Pat Dollard | Young Americans

This makes me sick. I’m asking all you Dollard Readers to keep one eye out for crap like this because it seems to be more widespread than the Mainstream Media is reporting, and it needs to be stopped, along with the people who perpetuate these disgusting scams…

SOUTHFIELD — The Better Business Bureau of Detroit is investigating an Internet scam offering to sell a car owned by U.S. Army Spc. Byron Fouty, whose remains were found in Iraq last week.

In the online listing, posted at www.craigslist.com, the seller claims to be Mick Fouty, father of the fallen soldier, and offers to sell a BMW for $2,800, significantly discounted from its Kelley Blue Book value of $80,000. It includes photos of the vehicle.

“We find scams like this really despicable and we want to do everything we can to avoid people falling for them,” said Tim Burns, spokesman for the Better Business Bureau of Detroit, which is located in Southfield.

Local family members were alerted to the scam by a friend of the surviving family of Spc. Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Mass, whose remains were found with Fouty’s last week in an Iraqi village.

“There’s some pretty sick people out there,” said Gordon Dibler Jr., Fouty’s former stepfather who lives in Oxford Township. “Byron never owned a car.”

The bureau launched an investigation into a dubious listing this week after receiving more than a dozen calls by people who had seen the listing, said Burns. Many callers became suspicious when they noticed the sale price, suspecting it was too good to be true.

It was.

The bureau is attempting to track the source and has contacted craigslist.com for assistance. It has also notified the Michigan Attorney General’s Office and the Federal Trade Commission.

“We’re taking this very seriously,” Burns said.

The listing included specific details on Fouty and claimed “this car will be my gift, my gift in the memory of my son….”

The scam is aimed at pulling “at people’s heart strings and make them feel like there’s more legitimacy to the offer,” Burns said.

The listing, which was posted and removed over the last few days, regularly changed e-mail addresses and domain names for fake online order pages, presumably to avoid being traced, said Burns.

It also included the actual address of a local trucking company in Detroit –which the bureau concluded wasn’t involved in the scam — and included a fake order page that had a false seal of approval from the Better Business Bureau.

From the sheer call volume, Burns suspects some people may have actually wired money to the seller.

“If they didn’t fall for it they wouldn’t be putting in this much effort,” he said.

(DetNews)

Nods to Steve from NC.