At some point or another when buying stuff on line you are bound to hit a snag or have a transaction turn ugly...

Then there's this:
YouTube - Broken Crank.3g2

That is a broken crankshaft.. now get this he performed a compression test and even took it for a test drive before purchasing the car and it made no odd noises aside from the exhaust rubbing on the transfer case (AWD)

Was told the car only had a bad axle seal.

After fixing the axle seal he pulled the flywheel inspection plate and when he had a friend push the clutch he saw the flywheel move!

So in fact you can shear the crank into two pieces and it can still transmit power to the ground.