The secondary car market in Russia continues to expand rapidly. By the end of September this year, more than five million used vehicles had been sold, marking a 27% rise from the previous year. Strong demand and new channels, including parallel imports and gray-market shipments, have drawn the attention of many scammers hoping to profit from car transactions.
Prepayment and counterfeit
The most common scam involves requesting a down payment on a car. Kirill Chernov, a car-valuation expert and creator of the AvtoRevizorro YouTube channel, notes that buyers can be asked to pay in full or to place a 5-10% deposit when a car is reportedly brought in for order and delivered under various pretexts.
“These scammers deploy sophisticated social engineering, using scripts and protocols designed to mislead. It takes real diligence to protect oneself, especially when the process is largely remote and the parallel import chain must be understood,” Chernov warns in a discussion with a socialbites.ca correspondent.
He adds that scammers increasingly pose as well-known firms, dealers, and popular bloggers. Buyers are shown a legally valid contract and seemingly credible contact details. If an advance has already been paid, scammers may push for further payments through loan offers, installment plans, or extra discounts. In many cases, the customer ends up with no car after these deals.
“Loans, discounts, and installments are not applicable for cars secured through parallel imports,” Chernov emphasizes. This is a strong fraud signal, as these vehicles are often located outside Russia. “They lack Russian documents, so banks will not issue a loan for them,” the expert explains.
Broken and altered
According to Chernov, most cars from Europe arrive with low mileage, while vehicles from the United States often come from insurance company auctions and may not be suitable for use after sustaining damage. Dealers sometimes conceal these issues.
Price gaps in Europe can be dramatic: a car with low mileage can cost twice as much as a similar vehicle with higher mileage, even when technical condition and appearance are similar. It is not hard to misrepresent a car with 200,000 km as one with 50,000 km. Online VIN checks can reveal whether a U.S. vehicle has sustained damage, though the process is more complex for German imports.
A notorious example involved a Mercedes-Benz E-Class with 600,000 km on the odometer that had its reading reduced to 100,000 km; the car had previously operated as a taxi in Stockholm. Another case featured a Volkswagen Touran whose mileage was altered twice: Denmark sold it with 350,000 km, it then went to Belarus at 200,000 km, and Moscow dealers increased the number again to 100,000 km. The vehicle later turned out to have belonged to the Danish police fleet and contained a concealed hole in the roof for a search light.
People can usually verify histories of cars from the United States, South Korea, France, and Scandinavia through VIN-based online searches. For German imports, the verification is more challenging.
Hybrid Japanese cars are popular in the region, yet in Europe they are often taxis. If a hybrid from Europe appears, it is likely to have seen taxi duty. German systems can also retain data, making full deletion difficult, according to Chernov.
With fake documents
Most cars come from the United States, Germany, South Korea, Japan, and the UAE. Dmitry Rogov, founder of RogovMobil, which specializes in turnkey car deliveries from abroad, explains that dealers sometimes route vehicles through Belarus and Kyrgyzstan to minimize customs charges under Eurasian Union rules. Along the route, cars pass through multiple hands and customs checks, which can increase transaction opacity, he notes.
“Incorrect customs declarations are common. Many declarations use a simplified format and rely on electronic databases that are not always checked. Later, it may be discovered that a vehicle was imported with an understated invoice, with the owner facing tax and recycling fees in the future,” Rogov observes. In conversations with socialbites.ca, he notes that invoice copies are easy to forge, and buyers often neglect to double-check documents.
He cautions that even purchases from official dealers carry a risk of incorrect documents and invoices. It is often impossible to determine at which stage wrong data entered the papers as the vehicle makes its way to Russia.
Rogov recounts a case where a buyer sought to restore an incorrect customs declaration after purchasing from a dealer. The dealer stopped returning calls, leaving the owner unsure which customs office to contact to fix the document and register the vehicle.
With replacement VIN numbers
Using VINs to market a vehicle is a frequent tactic in the secondary market, according to automobile expert Yaroslav Boyko. Dealers locate a vehicle with a matching description via specialized services and post its VIN in ads.
“Be wary of discounted prices offered by official dealers in classifieds. These discounts often apply only if the buyer uses credit and can be as much as 15%,” he explains. He recalls a gray-market car listed with a replacement VIN, which had actually been rebuilt after an accident.
Gray dealers may also try to pass off another car as the one a buyer wants. Before the inspection, they may urge applicants to apply for a loan, claiming the car is on bank property, though there is no such vehicle. Boyko adds that many older Japanese cars in the secondary market exist as duplicates with altered numbers and fake documentation that mirror a legally registered car.