The golden rules

• Never pay any advance, token or 'delivery fee' to someone you have not met with the vehicle present
• See the vehicle in person, in daylight, at a public place — bring a mechanic for anything expensive
• Verify documents against the chassis and engine numbers on the metal, not just on paper
• For imports, pull the auction sheet report before negotiating — thirty seconds against a six-figure mistake
• Payment screenshots prove nothing; money is real when your bank says it is
• Deals priced too well to be true are priced that way to hurry you

Scams we see

• Advance-fee: 'car is in another city, send token money and we deliver' — the car does not exist
• Fake overpayment: buyer 'accidentally' sends a forged receipt for extra and asks for the difference back
• Document swap: papers belong to a different (cleaner) vehicle than the one in front of you
• Impersonation: someone claiming to be AutoOnes staff offering paid 'verification' or ranking — we never call to sell ranking, and all our prices are fixed on-site

What we do on our side

Automated screening before ads go live, human review on suspicious patterns, payment processing that keeps card data away from everyone including us, and a support desk where fraud reports jump the queue. Confirmed fraudsters are banned and, where the law is involved, reported.

If you got hit

Report the listing or user to us immediately so we can protect the next person, and file with your local police cybercrime wing (NR3C in Pakistan) — bank-transfer fraud recovery moves fastest in the first hours.