Complaint Review: Midea Wheelchair Vans - Phoenix AZ

I am writing to warn others about a scam being operated as Midea Wheelchair Vans in Phoenix AZ using both Facebook Marketplace and a scam website mideawheelchairvans.com.

My family initially responded to an ad in Facebook Marketplace offering a used wheelchair van for sale. The price was very good compared to other vans that we had looked at. The van was located out of state, but the listing said that they would ship it. A man identifying himself as James Blake responded, and sent a purchase contract with a price of $15,000 together with a copy of his commercial drivers license which was from the state of Arizona. The email came from info@ with the suffix mideawheelchairvans.com.

“Mr Blake” told us that the reason he could sell wheelchair vans at such good prices was that he was operating his business as a nonprofit, and the vans were donated to his nonprofit company.

“Mr. Blake” asked for a deposit of $5,000 after which he would ship the van to our family member in another state at no charge, with the remaining $10,000 to be paid after delivery. He asked us to pay the deposit to his accountant who he said was Bryan J. Williams. I’m including these names in case they match any other scams being attempted, in all likelihood these two people are either innocent third parties or else they are also victims of the scammer and/or possibly have had their email or other accounts compromised.

Although we were buying from out of state, we made an appointment for in-state relatives to go inspect and test drive the van in Phoenix where “Mr. Blake” said it was located. The Midea Wheelchair Vans business web site mideawheelchairvans.com shows (at the time of this writing) 4215 E Fairmount Ave, Phoenix AZ 85018 as the place of business, and has around a dozen wheelchair vans listed for sale, together with testimonials from former customers. Although it is not a large web site it looks well put together. The web site lists the business phone number as 281-643-6398. The number that “Mr. Blake” gave us for contacting him was 480-954-1129. And I’ll add, the address on James Blake’s commercial drivers license matched the 4215 E. Fairmount Ave address on the business website.

On the day of the inspection we called “Mr. Blake” to confirm the address and location, it rang and then disconnected, and then he called us back a minute later and confirmed the 4215 E. Fairmount Ave address. When we arrived, that address was just a regular house in a normal residential neighborhood. It wasn’t a business, there weren’t any vans or any place to park vans other a two-car driveway and a one-car garage. We called the same contact number as before, it disconnected again but this time he didn’t call back. We called the business number on the web site and left a voice mail message, but got no call back.

Suspicious now, we rang the doorbell just to be sure. There was a ring camera at the front door and a separate video camera over the garage door. A new pickup truck was parked in the driveway. No one answered either the door or the ring camera doorbell. And no one responded to several other calls to both numbers afterward.

Later when we got home we took a closer look at the web site. Doing google image searches revealed that the photos are copied from other web sites, including the images of “happy former customers” used in the testimonials. A whois search of the domain reveals that it was only recently registered, in March 2023. Yet, Midea Wheelchair Vans’ web site says they’ve been in business under that name since 1974. And the registrant is an undisclosed entity in Reykjavik Iceland. A search of the Arizona Corporation Commission web site reveals no business or nonprofit entity registered under Midea or Midea Whelchair Vans or anything similar.

Looking back, there are some other yellow flags as well. The purchase contract was very basic. It listed the governing law as the law of the United States of America - - not specifying any one state. There was no sales tax, just a price of $15,000 of which $5,000 was to be paid by wire/ACH as an initial deposit and the remainder upon delivery. Payment terms were by bank transfer to a Navy Federal Credit Union account belonging to the “accountant Bryan J. Williams”, and the RTN was the actual RTN for Navy Federal.

I hope that this report is helpful in alerting others about this ongoing scam. I’ve tried to include information that will cause this report to appear in google searches of the business name, web site, phone numbers and two names that we were given. And reminder that these two people may not have knowingly been involved in the attempted scam.  But Midea Wheelchair Vans, its web site and its fake Facebook Marketplace listings quite evidently are part of an ongoing scam