Courtesy of Florence Klein, Founder, SilverPlanet.com

If you like buying things off of Craigslist, you need to be aware of this scam. Better Business Bureaus across the country are receiving reports about sellers on Craigslist claiming to have BBB accreditation and that they participate in the “BBB Purchase Protection Program.” This supposed program would protect buyers if they didn’t receive the items they paid for.

But the BBB says there is no such thing as a buyer’s protection program and warns that any online seller claiming participation in this program is scamming customers.

The sellers have used more than a dozen names, including Emma Lawley, Hollie West, Claudia Curtis, Mallory Downs, Stephanie Bradford, Elizabeth Stanford, Kristine Gilmore, and Linda Koller. They have created fake BBB reliability reports for each phony identity and stolen images from the BBB’s Web site, including the logo, to mimic that layout on their own Web sites, overstockshop.biz and overstocksales.org, which the phony names are linked to. After contacting the Web hosting company, the BBB was able to have both sites suspended.

But that doesn’t mean the scammers won’t try to set up shop somewhere else.

“Consumers look for BBB-accredited businesses and the BBB seal when evaluating the trustworthiness of businesses, because the logo tells them that the business lives up to BBB’s rigorous standards,” said Steve Cox, BBB spokesperson. “Unfortunately, some businesses and scammers will lie to customers and falsely claim that they are accredited by BBB.”

To verify a business’s reliability report, read it directly from the BBB’s site. If you believe a business is fraudulently claiming accreditation, contact your local BBB and file a complaint.

Click here to watch an ABC15 (Arizona) television news report on the scam, one of many that have aired across the country.