The dealership website looked real because a machine copied it

The FTC published a consumer alert on 1 September about a scam with a particularly bleak ending. Someone finds the car they've been hunting for months, pays up front, drives to the dealership to collect it, and the staff have no record of the order, the payment or the vehicle. The site they bought from was a copy.

What has changed is how cheap the copy became. Scammers now use AI to lift a real dealership's website wholesale: the logo, the stock listings, the photography, even the customer testimonials underneath. They write out a believable buying process and a generous returns policy, because both make a stranger relax. The bait is usually something scarce, a rare muscle car or a hard-to-find classic, the sort of listing that makes you hurry before someone else takes it.

The FTC's advice is unglamorous and it works. Search the dealer's name together with "scam", "review" or "complaint" before you send a penny. Ask to see the car and the premises in person, and walk away from a seller who won't allow that. If it really is too far to visit, offer to pay for a mobile inspection service, because a seller refusing an independent set of eyes has told you what you need to know. Treat any demand for payment by wire transfer as the end of the conversation. Reports go to ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

One quieter risk sits under all of it. If something has been rewriting your searches, the dealership you find first may not be the one you meant to find. Tendvane's browser-hijacked repair wizard puts your search engine, homepage and new-tab page back to whatever you actually chose, so the results you're reading are the ones you asked for.