You never know who’s going to approach you in the parking lot of your favorite mall or big-box store. Sometimes it’s an old friend or family member you haven’t seen for a while. It might be an earnest young missionary, or someone canvassing for a political candidate. And, of course, often it’s someone looking for money. Those range from inoffensive to downright criminal; from Boy Scouts doing a fundraiser to a panhandler to a mugger.
Somewhere along that spectrum, just in the gray zone at the border of legality, you’ll find the so-called “White Van Scam”: people selling a product from their vehicle, traditionally a white van, with a kinda-sorta plausible explanation for why their pricing is so good. That scam’s been around for decades in one form or another, and now it has taken a digital turn. Here’s what it looks like, and how not to fall for it.
The Classic “White Van Scam”
In the classic version of the white van scam, dating back to the 80s, strangers would pull up to you in the parking lot — usually in a rented commercial van, hence the name — and ask if you’re interested in getting a seriously great deal on some top-quality speakers. The pitch usually was that they worked for an electronics retailer that had found itself with excess inventory through some kind of mistake, and that they had to blow out the product at a downright sacrificial price.
The product will have a name that’s carefully chosen to sound like a legitimately prestigious brand. It might mimic the look and packaging of Harman Kardon speakers, for example, but be branded as “Karmon Hardan” (that’s a hypothetical example, but you can find a real-world list at the link in the previous paragraph). It sounds like a great deal, especially as the salesman reels off huge “suggested retail prices” and then tells you what he’s asking today. Usually, it’s just pennies on the dollar.
This scam’s been going on for centuries, in one form or another. In London after the French Revolution, doubtless it would have been a “refugee nobleman selling the family jewels” for a pittance. The jewelry would quickly turn out to be glass and brass, rather than gold and gemstones, and it’s the same with the “high-end speakers” sold from the van. They may look right and feel solid (some buyers have found cement or bricks inside, to add weight), but they’re of very poor quality and may not work at all. Tip: If you want to see what these look like in the real world, you can just search “white van scam” on YouTube to find examples.
The White Van Scam is Actually (Mostly) Legal
The surprising thing about the white van scam, as it’s usually played, is that it’s more or less legal. The company behind the scam usually has a legal existence, and a business license. As long as the fast talker who sold you those “Kirsch” speakers let your eyes and ears be fooled, and didn’t outright tell you they were the Klipsch speakers they accidentally-on-purpose resemble, they’re in the clear.
There are a couple of extra layers of deniability involved, which make it even harder to get any kind of restitution. The salespeople are usually independent contractors, rather than outright employees, so the company can simply disclaim any responsibility for any “misstatements” that may have taken place. The van (or other vehicle) is also leased, so it can’t easily be traced back to the parent company.
The end result is usually that your money’s gone and you have no recourse, since the only person with any legal responsibility for what you were told is the contractor. They can be hard to track down, and even if you do successfully bring them to small-claims court you have the problems that a) it’s your word against theirs; and b) even if you win they may not be able to pay you or may simply skip out.
Why The White Van Scam is Enjoying an Online Comeback
One thing the classic white van scam counts on is that most people aren’t hardcore audio enthusiasts. They don’t know the brand they’re being offered, but it sounds impressive, and so does the discount. Back in the 80s you just had to take the seller’s word for all of that, but now we have phones and Google. So it’s harder to make this scam work, right? Well…no.
The great thing about a classic scam (from the scammer’s perspective, of course) is that it’s evergreen, and you can always find a way to give it a contemporary twist. So, instead of the internet killing the white van scam forever, scammers now leverage it to their advantage. They’re real companies, you’ll recall, in the narrow sense that they’re registered somewhere and have a license to do business. So of course, they do what real companies do:
- Put up a website
- Set up an official Facebook page
- Use social media accounts for marketing
- Buy advertising through Google (to show up in search results) or search engine companies (to show up in your timeline)
The really enterprising ones will take this a step further, finding ways to lend a veneer of authenticity and quality to their low-quality products. For example, they might:
- Set up a faux review site for audio-video equipment, placing their products in the company of legitimate brands, and rating them as equal or superior to the real product.
- Set up fake blogs or bogus social media accounts, where a self-styled “expert” talks about and endorses products from the company’s multiple brands.
- Have sock-puppet social media accounts posting rapturously about how much they love their new [faux brand] speakers.
- Position themselves as a legitimate retailer of overstock products. There are a lot of those out there now, some of them well-known, but a lot of them obscure small-scale operators.
So, when the “marks” (victims) whip out their phones and do a quick search on the product’s brand name or model number, the top handful of results will appear to confirm the salesperson’s story.
But Wait, There’s More!
While the classic version of the scam sells speakers, there’s no rule to say they won’t offer something else. Versions of the scam may offer anything from 4K televisions to AV projectors to mattresses or trampolines. If you want it, and the normal price is high, a scammer somewhere will probably try to sell it.
Whatever the product, it will probably look good at a casual glance. The same manufacturers that flood dollar stores, Amazon, and Temu with low-cost products will cheerfully do customized packaging for these shady operators as well. This may extend to conveniently printing an inflated “MSRP” (selling price) right on the box.
The seller might not always claim to represent a retailer. Current versions of the scam leveraging legitimate resale sites like Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, or Offerup, may pose as private sellers. Like the traditional scam’s retailer-in-distress scenario, they’ll have a plausible story (“we’re downsizing,” “it didn’t fit our space,” “the landlord wouldn’t let us wall/ceiling mount it”). Some may even be previous victims of the scam, now trying to recoup their money by passing the pain along to someone else.
Avoiding the Online White Van Scam
Most of us would probably feel at least a little uneasy about buying something out of a random stranger’s vehicle, and for good reason. Legitimate retailers generally don’t operate from a vehicle, at least the ones that deal in high-end products. Instead, they take a cold, sober look at their liquidation options, and pick one that’s suited to their situation. For a genuine retailer of prestige products, discounting can undercut their entire brand identity, so they tend to avoid it.
So the fundamental key to avoiding the “white van scam” — either the online or traditional version — is an attitude of wary skepticism. Instead of being satisfied with a quick Google search, or checking the link or QR code on the seller’s business card (on a really bad day, that might turn out to be a phishing attack), you should probably dig a little deeper.
For example, you might:
- Add the word “scam” to your Google search when you look for the brand name or model name of the product they’re trying to sell you. If you see lots of complaints online, just walk away.
- Take a closer look at any social media account that claims to own and love the product. Does it look like a real person’s account, with lots of friends, interaction, and silliness? Or is it sparse and impersonal, with a list of friends and followers that are similarly vapid accounts? That’s probably a fake.
- Go to a genuinely reputable site for AV equipment, like AVForums or Stereophile, and enter the name of the product into their search box. If you get zero results, or lots that boil down to “don’t buy this piece of crap,” you’ll know that the seller’s inflated claims (and correspondingly inflated “list price”) are bogus.
- Look up the website’s registration information. If the seller claims that the company is a longstanding player in the industry, but the registration data shows that the site is just a few months old, that’s a red flag. It’s also a red flag if that supposed review site or audiophile blog turns out to share the same ownership.
You can also, of course, turn to Spokeo.
Uncovering a White Van Scam with Spokeo
Whether the seller gave you their name, phone number, or email address, or if you found it on their website or by googling around, it pays to run it through a reverse people search tool like Spokeo. So what can you uncover with this kind of Spokeo search? Well, there are several possibilities:
- Spokeo cross-references data from billions of sources, so the results of your initial search can sometimes lead you back to a real person or business, even if it’s a Google Voice number or a separate email from their usual one. If the info looks above board, that’s fine, but it points to potential problems (perhaps your supposed high-end retailer’s information resolves to an apartment occupied by a 24-year-old college student in a cheap part of town), you’ll know to walk away.
- Spokeo’s search results for individuals include, among other things, their public social media presence. If you find that the same person has a bunch of accounts under different names that all tout the same products, that’s a big red flag.
- Searching the contact information given in the listing for a too-good-to-be-true deal on Marketplace or Craigslist can also return enough information to judge whether the account (and presumably, the offer) is legitimate. You might find the real person behind a pseudonymous account, for example, complete with their address and legitimate contact information. Not everyone who hides their name does so for malicious reasons, but it’s still a red flag.
- Searching down the registration information for a “white van”-affiliated website may let you track it (or the company behind it) down to its actual owner or owners, individually.
Ideally, this added digging will help you avoid falling for the scam. On the other hand, if you’ve already fallen for the scam and have lost your money, it might yield information that you could pass along to law enforcement in an effort to retrieve your money (or at the very least, make it harder for the scammers to continue). However tempted you may be, it’s usually best not to confront the scammer in person. That kind of confrontation can be unpredictable and even dangerous.
There may be an occasional exception to this rule, where the owner of the offending company or website is concerned. Those people distance themselves from the actual transactions for a reason, and may be reluctant to have their involvement known. A quiet approach (preferably with the assistance of a lawyer), and the threat of public exposure, may sometimes be enough to get you your money back. Just make sure you don’t cross the line into making any public statements that might be defamatory, which is why you might want to have your lawyer involved.
Keep Your Eyes Open, and Your Guard Up
Scammers in general appeal to a few well-known psychological quirks in the human makeup, and greed — specifically the desire to get something for nothing, or very little — is one of those. It’s what’s behind most investment scams, for example, or the “you’re a winner!” emails you get that claim to come from Publishers Clearing House.
You absolutely should take the precautions we’ve outlined here before giving some random stranger your money. But even without taking those steps, you can probably rule out most of these scams just by remembering the adage that “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”