Engine trouble
Scammers use garage address to con buyers
A SMALL garage in Fife unwittingly found itself at the heart of a UK-wide car scam after cyber criminals used its address to con victims.
Bonnygate Garage have dealt with about 100 people turning up at their Cupar base looking for vehicles they bought online. Boss Harry Cairney said they have received five calls a day since March from car buyers caught up in the fraud. Criminals set up a fake website that month called Auto Promotions to “sell” cars over the internet at bargain prices.
Auto Promotions was a real firm which sold cars from the same Cupar address from 1984 until it stopped trading in 2008. Crooks used the name to trick people into paying for secondhand cars they’d never receive. Retired car dealer Graeme Sheach, who ran the original Auto Promotions and has no involvement with the scam website, said he’s been hit with court orders from victims demanding thousands of pounds.
His son Gordon said he’d even hired an “ethical hacker” in a failed bid to sabotage the fraudulent website.
The BBC found large numbers of people searching for cars online had made bank transfers to the phoney firm. Victims only realised they’d been conned when vehicles didn’t show up.
Some desperate people turned up at Bonnygate Garage to see if they could find the car they’d purchased.
Harry, who has run the garage for 10 years, described the situation as “crazy”. He said: “This is a small, little garage where we fix and repair cars on a daily basis. We don’t sell cars from this location at all.”
Asked how many buyers had visited the garage, Harry said: “I’ve lost count. Around 100 people have turned up.”
He told of one couple who had driven to his garage for seven hours with a five-monthold baby looking for their car.
Harry posted a “scam alert” on his garage’s Facebook page in May to warn the public.
In 2018, Gordon and his son set up a firm on Companies House to keep the name Auto Promotions within the family but it sat “dormant” since 2019.
Graeme, 71, told the BBC: “The way I see it, this has taken away my good name, my good reputation, which I’m furious about.”
Dubai-based Gordon contacted Action Fraud to report his name and company name were being used by the scam Auto Promotions site.
Police were later able to shut down the website but the culprits behind it have never been caught.
It’s a little garage, we don’t sell cars from this location HARRY CAIRNEY IS STUNNED BY FRAUD