The scam artist then instructs the victim to send a deposit or full payment via wire transfer to initiate the "shipping" process.
It comes as one man 'John' - who is not using his real name - shared his story of being scammed out of £10,000.
In a similar case a German woman Pissamai Strehle (50) who started an online relationship with a man who said he lived in Newtownabbey, in Co Antrim - was conned out of £130,000.
Craigslist is a great resource for selling things, finding apartments, locating services and meeting people.
Most of the time transactions go smoothly and both seller and buyer are satisfied with the Craigslist experience.
In particular, and the topic of this blog, is the persistent attempts by scammers to defraud or steal personal and sensitive information from registered Craigslist account holders by sending phishing SMS text messages (sometimes referred to as SMSishing).
A favourite social engineering technique amongst scammers, phishing is an effective way of prompting users to divulge their personal information.
The site receives billions of page views every month and is in the top one hundred most visited websites in the world – the twelfth most visited website in the United States.
When it was founded it provided the Internet with a much needed platform for advertising, selling and exchanging goods, and its emphasis on functionality over design made it the success story it is today. However, for many of the same reasons Craigslist is popular with the wider public, it is also very popular with scammers and fraudsters (any regular user of Craigslist will attest to this).
Most people have used Craigslist — the community website that helps people browse real estate, personal ads, concert tickets, furniture, jobs, and almost every other item you could think of — at least once.
It can be a great way to get in touch with people in your area that have needs that correspond with your own.