How long to wait for pre purchase

[TheDBYC]

@vxf111

OP lives near the Canadian border it would not be so unusual for a buyer/seller to be in a different country. With the border still being closed, it can make arranging things more complex than usual (typically US/Canada sales are no big deal but that may not be true right now).

My impression from OP’s post was that the family was somewhat local & the father working elsewhere, because she stated that the family’s vet refused to drive an hour. Plus, in this day & age international communication & commerce should be no big deal unless the father is working on an oil rig in a remote part of Kazakhstan or something. And if that were indeed the case, why on earth is he the designated financial point person?

The Canadian/US border issue is such a big deal that it seems implausible that the OP wouldn’t have mentioned it as a factor in her posts. We’re in Virginia, I see horses in Ontario that I like all the time. Currently, I’m not open to looking in Canada – I can’t get there to look at horses & it would be complicated to get the horse here. However, if I were working in Canada & looking at a horse in the US, I wouldn’t forsee a huge issue making arrangements .

[vxf111]

Who knows what the dad is doing, I don’t know why he’s struggling to set this up but it does seem like the horse is in a remote area with limited vets. They managed to go out and try the horse and left a deposit. So I don’t think it’s a Nigerian scam. I don’t know if they’re inept or there is really a paucity of vets or what-- I’m just saying this really doesn’t sound like the Nigerian scam. Nigerian scammers don’t show up to try a horse and pass for horse people.

I recently sold a horse to a legit local horseperson. He left the country for work. It took him over a week after the agreed time period to send a check and then the USPS took weeks to deliver it. He wasn’t a scammer. Just not very focused and couldn’t be bothered to get things done. He was overseas working and figured I’d just wait. He was just… not focused. He could have had his wife in the states deal with it, but it was his money and I guess he just wanted to handle it himself. I don’t know their dynamic. It was annoying but not a scam.

Doesn’t mean the OP has to put up with this stuff (I got very close to calling off my sale in frustration). Just saying it doesn’t seem like the typical “fake check” scam.

[mmeqcenter]

It’s really not that uncommon for an adult in a household to travel extended periods for work. I know someone whose spouse is on the opposite side of the country for 6 weeks at a time, another that is gone 3-4 days out of every week all year. Sure, a lot of travelling was halted this past year, but in the last several weeks it’s picking back up.

My dad used to travel a fair bit when I was a teenager. He was in China for work when my mom decided to go buy another house She obviously called him and stuff but, didn’t wait for him to get to actually see the house or anything. And this was before FaceTime, so the most he got was pictures. People are silly.

I don’t really think this sounds like a scam myself. Just a series of unfortunate circumstances piling on top of each other - limited local vets, vets that won’t travel, and the person trying to set everything up rather inexperienced and not local.

[vxf111]

Yeah, lately I’ve been shocked at things that SHOULD be easy to set up and are impossible. Everyone is backed up and understaffed from COVID. Even just getting the mail there on time is no longer a guarantee. Doesn’t mean the OP has to put up with it, but nothing about this screams “scam” to me. Scammers don’t usually manage to try a horse and W/T/C it in front of other people well enough to pass for riders. Nor are they usually interested in investing that kind of time and effort into passing a fake check.

[Tucker5]

For the last hellacious year, I have been horse shopping and tried to set up PPEs on 2 different horses. In both cases, appointments were booked out 2-3 weeks in advance. And these were not rural or horse scarce areas. So from my anecdotes, this time frame is not terribly out of line. It’s just a matter of whether or not you want to wait, or as others have suggested, charge for trailering to their vet.

[Casey09]

I’ve heard that vets are pretty backed up, so that seems plausible to me.

[Tha_Ridge]

@TheDBYC

Fwiw, my vets will travel an hour. Between the traffic & the state of the backroads in this county, an hour is nothing. Have you checked to see if their vet actually exists? If it were me, I’d inform the dad that I intended to call their vet for a reference & see what kind of reaction was forthcoming.

Yeah, this is good point. I’m in a very horse heavy area with lots of vets and mine still drives an hour to our farm.

[TheDBYC]

@vxf111 and maybe not. Something about it is just enough of a stretch that my reptile brain would be going “Hmmmmm”. I tend to poke around a bit on people I’m doing business with - Googling, quick court record search & sweep of social media. If those checked out ok & I had the month to wait, I probably would. Him not signing the contract is a bit of a red flag to me. Though, that would depend on the terms therein. If it was the final sales contract with no language to reflect the deposit & PPE outcome, that’s different.

The other issue I as seller would be concerned with if I were in the OP’s shoes is the horse injuring itself in the interim. Or the possibility of missing out on another buyer who doesn’t care about a PPE. (Nutso, but they’re out there!)

[vxf111]

OP says she also can’t get a vet out and she’s been calling. So this doesn’t seem like bad faith from the buyer. She’s striking out too!

[ElBe]

I will add to the chorus - the lady i bought my horse from nearly fired me as a buyer. I really was trying, but it took much too long for my vet to show up. This doesn’t help you much, and I hope they can arrange a PPE sooner than later and it works out for all.

[BostonHJ]

Years ago I wanted my horse vetted by a particular vet who only did vettings at her clinic. As the buyer, we paid for the shipping and also to insure the horse who while a mid-fives prices, was not insured by the seller. The agent who wrote the policy said she’d cancel it with a refund if we ended up not buying the horse. Incidentally he vetted fantastically and stayed insured Only creature I’ve ever had that I didn’t file a claim on.

[CHT]

Our vet will perform vet checks for client horses as long as there is full disclosure including that they can disclose/be honest about any previous vet work. It might be worth considering as an option. I have had to use a seller’s vet when vetting in remote areas, but I have the x-rays/reports be sent to my vet for a second opinion just in case. That seems to work well for me.

Good luck and I hope it works out.

(A client recently sold a horse, and even though we have many vets in our area, it was also difficult to get a time booked and they couldn’t used their preferred vet - it just seems like that is one busy profession))

[OverandOnward]

@TheDBYC

There are ways of perpetuating fraud on what are popularly considered virtually fraud-proof instruments like cashier’s checks.

THIS X 1,000.

Some people are so certain that particular forms of payment other than U.S. currency cannot be reversed . Those people are what we call WRONG.

The banking system, in this country and internationally, is far, far more complicated than even people who work in banks know or understand. The scammers know what works for them.

@vxf111

OP says the people came to “try” this horse in post 1. They seemingly have a vet an hour away. So it doesn’t sound like the classic Nigerian scam. These people managed to ride the horse enough to pass for normal horse people and knew to ask for a PPE and knew the name of a vet in the area. And knew to balk at the idea of using a conflicted vet. There may be something odd here but it could also just be a difficult transaction with the parent out of the country and the horse in a remote area.

In all consideration, none of that means it is unlikely to be a scam. Scammers come around “to try” a horse or :to see" a vehicle for sale, in person, all of the time. It makes the scam work better.

Not all scammers are “Nigerians”. Not sure why some posters think that all scams originate in Nigeria. Scammers are abundant and local in every country. Scamming isn’t geographic, genetic or racial in origin. There has never been a tribe or a moment in history that didn’t have its share of scammers. Including the United States - heck, due to population alone, the U.S. may be in the top ranks of countries with scammers.

Maybe this is not a scam, just a lot of difficulties. But the OP does need to be alert for red flags, because scammers are everywhere right now. In my business I run across them once or twice every year. Annoying, but it is part of business today.

[vxf111]

I just think this is waaaaaaayyyy to much trouble to pass a bad deposit check. How much could that possibly be for? A couple hundred bucks? Scammers who pass bad checks are looking to get in and out and not be traced. Coming to try the horse and all these phone calls with the OP is leaving a trail a mile long. This is a whole lot more time, effort, and trouble than your average scammer is willing to invest.

“Nigerian scam” is the shortcut term for the common scam where a person passes a fake check and then asks the recipient to either provide a partial or full refund back (advanced fee scam). That term is used to describe that scene because it originated with scammers in Nigeria but now it’s become a way of describing the scheme itself.

Who even says the deposit is refundable? OP never said that. The “scam” only works if the OP sends money back to the buyer and she’s never once said that was part of the agreed upon deal.

[TheDBYC]

Have you ever worked in retail?

[vxf111]

For about five years but now I’m a federal prosecutor

[TheDBYC]

@vxf111

For about five years but now I’m a federal prosecuto

Gotcha. You deal with the big stuff.

I have seen some absolutely jaw-dropping ridiculous behavior during my tenure as a fine jewelry manager & then LP for a popular, free-standing suburban American department store. And then there was farming. My dark joke is that I thought most reasonably honest until I started farming. Some general patterns:

1. The overwhelming majority were small thefts. You get into little to no trouble if you’re caught as it isn’t cost effective for the store to prosecute. Just sign a document pledging not to return & the store won’t press charges.

2. People didn’t care if they were making themselves easy to identify. In their minds it was low risk, because hey, they were the smartest people in the room. One guy had a thing going where he would buy diamond rings at one location, steal the same ring at another, and return them for cash at a 3rd. The point of sale system requires you scan the customer’s drivers license to process a jewelry return…They had his real name, LKA, etc.

3. There were 2 people on the rare chicken breeds FB page I belong to conning people out of money at least once a week for years. And did it despite previous victims posting & doxxing them incessantly. They knew exactly what they were doing. Kept just enough transactions honest to cast doubt, blamed acts of God for delays – “A tornado hit my coops!” – and avoided doing business with folks close enough to take a field trip to their local sherriff’s office to file a report.

4. Making the target feel guilty, confused, harried, or intimidated is scammer 101. Any time a customer started screaming, I went on high alert. They’re not really upset about the $2.50 in Bill’s Bucks. They’re doing it to fluster the shy teenaged cashier into not noticing they’re about to walk out wearing stolen $90 Nikes on their feet. This is the main reason why the OP’s buyer has my hink-o-meter ringing: shifting the responsibility for the transaction onto the seller so she is to “blame” if it doesn’t work out.

5. A few hundred or a thousand dollars may not seem like enough to be worth the bother until you consider that a lot of folks only make $250-$500 a week. (Assuming they work at all.) So, a few hours of work to scam $250 is a no-brainer for them from a cost benefit analysis perspective. (And a free ride on a horsey, too!) It is so easy that they could be running 5 or 10 such scams at the same time.

Look, I’ll be thrilled if i’m wrong here. It’s just struck me as odd enough that I’d rather say something & have some folks think I’m overreacting than find out next month that the OP got ripped off for hundreds or thousands.

[lenapesadie]

@vxf111

Who even says the deposit is refundable? OP never said that. The “scam” only works if the OP sends money back to the buyer and she’s never once said that was part of the agreed upon deal.

This is a very good point. Without a signed contract, it’s only handshake on if the deposit is or isn’t refundable. In my area, I understand the default is a deposit is refundable unless the signed contract says otherwise (FL).

I know my purpose in posting was to give the OP a heads up type thing should the buyer start making noises about a deposit refund. I read the OP that vets were available but that OP had used these vets previously; conflict of interest. I could have mis read the OP and it’s certainly possible the buyer is legit.

Scam tactics include offering a large deposit. It helps overcome suspicion from the victim I suppose.

ETA a friend of mine has had two scammers attempt to con her on $200 puppy deposits.

[vxf111]

I honestly would be very surprised if this was an advanced pay scam. Anything is possible. But right now we’re in a pandemic. The horse sales market is hot. Equine vets are stretched thin. OP seems to be in a remoteish area. What is more likely? That the buyers are indeed having trouble arranging the logistics (or even just dicking around) or that there is an advanced pay scam? I think the odds are much better that either the sellers ARE being honest and they’re having some trouble setting things up (earliest small animal dermatology appointment I could book was FOUR MONTHS OUT and I called 12 places and was willing to drive up to two hours) or they’re just being lazy/non-diligent/don’t care that much. I can think of a million more likely scenarios than the advanced pay scam here, including that they just aren’t THAT motivated on this horse (maybe they’re having cold feet or trying other ones in the meantime or having some sort of intra-family dispute about paying the money or who KNOWS what).

I did work retail for 5 years before going to law school. So I’m not totally unaware of how the world works. Yes, people will scam each other in all sorts of creative ways and for even small sums of money, but here’s why this does not strike me as an advanced pay scam.

Here’s all the effort you would have to go to to even set this scam up…

1. Find a horse for sale (easy)
2. Call and make arrangements to try it (easy)
3. Make up a backstory (easy)
4. Research the name of an equine vet just far enough away that that person couldn’t come (medium level difficulty unless you’re a horse person)
5. Show up to try the horse, in the process expending fuel, roping in at least 1 adult and the child rider to show up, and spend minimum an hour of time out there. Plus you have to outfit the kid in riding clothes so she can pass (hard)
6. Have the rider actually ride the horse and look sufficiently capable that the seller doesn’t pull you off and tell you to take a hike. You literally have to have the rider try the horse and appear to be an appropriate rider. And per the OP this is a young green horse. So you have to have a capable child fellow scammer who can not only ride a greenie but talk the talk too (hard)
7. All the while during the trial ride, the rider and other adult both have to talk the talk and walk the walk in terms of being legitimate. Meaning you have to know the name of a barn where you board, a vet you use, horse terminology, discuss planned use for the horse-- and none of this can set off alarm bells so it has to be a pretty airtight story that both the adult and child can get perfect during the entire time you’re out there (hard)
8. Talk the seller into giving you time to arrange a vetting with a refundable deposit if you can’t find a vet in time (lots of sellers would say “no thanks” I’m not holding the horse, others would say "I’ll hold it but the deposit is non refundable, and other sellers would just agree to hold the horse for a week without a deposit, thus thwarting the scam). So you have to find that perfect seller who will agree to hold the horse with a refundable deposit. And you probably can’t figure out if the seller will agree until you’ve done steps 1-7 already (hard)
9. You have to actually luck out and NOT have vets willing to go to the seller’s barn to do the PPE when the seller herself calls them (hard)
10. All the while you have to talk the talk and walk the walk while this is happening so the seller doesn’t suspect . Meaning you have to research the names of equine vets and correspond with the seller about your efforts to get them out (hard)
11. Then you have to hope the seller actually cashed your scam check and writes you a good one. A lot of sellers would just hold the check, not deposit it, and return it to the buyer if the sale didn’t happen (hard)

A lot of this is just way too hard and too much trouble for the average scammer. And many of these steps are wholly outside the scammer’s control— for this to work the way you’re suggesting it does SO MUCH is left to chance.

The difference between the above scenario and the situations you outlined is that those scammers had an easy/low investment route to the scam. This has to be the most complicated and high effort advanced pay scam ever if that’s indeed what it is.

Plus in order for this to even make sense, you have to read a bunch of facts into what the OP has told us. The most major fact missing here, which is critical for this to be an advanced pay scam, is that the deposit is even refundable! If the buyers gave her a non-refundable deposit… the scam doesn’t work.

There are also some major differences between retail theft (which after being a manager in a mall store for several years I am not unfamiliar with) and passing bad checks. I am well aware that people will steal all kinds of stuff and act in really stupid ways… but this isn’t pile robbing from the GAP. We’re talking about an orchestrated scheme here using a child as a confederate in which so many dominos have to fall perfectly in place for it to work-- all for a couple hundred bucks (out of which deduct fuel costs and the cost of buying riding clothes for the child so she can pass for a legitimate rider).

When you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras. Based on what the OP has told us and my recent experiences horse shopping, I find it plausible that a non-horsey person who is distracted by other things could indeed be having some difficulty setting up a PPE right now for a horse in a somewhat remote location where that non-horsey person doesn’t have pre-existing relationships with the local vets. I also find it plausible that the buyers might be less than earnest for a variety of non fraud related reasons (cold feet on committing to a horse at all, cold feet on the costs, family issue that makes this suddenly a difficult time, found another horse they prefer and are pursuing that in the meantime, lazy and just don’t care that much to get the deal done, etc.) I think it’s POSSIBLE that this is a scam. Anything’s possible. But does it SCREAM out that it’s an advanced pay scam? Not to me.

[TheDBYC]

You’re making the assumption that horses would be a new endeavor for the people. That is not necessarily true. Would it surprise you to learn that the worst con I’ve ever dealt with on a personal basis was a cattleman who could cowboy? I mean like – get on the rankest, craziest uncut 4 yo at New Holland & make it go so well you’d have bought it for grandma – kind of skill. He bought a lot of horses from unsuspecting owners & flipped them at New Holland Dangerous dude. Out on parole for felony kidnapping & drug convictions. Had a preteen nephew that was actually a real nice kid he brought along. ( Idk why the family enabled him, but that’s not relevant here. ) The nephew had a pony at home for trail riding. To sellers, it looked like nice uncle who was a skilled horseman out helping his nephew find a suitable new horse.

If you’d asked, he would’ve told you, “Oh, I do my own farrier work. Went to Oklahoma Farrier School. Dropped out & came back to help my mother after my father died.” (He actually could do reasonably decent farrier work including hot shoeing.) or “Oh, our farm is out in the boonies. I do most of the doctoring on them. You use Dr. Moore? Oh, yeah, yeah. I used to do ride alongs with him.” “Fluffy doesn’t stay sound in work? Tell you what. I have this nice client, older lady, does Bible study with my mom. She just wants a quiet horse to walk around on once a week.”

This guy worked hard at his hustle. He was out there 10-12 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week. Shill bidding at the livestock auction on his cattle, trolling Craiglist for animals to flip, putting training rides on horses he thought might be more than kill pen prospects, and so on. You had to admire it in a twisted way. If he’d been honest and able to stay clean he probably could’ve been the next Richard Branson.