It certainly pays to be cautious. A mate just responded to a Gumtree advertisement for a 73 Z900 Jaffa rolling bike in Queensland. The seller's story was the bike had belonged to her uncle and he removed the engine and exhausts many years previously. The story went on that the uncle may still have the engine and exhausts, which he may well be happy to sell as well. The bike was $3000 which made it very cheap (but not unbelievable like a few years ago when scammers would advertise a $200,000 car for $10,000). My mate agreed to buy the bike and as he had a son living fairly close asked for an address, as well as bank details so he could transfer a deposit. He agreed to deposit $200, with his son paying the balance in cash the next day when he picked up the bike. He was supplied with bank details and an address (a real one). An hour or so later he got a SMS saying someone else had offered to put down a $1000 deposit. Haggling over the deposit rang alarm bells so he searched on google for the images of the bike and found it advertised in the US. He also checked the mobile number and found it was also overseas, so he reported the scam to Gumtree. The story was believable, the woman he spoke to was an Aussie (not a Nigerian Prince) and the only alarm bell was pushing for a bigger deposit. I can only imagine how many deposits they take per scam but I suspect it would run to many thousands. Sorry for the long story but sadly these days scammers are getting very clever and it really does pay to have someone close by who can front in person (as well as checking any pictures in the advertisement to see where else they've appeared).