Crime & Safety

$14,000 Online Car Deal Hit the Skids for Tinley Park Man

A 55-year-old man got police involved after a car deal through eBay went bad and the $13,700 he wired to a Florida dealership went unreturned.

A Tinley Park man might have fallen victim to an electronic swindle after paying nearly $14,000 for a Mercedes to a dealership using the auction website eBay.

The 55-year-old man had signed "legal documents" for a 2001 beige Mercedes-Benz on June 29, Tinley Park police said. A few days later, on July 2, the Tinley Park resident wired $13,700 to an Orlando, FL, based dealership. That's when the trouble started.

By July 25, the man still had not received his car and he decided to visit the Tinely Park Police Department, police said. An officer called the dealership and was told that the car was sold to somebody else. The dealer on the other end of the line told police the money would be paid back to the Tinley Park man.

The cop recommended that the man also send a registered letter to the dealer requesting the money and also to contact the Illinois Attorney's General office, since it was a civil matter, if he did not get the refund.

About a week later, the Tinley Park man returned to the department when the refund had not arrived, police said. The officer placed a second call to the same man he spoke with before and learned that the refund supposedly had been sent to an address in Tennessee. The Tinley Park man came back to theon Aug. 10, still without the requested refund. The cop could only get the dealership's voicemail on the third try.

Police found out six days later that the Tinley Park man had reached out to the dealership through electronic communication and had been, for the second time, assured that the refund would be wired to him. It wasn't known at the time the report was taken on Aug. 16 whether the money had been returned.

Police had collected paperwork associated with the initial sale. No arrests were reported.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to arrestreports@patch.com.