point. A genuine private seller with lots of interest doesn't need your money to hold a car, they need you to turn up, and the next person who does will buy it.
The move that beats it: pay nothing until you're standing next to the car with the seller and the log book. A seller who won't hold it for you without money isn't somebody you were going to be able to buy from safely anyway.
What is the car shipping scam?
The seller can't meet you because they're working abroad, posted away, offshore or moving house, but the car's already with a transport or storage company that will deliver it. You pay the seller, or the "transport company", and the car's delivered to your door with a few days to change your mind.
None of it's real. There's no transport company, or it's a website set up for the purpose, and there's no car on its way. The story exists to explain why you can't see the car before you pay, which is the one thing every honest sale lets you do.
The move that beats it: only buy a car you can see where it lives. If the seller can't be there, the sale can't happen yet, however good the price.
What is the advert not telling you?
Paste the advert text and the registration. We read it against the car's DVSA MOT history and our known-faults database, then tell you what the seller left out.
Check an advert now (free) →How do fake escrow and buyer-protection scams work?
You're told your money will be held safely by a third party, often borrowing a real company's name and logo, and released to the seller only once you've received the car and you're happy. Then an email or a link arrives from the "protection service" with bank details to pay into.
It's fake. On a private car sale, Facebook Marketplace doesn't hold your money for you. It's a noticeboard that puts you in touch with the seller, and the money goes from you to whoever you send it to. So an email that says a marketplace, a courier or a payment service is holding your money for a car is from the scammer, however official it looks.
The move that beats it: don't pay any third party, ever. Pay the person whose name is on the log book, by bank transfer, at the car, once you're happy. If a seller insists on a protection service you've never used, the protection service is the scam.
How can you tell if a Marketplace car advert is fake?
The ghost car is a real car in someone else's photos. The scammer lifts the pictures from an old advert or a dealer's listing, adds a price well under the others and a believable story, and waits for deposits. The car exists. It just isn't theirs, and it isn't for sale.
The checks that catch it are free and take a couple of minutes:
- Reverse image search the sharpest photo. If the same pictures turn up on an old advert, a dealer's site or a listing somewhere else in the country, you've found where they came from. How to find a car's previous adverts shows how.
- Ask for the registration, then check it matches the car in the photos. The free DVLA vehicle enquiry returns the make, colour and year. A ghost car's plate often belongs to a different car, or to the real car hundreds of miles away.
- Ask for a short video, or a photo of the car with today's newspaper or a note with your name. Someone who has the car can do it in two minutes. Someone using stolen photos can't.
- Look at the profile. A brand-new account, a location nowhere near the car, or the same seller listing several cars at once are all worth a second look.
Why is the car so cheap?
Sometimes there's a good reason. Usually there's a reason you haven't found yet, and on Marketplace "too cheap" is the bait that gets a buyer to skip the checks.
There are only a few honest explanations. The seller needs money quickly, the car has a fault they know about, or they've priced it badly. A genuinely cheap car with a fault normally has the fault somewhere in its records, and the model's known faults tell you where to look: the Ford Fiesta and Vauxhall Corsa pages list them with what they cost. A cheap car with no reason anywhere, a seller in a hurry and a request for a deposit is a scam until it proves otherwise.
What about scams where you can actually see the car?
These are the ones that get careful buyers, because the car's real and so is the seller. The problem is the paperwork:
- The seller isn't the keeper. "Selling for a friend" is the classic, and the selling for a friend scam shows how to test it.
- The seller's a trader posing as private, selling a car the trade wouldn't retail. A dealer posing as a private seller has the tells.
- The car's stolen or on cloned plates. The VIN on the car has to match the one on the log book, character for character, and the log book itself has checks of its own. How to check if a car is stolen covers both.
- The viewing's somewhere the car doesn't live. A car park or a lay-by means you can't go back. The car should be at the address on the V5C.
And if the seller sends you a link to a vehicle history check to reassure you, don't use it. Run your own, on a site you've chosen, because a check you've been handed is only as honest as the person who handed it to you.
What should you do if you've been scammed on Facebook Marketplace?
Ring your bank straight away, on the number on the back of your card, and tell them it's a scam payment. The sooner they know, the better your chance of stopping or recovering the money. Then report it to the police's fraud reporting service, and report the listing and the profile to Facebook so it comes down.
Keep everything: screenshots of the advert, the messages, the payment details and the profile. Scammers delete listings and accounts quickly, and the evidence is what your bank and the police will ask for.
Can a scan spot a scam advert for you?
It can spot a lot of what gives a scam away, and it's worth being exact about the limit. The official records we read, the DVSA MOT history and DVLA's details, are the same ones anyone can look up free. What no plate lookup has ever seen is the advert, and on Marketplace the advert is where the scam lives.
The free scan reads the advert text, pasted or screenshotted, against the car's records, and it scores the patterns scams rely on: urgency language like "must sell" or "moving abroad", a price well under what the car's worth, a vague location, an advert with nothing specific about this car in it. It also checks the plate it reads from your photos against DVLA, and drops it if DVLA's make doesn't match the car in the pictures, which is often how a lifted plate shows itself. A blatant scam advert gets the walk-away verdict whatever the records say.
| The scam | What helps |
|---|---|
| Urgency, too-cheap pricing, a vague seller | The free scan reads and scores the advert's wording and price |
| A plate that belongs to a different car | The free scan checks the plate against DVLA's make |
| Stolen photos | A reverse image search, by hand |
| Finance, theft or a write-off on a real car | The Provenance Check |
| A deposit, a courier or an escrow email | Nobody's database. The rule: no money before you've seen the car |
The honest limit: a ghost-car advert built from a real car's photos and a real car's plate can pass a records check, because the records are real. What a scan can do is notice the story around them. What stops the scam is you refusing to pay before you've seen the car, the seller and the log book in one place.
So what should you actually do? Before you message the seller, copy the advert into the free scan with the registration, or upload screenshots if there isn't one. It's free, needs no card and reads the advert the way a scammer hopes you won't. If the car's real and you're getting close to buying, the free report upgrades on the same link with nothing re-run, adding the finance, theft and write-off checks in a Provenance Check.
