Greg's Corner

Why haven’t the classifieds murders of two young men caused any concern?

Within the past week two young men who were both full of promise lost their lives after trying to complete transactions through online classifieds. In the first case, 19-year-old Brian Brown was shot and killed in North Miami Beach while trying to sell a Playstation through craigslist. He was getting ready to leave for college in Northern California where he had earned a football scholarship. According to the Craigslist Killings – Craigslist Safety blog, Brown was the 115th person to be killed through some type of craigslist transaction gone wrong.

In the second case, 21-year-old Zack Finch was shot and killed in Charlotte, North Carolina after trying to buy a cell phone through the classifieds app LetGo. Finch was a star for his university’s baseball team. By this blog’s estimation, Finch is the third person to have been killed while using the LetGo app.

Both of these men had such promise and unfortunately their lives have been cut short due to greedy and heartless killers who just wanted to make a quick buck regardless the cost of lives. In both cases no arrests have yet to have been made. The bigger question is, why haven’t these two murders, that happened within days of each other to two similar men, not been a cause for concern? People carry on using craigslist and LetGo like nothing has happened and continue to disregard the basic tenets of safety. Both murders occurred in broad daylight in public spaces and as we’ve said in the past, these old rules don’t apply anymore as criminals have become bolder in their crimes in the past few years. Virtually all the big names in the industry have had violent crimes attached to their brand including Backpage, LetGo, OfferUp, Facebook Marketplace and of course, craigslist.

Geebo is very serious about the safety of our users. When you meet someone to either buy or sell an item we highly recommend completing the transaction at a police station during the day. Many police stations now have areas set up just for these transactions. Even then we still recommend taking a friend and letting people know where you’re going and why. While these measures may seem extreme, it’s worth it in the end to see not only our users, but the users of all sites and apps, to come home safely.