I would like to get my 80 year old mother out of this cold weather for good. So, for the past 2 weeks I have been searching for rental properties in Florida, through Zillow and Trulia. I found a beautiful house 3 bedroom/2 bath with a screened pool on a canal. A really beautiful place.
I sent a note through email to the listed contact. This is the email response I received:
*From: fulfilled family
Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2015 6:37 PM
To: XXXXXXXXXXXX@yahoo.com
Hello,
We are pleased with your interest in our house, our lovely home is still available for lease and we want responsible adults/family that are neat and also believe that they have what it takes to take care of our house.The reason why our house is up for lease is because I got transferred from my place of work to Michigan. I will be away with my family for at least four to five years because of the love I have for them, I have decided not to sell our house and also assuring them that we only have few years to spend here and we are wanting to lease it out to person/family who is willing to assure us of taking absolute care of our home and pay their rent on time.
We will be very pleased if we can find the right tenant to rent our home, a person who is a clean freak and does not tolerate anything that has to do with dirt. Our home is a 3 bedrooms and 2 baths home it’s very specious and neat and it located at (XXXXXXXXX, XXXXXX, FL XXXXX) pets are allowed cause we also have a dog,the rent is $XXXX and the refundable deposit is $XXXX the rental fee is inclusive with utilities and my home available as at this moment. We would like to know about you and your family and where you contacting from.
Remain blessed
Mr. & Mrs Possiblescammer*
I did some googling and came up with an owner’s name for the property, and it was not the same name as the person who emailed me. I then responded to the possible scammer asking for his full name, address and phone number and a copy of a deed showing that he was the owner of the property, since there are a lot of scams on the internet. He then replied with this:
*From: fulfilled family
Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2015 8:01 PM
To: XXXXXXXXXX@yahoo.com
This is no scam whatsoever and as a Catholic family it is against our doctrine to take advantage of people.
Name: Possible Scammer
Address: XXXXXXX, XXXXXXX, MI XXXXX
Phone: (XXX) XXX-XXXX
And i will not send you my deed cause you not yet my tenant and i will like us to do all we have to do on trust and we will both be happy at the end.*
I want to believe this is legit since I love the house, but I really think in my gut, it’s a scam.
What do you think?
ETA: I have sent the correspondence to Trulia, and asked them to look into it.
There’s something about the way Nigerian scammers write that’s very distinctive. It’s almost a Charles Dickens flavor to the correspondence from their colony style mannered English.
When we recently were househunting in Florida, we learned about a scam that’s actually pretty popular - find a house that’s been on the market for awhile, probably will continue to be, put on your own locks, and rent it out to new immigrants. One property we looked at, in a neighborhood we found out later was high-crime-rate, had a sign on the door warning about it - in Spanish first, FWIW.
A legitimate offer to rent or sell will be made through legitimate means. Check the real estate listings, and don’t hesitate to engage a local realtor to work for you.
As I said in the OP, I looked up the owner of the house, and it’s a different name. I’m still in communication with this scammer. I want to muck with him for a while.
Tell him you’d like to pay rent for the entire year in advance. However, you only have a check for $100,000. And if he would kindly wire you the difference once he receives the check. Offer to pay double the rent for his troubles.
What if someone really fell for this? Takes us for example. We would have sent a couple thousand dollars to him, spent a couple thousand on the moving company, rented out our house, and drove all the way to Florida. Once we got there, the REAL owners would have answered the door. We would have had no money, no place to stay there, and no place to stay back home, if we could even get back here. And all of our belongings would be in Florida. What a mess.
Well, not the scammer’s problem, is it? Scammer doesn’t care.
I went to a local Neighborhood Watch meeting once, led by a local police liaison person. (Well, several times.) One person mentioned her car was broken into and a ball point pen got stolen out of it. :dubious: Police liaison person could only point out that crooks don’t care how much damage they do, all to get a ball point pen out of it.
