SANFORD, North Carolina — A financial setback for Rod Ashby, victim of Hurricane Helene. A scam cost him nearly $40,000 while he still desperately searches for his wife, Kim.

Our sister station in Raleigh, ABC11, was first informed you’re talking about Rod and Kim Ashby, a couple from Sanford who were in their mountain home in western North Carolina when Helene struck. The Ashbys’ home in Elk Park, near Banner Elk, was swept away by floodwaters with them inside.

The couple held each other until they hit a tree and separated. Rod got to safety; he hasn’t seen Kim since.

A few days after Hélène, Rod and his crews searched for Kim, but more than a month after Hélène’s arrival, the search continues.

“We just want closure. I mean, no one wants to leave their loved ones on the side of a mountain,” said Rod’s daughter, Ansley Ashby.

To reach this conclusion, Rod wants to continue looking for Kim. He lost his truck in Hélène when thick mud and water destroyed it.

He currently lives with his family in Pittsboro and wants to purchase a new truck to continue searching for Kim in the mountains.

“All he wants to do is get back out there, be able to bring resources to the people doing search and rescue and help as much as he can, but it’s really difficult to navigate the roads without a four-wheel drive vehicle, and we just don’t have another one, so he was just trying to get a truck so he could go,” Ansley added.

In his search for a new truck, Rod found a 2020 Ford F-350 for $38,900 on a website that claimed to be a Colorado auto company that only sold seized cars.

It was a deal Ansley said she was skeptical about. Yet she spoke to the seller on the phone, received emails regarding the transaction, obtained a contract, and even obtained a bill of sale.

“Everything checked out for me. The email matched, the phone numbers matched, everything looked legit,” she said.

Rod wired the money and got confirmation that the truck would be shipped in a few days.

“He was supposed to have the truck by the 30th and he might be back in the mountains from time to time, that’s when things started to go wrong,” Ansley added.

Horribly wrong, because they noticed the truck was still for sale on the website and quickly realized the deal was a scam. In reality, the website was just a copy of a real car company’s site.

The Ashbys contacted the banks involved, filed a fraud report and attempted to stop the wire transfer, but were told it could take up to 90 days for a response, which Ansley said was too long to wait.

“Imagine if it was your wife, your son, someone like you who wanted to be there, you wanted to look for them, you wanted to find them like everyone else. So I think it was like another punch in the stomach for ‘OK, well, now it’s gone bad and now it’s set me back even further,'” Ansley said.

Rod filed a police report and said officers were investigating.

ABC11 Troubleshooting Tool Diane Wilson spoke to the owner of the legitimate Colorado car dealership the scammer was impersonating. He said that over the past few months he had received numerous calls daily from people who were thinking of buying a car from him, but instead they were the scammer. He said the scammer underpriced vehicles to make them attractive to people so they would let their guard down. He also said he was cooperating with law enforcement.

Wilson also tried to reach the scammer, but the website no longer works, an email to the company came back as undeliverable, and his phone number rang busy.

Wilson also contacted the two banks involved in the wire transfer. One of them responded with the following statement:

“We place great importance on the privacy and security of our members’ financial information. Therefore, we may only disclose information about account-specific matters and procedures to the member.”

The best advice when buying a car online is to never be too careful. It is very easy for a scammer to duplicate a sales listing and website to make them appear legitimate.