About
Why this archive exists
Fraudulent equipment and vehicle sales work because the buyer has no way to check the seller in the moment that matters. This is an attempt to fix that one domain at a time.
Buying a used excavator, a fifth wheel, or a restored pickup almost always happens at a distance. The unit is three states away, the seller wants a wire, and the only thing the buyer can inspect beforehand is a website.
That asymmetry is the entire business model of equipment sale fraud. A convincing site can be assembled in an afternoon from a cloned dealer template and inventory photographs lifted from real auction listings. The operators register a fresh domain, advertise units well under market, collect wires for weeks, and abandon the domain before the first buyer finishes filing a police report. Then they do it again under a new name.
The losses are not small. A single wire in these cases routinely runs from fifteen to sixty thousand dollars, and it is frequently money a small contractor, a farmer, or a retiring couple had set aside for exactly one purchase. Wires to a domestic account are rarely recovered once the funds are withdrawn.
Fraud Reported exists to make that abandonment strategy expensive. When a domain is documented in a public, indexed case file with the payment method, the beneficiary name, the reused photographs, and the dates, the site loses its most valuable asset: the appearance of having no history. A buyer who searches the name finds the file. Sometimes that is enough.
How we work
Evidence over accusation
A case file states what can be documented: the registration date of the domain, the wire beneficiary name, the origin of the listing photographs, the amount lost, and the dates. Where a claim comes from a single buyer and cannot be independently corroborated, it is labelled as such.
Published in the open
Each file shows its risk level, its evidence, and its verification notes so a reader can weigh the material themselves. Nothing sits behind a login, a paywall, or a fee, because a warning nobody can find protects nobody.
Built to be found
Files are structured so that a buyer searching a domain or a company name in the minutes before wiring money lands on the documentation. That search is often the last moment the loss can be prevented.
Correctable by design
Mistakes are possible and we would rather fix them fast than defend them. Verified business owners can submit documentation, and files that turn out to be wrong are marked cleared or removed with a public note.
What we are not
- We are not a law enforcement agency and we cannot compel anyone to do anything. Report wire fraud to the FBI IC3 at ic3.gov and to your bank first.
- We are not a recovery service. We never charge victims and never offer to retrieve funds for a fee. Anyone who does is running a follow-up scam.
- We are not a credit bureau or a rating agency. A domain missing from this archive has not been cleared, it has simply not been reported.
Contribute
This archive is only as useful as the reports it receives. If you were targeted, or you are a dealer whose photographs and identity are being used by a fraudulent site, file a report or write to reports@fraudreported.com.