FAIRFIELD-SUISUN, CALIFORNIA Mellanie Matos and her husband, Anderson Macena, were out $6,000 after buying a van that needed thousands of dollars of transmission work. She was going to use it to start a mobile dog grooming business. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel/TNS) How to avoid falling victim to online car sales scams Larry Hoover has bought a lot of cars – sight unseen – off the eBay auction website over the years and never had a major problem. “It never crossed my mind that they’d try to defraud me,” he said. And then the Phoenix-area resident made a deal with a South Florida used car dealership that advertised a 2002 Cadillac El Dorado as being in perfect mechanical condition. The dealer persuaded Hoover to wire the $6,500 purchase price directly to him so he could avoid seller fees charged by eBay and PayPal.