Craigslist is often a first stop on the Internet for those looking to get a deal. One student says this will be her last visit to the Web site after being scammed out of nearly $5,000.

Ahsley Loftus has had a string of bad luck lately. “Someone hit me, they ran a red light. I got money back from that. They ended up totaling out my car.”

So Ashley took that money and decided to put it toward another car. "I'm like, I'll have that money. I'll save everything else and I'll buy a nice car!”

She found her new car on craigslist. After exchanging nearly 40 messages with David Balliet, she thought she had bought the car. "I talked to the guy back and forth and evidently it was a fraud.”

Ashley eventually wired money through a third party she thought was e-Bay. The scammer assured her that "in this way we are both protected." Ashley and her family thought the deal was legit. "I think it was $4,750 altogether." But she never got her car.

One of the reasons Ashley thought this man was reliable was because when she sent him money through Western Union, he actually sent it back and told her to send it through a different party, which she did.

“I got to save a lot of money now,” says Ashley. “I still want to buy a new car so I need to do a lot of saving. No shopping for a while."

In 2007, Omaha Police took only two reports of similar crimes, but in just the last month, three similar crimes have occurred.

Omaha city attorney Marty Conboy knows victims of the scam very well. "I was one of them.” He never sent the money and confronted his scammer. "He said he had over 3,000 people respond to this ad.”

Conboy says the scammer exchanged e-mails with him knowing that the scammer had enough electronic protection that he could never be found.

Conboy says two things that should always raise red flags for Internet shopping are when the item you want to purchase isn't someplace you can see it and when they want the money sent through a third party.