AVON, Ohio — It’s hard to imagine losing $20,000 to an online scam unless you’re a man from Avon who just recently lived through that. His bad luck, though, doesn’t stop there and yet he wanted to step forward to warn you about the bad truck deal.
“I was involved in an accident,” said Jeff Smolinski, who crashed his car recently.
He wanted to replace it with a red Chevy pick-up truck he found online from a business supposedly located in Alabama.
“My search was a very slow process,” said Smolinski. “I didn’t jump into it.”
While doing some homework on the truck and the business, he even talked to a buddy about the possible purchase.
“[I talked to] a friend of mine who has several cars because I’m new to this process of buying online,” he told us.
Smolinski then went to his bank, wired the $20,000 and —you guessed it— no truck ever showed.
How did he feel at that moment?
“Oh, just emptiness, total emptiness,” he replied.
LOCAL ALABAMA POLICE: 'ON-GOING INVESTIGATION'
News 5 Investigators called local police in Alabama, who said there is an ongoing investigation into Smolinski’s case. They said there had been a local car lot with the same name, but it appears someone created the fake website posing as the business.
“It’s not uncommon for these types of scams to use the name of a legitimate dealership,” said Sue McConnell from the Cleveland Better Business Bureau. Her best advice? If the price is too good to be true, it usually is. If the only way to pay is through wiring money, that’s a red flag. Check reviews like on the BBB’s Scam Tracker site and others.
And remember, people selling cars need a license to do so. “You could go to the dealer license website of the state where the dealer is located and see if there’s even a license that exists,” McConnell explained.
NOT THE FIRST TIME WITH MAJOR PURCHASE PROBLEMS
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time Smolinski and his wife, Annette Rawlings, have been caught up in a major purchase problem. You might recognize them from a recent News 5 Consumer Investigation where they spent 9500 bucks for kitchen cabinets.
RELATED: Customers lose big money to cabinet company; one owner with felony warrants runs from our cameras
However, they never got them from the seller, Chris Cook, who denied his own name when we confronted him at the time but was convicted of a felony in the case.
Smolinski said Cook eventually paid them back. Smolinski told us he now hopes his truck money can be recovered, too. ‘To this day, I still can’t believe it, that this happened,” he said. “I thought I was a sharp guy and this would never happen to me.”
