Friday, April 16, 1999
Used-car bargain hunters get taken for a ride
Woman swindles would-be buyers out of deposits
BY TANYA BRICKING
The Cincinnati Enquirer
BMW 325e '87. Loaded, sunrf, looks good, runs excellent. $775. 369-9896.
It started with the lure of a car at a bargain price.
But a classified ad that has left several Cincinnati families short hundreds of dollars has ended up as a case for the Cincinnati Police Division's fraud unit.
Ebrahim Rashid saw the classified ad in The Cincinnati Enquirer last week and thought the deal was too good to pass up.
So he called the person who placed the ad, a woman who called herself Kathy Staples. She said she'd be in her nurse's uniform and would show him the BMW in the parking lot of Good Samaritan Hospital in University Heights for a test drive.
Mr. Rashid, 28, a systems engineer from Price Hill, liked the dark gray car and thought it was in good condition. The woman told him she was selling it because a relative had died, and she wanted to get rid of it.
He was ready to put down a deposit. The woman wouldn't take a check, he said, because she said he might change his mind. And for insurance reasons, she said, she couldn't sell the car on the spot.
So Mr. Rashid left, $100 poorer, but with a receipt she signed and an agreement that they would meet again to complete the deal.
Police say the woman used the same line on other people who wanted to buy the car. She met them separately at Deacon ess Hospital in University Heights and even broke down in tears with a sad story about why she had to sell the car, said Spc. Ralph Unger, a fraud investigator.
One person paid her $350 cash. Another couple is out $700.
The woman missed her appointments to meet the buyers again. Now her phone number is disconnected. At the time she placed the ad, newspaper adver tising representatives confirmed the phone number, but police think she gave a false name and address.
Detectives also want to know whether there are more victims. Anyone with information can call 352-3545.
The whole thing has left Mr. Rashid feeling vulnerable and angry.
“It's not about the $100,” he said. “It's just that I want to see her in jail.”
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