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In a way, I'm sort of afraid for the site's sake to mention the name. It appears that other forums have been hacked or experienced down time because they've asked about this seller/company.

I won't mention the name, just in case. If you're interested, it's a long story but I think that is how they suck you in. Found a craigslist ad for an 2006 BW Montauk. It was in the $15k mark. Not screaming low but a good price, at least around here and it looked like it was in good condition. Typical description, 2nd owner, work done, etc. I reached out to the seller and it took some time for them to respond. When they did, it appeared as if they were having issues with craigslist going to spam and asked for a direct email. I gave them a secondary account I use for such things. Again, slow to respond and they acted like messages weren't getting through. Their responses were a little off kilter as if they were a wife who is going through a divorce or a widow selling off her husbands things, so it sort of made sense. I guess this is a ploy to make you anxious or delay the process to gather others into the group.

After some time they noted that the boat was stored in a warehouse where it could be viewed. Again, slow to respond so I did a google search of the place and couldn't find it. I posted on an area forum asking whether or not anyone knew of this storage location and had another member contact me saying he was looking for the same thing. We compared notes and found that we were both sent the same emails at about the same time so our suspicion was up and started working together. They finally came back with the name of the place which was an auto consignment type. Seemed odd but they had a long story that accompanied it and it seemed reasonable. My very skeptic wife read it and the other emails and even thought I should check it out. Checked out the website and it was very well done. Locations, services, how to sell using them, forms to fill out, terms & conditions, their rates, history of the company, Live Chat, the whole works. Used the live chat to ask some general questions.

Did internet searches of the site and found quite a few forums, very similar to this one, where someone like me asked about the company and service and they had a lot of positive responses. Found news articles about the company start up 4 years prior and about the founders of the company. Found several guys who had just posted a question about the site on thehulltruth forum. One was concerning a BW 210 sale. It started feeling like a very real thing so I broke off communication with 'my competition'.

I started the website's process for negotiation and purchase. It was kind of a slicker version of ebay. The next day, received an email from the seller saying that another person put in an offer as well but that I responded first so they were going with me. Felt honorable. I've done this before when selling through craigslist for a hot item. I thought I had beat out my 'competition'. Received notification from the site and through email, etc. I was planning on going to the warehouse to view it but was struggling to locate it exactly. Google maps was pointing towards office buildings and not something that looked like a storage place. I contacted the company and they said that the address would come with the invoice and that what I had was their office location. Along with it was to come the boat hull ID # so I waited. Received an invoice and it all appeared legit. Had instructions for payment, which they held, until I physically reviewed the boat. The address they provided was located in a neighboring state which is not what I was initially told and it didn't look like a warehouse or storage facility so my suspicions greatly returned.

I said something about viewing the boat before I'd do anything and they then began contradicting themselves. All alarms were in full blaze. Their HQ is supposedly based in Miami so I asked how the hurricane was affecting their business and they didn't know anything about it. Using the Hull ID, I called around several agencies. They said it was a proper number but they didn't have record of the boat. I sent the payment instructions to a friend at my bank and he reviewed. Said it all looked very legit, tracked down the company, etc. I went back to all of the forums where I found positive reviews. Again, they were common sites like this one with great feedback from veteran posters but something seemed fishy. The name of the company is long and they would type it all out every time they used it. No abbreviations, no shortening of the name, nothing. Unusual. They were all like this. I forwarded these links onto my friend at the bank including the 'news articles' about the company and it's founders. He called and said his bank wouldn't let him view them because they were all coming from out of the country. Went back to links, shortened the URL and sure enough, other faux websites from other countries started popping up. It was then obvious. They had copied over or hacked the forum websites to take a thread started by a member asking about the company and changed all of the responses to positive feedback. I relayed this to my 'competition'. I tried to go back to thehulltruth forum members to warn them but the website is down still. Relayed it to my bank and they investigated deeply. Their review department traced it to an address that pointed to a shoddy apartment in New York. Knowing I was onto something, I went back to the Live Chat. I tried to act like I was still interested but having troubles with the transfer and needed to confirm some information. I noted the apartment address in New York and the associated name and was immediately disconnected and cut off from the site. I then went to the FTC to try and find information and have wound up reporting information to them.