Beware of Scams

[sdsubzero4]

I am writing this to let everyone aware of scams going around. I was almost a victim of it. Here's the background. I found a house for rent on Craiglist and it just happen to be a few houses down from where I live now. It was just for $1000/month (cheap for a 4br/2.5ba house). So I replied to the email and got this back. (Bear with me for this is a long post, but worth it for prevention)

May the Peace of the Lord be Upon you and,Thanks for your interest in our property.


bdrm.,\\ full bath home features granite counter tops,living roomand dining room or den, tiled floors and all appliances. The kitchenopens to a private backyard. The home is on a no-thru street creating minimal traffic. State of the art recreation center Me and family have been relocated to Abuja Nigeria while my first son which is my lawyer he is in London England but me and my wife will are here in Nigeria for a missionary work with human right awareness in conjuction with UN We will not be coming back until 6 yrs from now. Before we left our home , Iwanted to sell the house before My wife advised that we should rent itout than to sell it. On getting here, I discovered that my missionary work will last for 6years so I decided to look for a responsible and caring person to maintain and take proper care of my House as I do.we search for a God fearing and reputable agent who can take good care of the house,


I'm willing to rent out the house to a tenant who is able to come up with 1months and security deposit rent as a deposit and I will like him/her to assure me that the house will be properly managed.. Concerning the lease, duration is minimum of 1 yrs or as the tenant pleases. I'm giving out the property with such a reasonable amount of $1000 a month and $500 for security deposit Total for you to move in is $1500,utilities included because I am only paying God back for his kindness and mercy over me and my family with what I have, that`s why I asked for such a reasonable amount. It`s also a pride for me to work for him on a missionary work. If you can assure me that you can take proper care of the property and also you can afford 1months rent and deposit to move in, below is the rent application form which I will like you to fill and Send back to me. If you can do all this for me, then I will be willing to rent my house to you....Looking forward to hear from you. Your full information will be used to process all documents that will be coming together with the keys leading to the house and this will come to you through FedEx courier service,And you can move in as soon as possible tomorrow.


Thank you and remain Blessed. So kindly confirm your interest by filling out the rental application form below.

Included with that email was a short questionnaire/application. It did not ask for your SSN or birthday (asked my age) and include the basic info for an application, current employment, emergency contact, reference. So I provided those information.

Today, I got a phone call from a strange number. It turnout to be the "owner" of that property. He asked if I was still interested, I said yes and asked if I could send the deposit via Western Union and he will Fedex the document and keys to me. He will email me the info. I got home and received this email.

Am very glad to speak to you and you are promise me and family that you will take very good care of our home am very excited, You can just go to any local store and make the payment via Western Union and write this information along with you...to the Western Union

Receiver's name : James Conrad
Receiver's Address: 13 Gospel street
City: Victoria City
State: Abuja
Country: Nigeria
Zip code: 23401
Amount Sending $800
Test Question: To Who ?
Test Answer: My Family

As soon as the payment is done get back to me with this details

Sender's Name:
Amount Sent:
Mtcn #10 DIGIT NUMBER:

And pls make sure you have the rest of the money by 5th of march ,You can call me on my # +23480-87-553-720 or dial 011-23480-87-553-720 So I will like you to get back to me as soon as you make the payment Now.

God Bless You&And Your Family.

I decided to check it out more because it feels fishy. I checked the phone numbers and it is a Nigerian phone number (Red Flag, Nigeria=scam). Then I walked over to the house and called the phone number posted. The person on the phone said he's the owner and know nobody by the name of the person emailing me. The owner didn't even know this had happened. I responded directly to the link on Craiglist, too. The one thing that caught my attention is the new listing with the real rental price.

So, the moral of this story, if it sound too good to be true, it most likely is. But do yourself a favor and check it out as much as you can so you don't fall victim to a scam like this. This was close for me, but trust your instinct. Hopefully this will help somebody. Craiglist is useful, but be aware of the scammers.

Just to be safe, I put a fraud alert out to the credit reporting bureaus.

 

[beejay31000]

this same thing happened to me, kinda. a house was too cheap. he said he was a preacher or something. it all sounded wrong so i ignored him.

 

[sdsubzero4]

Update: Checked the property tax info and the person listed on it was not "James Conrad." Its the person I called with the number listed on the property. That James person called me and asked if I sent the money. I told him to send me proof of ownership of the property and further investigation and if its legit, I'll think about sending the money. I spoke to my realtor and she told me it is a scam anytime someone tells you to send money by Western Union to complete a transaction like these. I'll see if he calls again, will update if anything new developed. Thanks for reading.

 

[ears]

you wouldnt beleive the number of those on craigs list and crap like that. when me and the wife were lookin for a place to live when we moved out of lakeside we ran into atleast 15 of those when we called or emailed they said the same crap. we looked into it, and it turns out some of them were actually on the market to be sold. we contacted a realator and they were saying that they had alot of people actually entering into those scam agreements.......

so we sent the emails and the add to the police. and a few of them dissapeared. and we stopped getting responses back to the emails. we emailed a few of the people and told them that we were sending all emails and their adds to the police and again we stopped recaiving the emails.

 

[Ford1288]

Ridiculous. Good thing they are easy to spot...

 

[ears]

yup,,,, and theyre all pretty well the same.

all using religion, and all off doing "gods" work. and all too good to be true deals.

and i guess the moral of the story is, if its too good to be true. it probably is!!!!

 

[wickedstangs]

Did you report it on Craigslist?

 

[ears]

me or danny?

i beleive my wife did, a bit after she notified the police, but it had dissapeared in the mean time,,,, im not 100% she dealt with most of it!

 

[Gibs]

Good you didnt get taken Danny. You are right, Nigeria=scam!!!! End of story.


Gib

 

[sdsubzero4]

The original posting had been removed. But I have all the email communication. I'm going to talk to a DA buddy of mine and see what they can do. If its from outside the country, not much can be done until they come into the country. I asked for proof of owner ship, they sent me what looks like one of those Microsoft workshop certificate. Let me put it up. Its almost comedy if it wasn't so damn ridiculous.

Take a look and have a good laugh. C'mon, at least get the name capitalized and add a few more letters and numbers to the contract number. This almost insult my intelligence.

It list the sale price as 248,000 (missing $ sign), mind you this is only a few houses down from mine and I had looked at that model when I purchased mine. In 2002, that model sold for almost $300,000. That house was built in the same phase as mine and I moved in Dec 2001. So, in 5 months, the house dropped $52,000 in the midst of the hottest rise in real estate prices? I don't think so.

Anyways, he called a couple more times and asked if I have sent the money. I told him, this deal sounds fishy and I don't feel good about it, so I'm no longer interested. He hung up, so I guess this is one fish he didn't hooked. I'm surprise he didn't try to convince me more. LOL!

 

[ears]

man,,, you shoulda let him on. kept contact with him... so the popo could get ahold of him more easily!

 

[sdsubzero4]

man,,, you shoulda let him on. kept contact with him... so the popo could get ahold of him more easily!

Don't need to. I have his email address, phone numbers, and all the email communication between us. The email conversation are the same as those on the phone.

 

[ears]

but he now may attempt to disconnect his phone number... and email account. if thats possible

 

[sdsubzero4]

but he now may attempt to disconnect his phone number... and email account. if thats possible

Still can trace the number. Don't matter if he disconnect or not. There are records. IP addresses, cellular numbers, everything is traceable and all things leave a "fingerprints" of sort. Its just a matter on how much time and effort want to use to find it.

 

[spdpilot]

They won't do anything to these people in another country. I had someone try a scam using one of my checks (fake/washed) $125K worth. Long story, but it was spread through out the country and I tried to get every police agency from every state where it happened involved. In short, it went no where. I had email and phone number, letters from these criminals etc.

Sad, but true.

I won't touch anything on craigs list at ALL.

Ask any law enforcement officier who deals with Cybercrime and they will tell that Craigslist is one big criminal rats nest. Problem is Craigslist is turning a blind eye to the problem and making lots of money. There is more criminals on there and growing.

 

[spdpilot]

but he now may attempt to disconnect his phone number... and email account. if thats possible

They won't change it. They don't have too. No one is going to after them.