Local car dealership continues to deal with Facebook scam artist

LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI.) – The calls kept coming in at Allen Jones Used Cars in Steens.

Last week, WCBI reported that a scam artist has fooled hundreds of people into thinking they were buying cars at highly discounted prices.

Some of those people traveled from other states to take up the “too good to be true” deals, thinking they were going home with a new set of wheels.

Employees at the dealership said it’s been like waking up in a nightmare.

The conman collected down payments, advertised cars that aren’t even on the lot, and left tons of people with unanswered questions.

“People are angry. They’re angry they got duped, they’re angry they’ve traveled three hours, three or fours hours just to get here for nothing,” said office manager Shannon Jones-Bowen.

On Thursday, a scammer started a fake page selling cars at unbelievable prices. That scammer also sent people to Allen Jones Used Cars in Lowndes County.

Office Manager Shannon Bowen said the con artist has tricked hundreds of people on a FaceBook page.

“They’re having an active dialogue with the people that are inquiring about these cars on the marketplace,” said Bowen.

There is a message Bowen believed customers have fallen for.

She said the scammer offered a good price for a vehicle, reeled clients in with a sob story, and then asked for payment over eBay.

“We don’t do business like that at all. We’ll never ask somebody to us money on sight or unseen car,” said owner Allen Jones.

Jones said this could be a potential threat to his business.

“It’s definitely a great distraction during your business because you can’t even take care of the regular customers, because of the phone calls, and people coming up looking and I understand they’re upset. They’re doing it because of greed and money. Instead of getting a legitimate job or have a legitimate business they try to tell folks they’ve given them a good deal,” said Jones.

But all they can do it right now is report the page on Facebook and wait.

“We’ve already had a few negative Google reviews saying that our dealership is a scam that we don’t exist and things like that. Although I’ve tried to reply to those critics there’s no way to get to all of them. It feels helpless to know there’s absolutely nothing we can do to about this,” said Bowen.

Allen Jones Used Cars said an investigator from the Mississippi Public Service Commission has an on-going case to track down the scammer and have the fake page shut down soon.