December 2006

The World Wide Web is a wonderful thing, very empowering, virtually ubiquitous in even moderately developed countries and, sadly, the most extensive venue for fraud and scams the planet has ever known.

The worldwide acceptance of www.ourSL.com as an essential tool to market Mercedes-Benz SLs has resulted in one rather unsavory by-product of success, the occasional scam. This usually involves the time worn scam of a broker's offer to overpay for a car and the request for a wire transfer reimbursement for the overpayment. This is rampant in online listings and ourSL.com is not immune. To combat this and educate our sellers of the risks of this type of sales inquiry, our new paid listing software for 2007 will have a very strong scam warning to alert those that list cars on the site.

These scammers, however, work both sides of the fence, listing cars that are priced far below current market value hoping to swindle an eager buyer out of a deposit to “hold” the generally too cheap to be true SL. Due to the fact that we screen every new listing placed on the ourSL.com, we are able to easily foil this kind of deception. However, some of the larger online listing sites simply don't have the manpower or the gumption to do this. This brings me to a little story about a classic “too good to be true” SL story. There are many such stories out there but this is one I was personally involved in.

I was gently berated by a fellow earlier this month regarding a 1958 300SL roadster we had on the site. He thought the price must have been a typo and was rattling off various 300SLs he was tracking online for roughly a third of what we were asking. I said, “Whoa, slow down. Show me these listings.”

One of the comparables he noted was a 1957 300SL listing on CollectorCarTraderOnline offered for $95k and located in Jakarta, ID. ID as in Indonesia , not Idaho ! The images featured a lovely light blue metallic 300SL sitting in a very un-Indonesian like garage. The listing contained a phone number and email contact information. I suggested the caller be very cautious with this car before getting off the phone.

To see just what was going on, I sent an email off to the seller requesting the chassis number and a copy of the Indonesian certificate of ownership. The next morning I received an email from Mr. Angga L. Nahor containing an image of a perfectly valid looking Indonesian certificate of ownership. Checking the chassis number in our 300SL Roadster registry revealed the last known location of the car to be USA and little else in the way of information. Further, he attached his phone number and, it turned out, Mr. Nahor was a photographer. The link to his website was at the bottom of the email! Clicking through the link I found a rudimentary site with Mr. Nahor's portfolio. As I'm looking through his wedding portfolio, the phone rings and it is none other than Mr. Nahor!

After a lengthy conversation, he noted in very broken English that the SL had been his Fathers and, yes, the asking price was very low but prices in Indonesia are very weak for these old Mercedes' and so on. To really test this guy, I requested he take the pristine Indonesian Title he'd sent an image of and place it on the trunk lid of the lovely blue 300SL adjacent to the insignia/star and take a picture. This would connect this guy and the title to the car. Once I'd received that image then we would talk again.

Well, that was a week ago and, as you probably surmised, I have not received that image. And low and behold, as I check Collector Car Trader Online.com today, I see this same car as a “Featured Ad,” although due to the weak Indonesian market for a gorgeous original 300SL Roadster, the price has been reduced to…$60,000! And the location has now changed from Jakarta to Pejaten!

We hear via the Gullwing Group's newsletter that a very similar Indonesian scam involving a Gullwing relieved a Belgium SL enthusiast of a $15,000 deposit AND a further $3300 for shipping charges to a shipper that did not exist! Ouch!

So, as the saying goes; if that cheap Indonesian SL looks too good to be true, it most likely is!