We're just looking for some advice on a bit of an odd situation. My uncle recently purchased a new car, the purchase was done via a reputable car auction site and all was fine there. We're based in the East of England, I picked up the car from Cardiff, Wales. This was early January. We have the new logbook so it's registered to my uncle.
A few days ago my uncle came across a listing on Facebook marketplace for the same car. It's not just the same make/model/colour etc, it's literally his car. The car has the same licence plate in the photos and has a lot of aftermarket work including a body wrap that matches his car exactly. The work to the car was done before we purchased it.
The car is listed for sale in England only a couple counties away from us, for about half the price that my uncle paid for it. I'm guessing this is some kind of deposit scam. The Facebook account advertising the car was set up this year, has no profile picture and this car is the only listing.
What's very odd is we don't actually know where the photos of the car that are being used came from, it's not the photos from the auction. All we can assume is they must have been from a previous time that the car was sold.
We've ruled out that this is cloned plates, because the chances of an identical car with the exact same body and interior work, including random decals, stickers etc, just seems a bit too far fetched.
I've reported the listing to Facebook as a scam. Facebook didn't have the option to provide additional details or I'd have explained that we actually own the car that the account is attempting to sell, but the listing still appears to be live.
I guess our main question is if there's any way that this could come back on my uncle? For example if somebody was scammed into paying the money for the car, is there any way they could attempt to claim they own the car and cause us problems? I'm guessing there's no way our address can be found from the registration plate? Also, is there any other steps worth taking other than reporting the listing to Facebook?
The timing also just feels so peculiar with the listing going up only weeks after we purchased the car from its previous private owner. It would make sense if the photos from the auction had been used because anyone could have got those, but these are completely different photos at what appears to be a completely different location. Is this likely just a coincidence or is something else possibly at play here? We don't know how long the previous owner owned the car for but it was at the very least several months from what he told us.