You may not have followed up, but I might have. My point is that a person would not be a total idiot to initially think this could possibly (not probably, but possibly) have been on the level, based on a cursory reading. The crucial thing – as always – is not to send money upfront, that’s all.
Once I’ve asked to see the apartment and he refuses (which of course he would, because he has no way to get me in to see it), then it becomes clear that it’s not legit. Maybe you would have instantaneously known it was a scam, but others would not have. So long as they don’t mail off any dinero before that light dawns, there’s no harm, no foul.
Even suspecting (knowing?) it was a scam, I personally would have asked him to arrange for me to see the apartment before sending money, because that is so obviously how renting apartments works. I’d have been interested to know how a scammer would respond to that iminently reasonable request.
Oh, I know. I’ve been an absentee landlord (I will not be doing THAT again, and we had a property manager!) But the implication in this ad is that the tenant will be dealing directly with the owner, who’s overseas.
He’d have asked for a security deposit before sending the keys. I guarantee.
Sadly (maybe that should be in quotes), they’re too stupid to actually engage in any sort of fun back-and-forth or entrapment. Saying you work at JP Morgan would likely result in just more automated responses. Best to leave it alone completely.
I have so far received no response, and am beginning to think that this is merely an autoresponder. Darn it - I was hoping this could play out into something more entertaining.
I’m going to have to keep a closer eye on my spam folder to pick out a juicy one.
Tell him you googled the address, looked at the streetview, and observed the type of windows on the building clearly marked with the street number, “Hastings Seeds”. Then looked at the windows as seen from INSIDE the apartment. How did he get them to look so different?
Is that supposedly a Harvard University diploma, in Latin, on that page? Is the guy trying to say he graduated from Harvard? My diploma is all in English, nice and readable-like - did he got to the double-secret Harvard that I didn’t know about?
My admittedly-rusty Latin (taken at Harvard, ironically in an Alanis Morrisette kinda way) thinks that it might supposedly be an M.A. rather than an undergrad degree.
Ok OK…its a scam, I’m not familiar with the area so didn’t know just how lowball the rent was.
FTR though
I would never ever have sent money unless it was to a verified (by “trusted” third party) trust account of some sort
It is not beyond the realms of possibility for me to imagine that somebody might want to rent a property himself from overseas rather than through an agent (stupid- yeah, impossible, not so much). If I wanted to rent a place and not engage and agent I could imagine myself setting up a similiar scheme to do so
I was an “absentee landlord” that did rent a property while overseas
We did lowball our rent (by about 20%) to secure a long term, trusted tenant that could move in on the spot
The main point that I wanted to make, was that the next step for the op need not be “send money” - there are lots of other ways to determine the legitmacy or otherwise of such a listing that could have been taken. Many here have based it on personal experience / knowledge. Some did some more investigation via publicly available research tools (google street view). There would have been still other ways to follow up also, you can get creative in such things to verify or otherwise something that might be a scam, but might (just possible) also be true.