Star, Idaho, January 27th – Unfortunately, Internet scams happen almost every hour of every day on classifieds websites in the United States. We’ve all heard of someone who was conned out of their hard-earned money because the deal was just too good to pass up.

​

Well, IdahoGunTrader.net, a classifieds website for firearm enthusiasts in Idaho, has taken a vigilant hands-on approach to help protect its members from becoming victims. For Todd Disraeli, the founder of Idaho Gun Trader, it took just one scam to put his team's battle plan into place.

​

“We had an Idaho Gun Trader member make the mistake of paying in advance for some ammo the scammer promised to ship once he received payment,” said Todd. Once the scammer received the payment via a mobile payment app, he deleted his account and vanished. What really upset Todd was that this member was a senior citizen on a fixed income, who needed the ammo to help put meat in the freezer.

​

From that point forward, Todd’s team decided to monitor IdahoGunTrader.net 18+ hours a day to delete scam listings within minutes after they were posted, not days or weeks later like other classifieds websites. This daily vigilance quickly discouraged the scammers and within a week, scam listings were down 90%.

​

Once we recognized a possible scam, we would do a Google text search and find expired listings from other classifieds sites, in other states, to confirm the listings were fake,” said Todd. Another tactic Idaho Gun Trader used was contacting scammers via text messaging to confirm a meeting location using fast-food locations that don’t exist in Idaho. Once a scammer would agree to meet, the team simply deleted the listing.

​

What’s Todd’s advice for not getting scammed? Don’t send a penny to anyone, no matter what they say about an emergency or needing a deposit. Also, always meet face-to-face in a public place, and when the deal seems too good to be true, it is.

​

And one last warning, if you're a seller, and a buyer wants to send you a Cashiers Check for over the amount of your listing, it's 100% a scam.

​

About: IdahoGunTrader.net is a free classifieds service for buying/selling/trading firearms and related items in Idaho. They currently have over 6,000 members and average over 160,000 page views a month.

​

###