Kijiji Car Scams to Watch Out For in Canada (2026)

You found a car on Kijiji, the seller messaged back fast, and now something about the conversation feels a little off. That instinct is worth trusting: Kijiji itself names two scam patterns hitting its own platform right now, and this page walks through exactly what they are, a real number from our own listings data on how rarely a private seller even puts a VIN in the post, and how CarSnag gives you an objective number to check a listing against, built by wholesalers, instead of a gut feeling.

What Are Common Kijiji Scams?

The answer, flat: right now it is two patterns, and Kijiji's own current safety pages name both of them directly.

The first is the fake vehicle-history-report link. A buyer or seller asks you to buy a report, or "verify" the vehicle or your identity, through a specific outside website, and Kijiji's own safety hub warns that site "may collect payment information or personal details without providing a legitimate service". The second is the Interac Money Request, which targets sellers: a message arrives that looks exactly like a payment notification, but Kijiji's own page is explicit that "An Interac e-Transfer payment sends money to you. An Interac Money Request asks you to send money to someone else," and accepting it sends money out of your account, not in. Kijiji's own page says it has seen an increase in that exact tactic.

Here is what the second one looks like in practice: you list a Mitsubishi Outlander, someone messages fast claiming they already paid, and what shows up in your notifications reads just like a deposit landing. It is not. It is a request asking you to release funds to them, and once you accept it, the money moves the wrong direction. A real 2026 case shows how close this can get: a Saskatchewan man nearly lost close to $4,000 to a fraudulent cheque on a Kijiji sale before catching it, and told other sellers afterward to cover every base before assuming a payment is real.

The verdict: a payment-shaped message that asks you to do anything before you have the money in hand, wired, e-transferred, or a cheque cleared, is never actually a payment.

How to Tell if Someone Is Scamming You for a Car on Kijiji

The tells are the same whether you are buying or selling: someone who will not give you the VIN when you ask directly, who tries to move the conversation off Kijiji fast, or who pushes for payment or a "hold" fee before you have seen the car in person.

Kijiji does offer an Interac Verified badge, shown when an account has completed identity verification, and it is a genuinely useful signal. But Kijiji's own page is direct about its limits: "it does not guarantee the safety or security of a transaction," and since verification is optional, an unverified account is not treated as suspicious on its own. Use the badge as one input, not as your whole decision.

The same broader pattern shows up off Kijiji too. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre names motor vehicles among the merchandise commonly offered in fraudulent classified ads, and describes the same overpayment shape Kijiji warns about under its own Interac name: a "buyer" sends more than the asking price, then asks you to wire back the difference, before the original payment turns out to be fake. If you are worried about the mirror version of this, someone posing as a private seller who is really running a lot behind the listing, our guide to spotting an unlicensed dealer posing as a private seller covers that pattern specifically.

The verdict: a verified badge helps, a fast overpayment or a pushed "hold" fee is the tell, and neither replaces asking for the VIN yourself.

What Are Kijiji Vehicle Report Scams?

The answer, flat: a buyer or seller directs you to a website that is not CARFAX Canada to pay for, or "verify," a vehicle history report, and that site exists to take your payment details or personal information rather than deliver anything real. Kijiji's own safety hub names this pattern as one of its current scams, and the fix is simple: never click a report link someone sends you in chat. Pull your own report from CARFAX Canada using the VIN, and pay for it yourself, directly, if you decide you need one.

Which raises the obvious next question: how often does a Kijiji seller even give you the VIN to check in the first place? We looked. Restricted to private-seller listings we only ever saw on Kijiji, never cross-posted to another platform, so a VIN in the record can only have come from the Kijiji post itself, at least 9% named a VIN anywhere in the post, structured field or description text, out of just under 1,000 new Kijiji-only private listings a day in the past three months.

That is worth comparing to the same measurement we ran for Facebook Marketplace on our guide to avoiding Facebook Marketplace car scams: there, about 30 a day out of roughly 17,000 new private listings a day named one. Kijiji private sellers volunteer a VIN far more often than Facebook ones do, but on both platforms it is still a small minority, which is exactly why the checklist below starts with asking for it directly rather than waiting for a seller to offer it.

The verdict: a missing VIN in the post is normal on Kijiji, not a red flag by itself, but a seller who will not give you one when you ask, or who wants you to pay a third party to "verify" it, is the actual signal to walk away from.

How to Avoid Car Scammers on Kijiji

Turn the checks above into a sequence and it looks like this: get the VIN before you agree to meet, pull your own CARFAX Canada report rather than clicking any link a buyer or seller sends you, meet somewhere public and well-lit during daylight, bring a second person if you can, inspect and test drive before any money moves, then pay only once the car, the keys, and a signed bill of sale are all in front of you. Kijiji's own meeting guidance points to a coffee shop, a shopping centre, or a community centre, and recommends telling a friend or family member the meeting location and expected return time before you go. None of that is optional for a real deal, and a seller who pushes back on any single step is telling you the deal is not what it looks like.

Nothing about this means Kijiji itself is the problem. The near-miss case above ended the way it should have precisely because the seller stayed suspicious of a payment that arrived too easily. That instinct, checking before you trust a payment or a report is real, is the entire defence, and it works on almost every version of this scam because none of them can survive you following the sequence in order.

The verdict: VIN first, your own report second, a public daylight meeting third, payment last, and none of it changes whether you are buying or selling.

Should You Still Buy a Car on Kijiji?

Yes, with the checklist above running every time. Kijiji remains one of the largest pools of private-seller car listings in Canada, and most of the people posting on it are exactly who they say they are, selling exactly the car described. Kijiji's own terms of use are direct that it will not mediate a dispute or refund a loss between a buyer and a seller, which is exactly why every real protection here happens before you pay, never after.

What CarSnag adds on top of your own checklist: it was built by wholesalers with two decades in the trade, not a generic app guessing at what a good deal looks like. Every match gets a 0 to 5 star Deal Score, priced against real comparable sales in your own region and your car's actual trim, not just its model, so you have an objective number to check a listing against before you ever type a message. CarSnag watches Kijiji, Facebook Marketplace, and AutoTrader in one feed, with nothing to install on your laptop and nothing to leave open, and the first month of Pro is free. For catching a real Kijiji listing the moment it posts, see our guide to Kijiji car alerts; for another verify-before-you-buy check worth running once you have the VIN, our guide to spotting an odometer rollback covers the next thing to look at. Our full buying guides library has the rest of the private-sale checklist, and the CarSnag blog has what we have learned from watching this market every day.

The verdict: Kijiji is safe enough to buy from once you know the two patterns it is fighting right now, and CarSnag exists to give you a real number to check every listing against before you commit.