Verified answer

100% scam.

There is no buyer.

There is only a scammer trying to steal your money.

The next email will say something like "I gave the driver one check which included your payment and his, please send the driver your cash and you will be paid back when the driver arrives with the check". Or the email be from another of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses pretending to be the "driver" saying "send me gas money" or "pay me my driving fee and I will pay you back when I get there".

The scammer will want payment via western Union or moneygram.

Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever.

Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of being the perfect buyer, great jobs, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram.

You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information.

Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash.

Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer.

If you google "cragislist buyer scam", "fake car driver buyer email scam", "fake car buyer fraud" or something similar you will find hundreds of posts from victims and near victims of this type of scam.

how much money will you be expecting? If it's a large lump sum then you should probably avoid the deal since people never pay cash upfront for car that cost 5g to 10g+. It's common sense to do some background check before you initiate these kind of transactions with anyone. Based on your description, the guy seems a bit shady. Ask for some verification.

How are you supposed to sign the title over to him if he sends a driver over with money? Something sounds really dodgy

If he's in your area code why can't HE come over, see the car, pay you and have you sign the Bill of Sale and transfer the title to him in front of a witness??

Meet at the bank. Transfer the cash and title inside the bank. Deposit the cash into your account. Walk out fearing nothing.

Your gut is trying to tell you something. Try a different method. Like the local newspaper.