Sailors looking for a second-hand boat can currently stumble across fake sales adverts on the internet that are extremely attractive in terms of price but are obviously fake. Especially for beginners or bargain hunters, such bait offers, which may be backed by fraudsters, are a risk that should not be underestimated.
The approach is always similar: popular boat types and sizes are offered on online second-hand boat exchanges for apparently incredibly favourable prices. Recently, this has become increasingly noticeable on the German platform www.boot24.com. For example, there are currently offers online for a six-year-old Sun Odyssey 379 for 38,000 euros, or an equally old Beneteau 38 for just 29,000 euros, or a Lagoon 440 catamaran for 36,000 euros. After a short search, about 10 more such adverts could be found. For industry experts and experienced sailors, these are clearly dubious offers, but for beginners they are not always immediately recognisable.
If interested parties get in touch, the fraudsters often try to collect reservation fees or even down payments, often just to enable a supposed viewing. Of course, this usually never materialises. Over the years, YACHT has also come across worse cases in which prospective buyers travelled to viewings and were then robbed on the spot because they had a lot of cash with them.
Practically every online sales exchange is regularly affected by such fake adverts, but normally such offers are filtered out by the operators. YACHT wanted to know why this does not seem to be the case at boot24.com and contacted the operator.
"We constantly check the incoming adverts before they go online," explains Sales Manager Barbera Makowka. "However, due to the large number of offers, it can happen that a less experienced employee overlooks such bait adverts and they go online." When asked about the examples mentioned, she confirmed that they appeared to be dubious adverts. She assured that boot24.com would now be checked again and the fake adverts found would be taken offline immediately.
Martin Dotti from the very similar-sounding, established competitor www.boat24.com also knows that such decoy adverts are a problem for the industry. "The similarity in name has meant that we have been flooded with customer enquiries for weeks. Time and again, insecure customers/prospective customers end up at our support centre. Every week we receive reports and enquiries about fraudulent adverts that are not placed with us at all, but with "Doppel-O". However, as the customers don't seem to get an answer there and the reported fraudulent adverts are not deleted, they turn to us.
This causes a lot of extra work for their customer service and brings the entire online industry into disrepute unnecessarily. It is well known in the industry that all incoming offers have to be checked before being placed online.
For potential second-hand boat buyers, this means being careful: You should always compare other offers from other sellers of the type of boat in question to get a feel for whether the price seems unusually cheap. If a conversation with the seller results in any financial advance payments being demanded for a viewing or "reservation", or if the viewing location of the boat seems unusual, it is better to keep your hands off the offer.
