“Hi, Peter. My name is Gill and I am interested in purchasing your home at *** South *** Street. Have you considered selling the property?”
What threw me isn’t so much that this person knew my first name and address, but more that they knew the cell phone number the text was sent to. It isn’t my main phone and I never hand this number out. Even when I make outgoing calls on it all calls have the number automatically blocked.
This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten something like this on this phone. About 2 weeks ago someone left a message claiming to be buying properties in my area and flipping them. During the message the guy said “this is not a scam” three different times. Both numbers are local (spoofed?) that do nothing but ring when called back.
So what’s going on here? I’ve owned the property in question for 22+ years and it is not for sale. I checked my departments hot book under real estate scams but there isn’t anything quite matching this stuff.
I don’t get it. If the messages come from a fake/spoofed number, how are the suckers supposed to call back?
As for your number, my first guess is that it was stored as insecure contact information on someone’s phone. Don’t know how easy it would be to get customer information leaked directly from the phone company (maybe not that hard in practice, but I have no idea).
Yeah, that is strange but the idea that the information was cribbed from some hacked data seems plausible. I’m not sure what you should do now… block and ignore or say the property is for sale for $20 million or something equally ridiculous.
We are getting a ton of letters offering to buy our house for a decent amount. I’m sure calls work similarly but we don’t respond to those.
I read carefully one of the letters. There was a conditional statement regarding an inspection to verify certain facts about the house.
I’m sure that at least one of the scams is to suggest an big offer, get you excited about it, then they start taking it down bit-by-bit as they “discover” certain negatives about your property that “obviously” lower the value. Eventually the offer is well below market value, but maybe you aren’t so sure about it’s real value anymore.
A lot of people, once they get started into something, have a hard time dropping out. They get easily victimized this way.
Of course, that’s just an small scam. I’m sure there are major scammers involved. E.g., you have to put up some money first or some such.
If you’ve ever entered that cell phone number in a form online, or a paper document that gets entered into a database (like a warranty card), or given out that number to a repair tech, or a receptionist at a business, it can be found & linked to your name & address. Or even if you just used that cell phone to call an acquaintance who isn’t very computer-savvy and careful about going online – his contacts could be hacked and get your phone number.
That spoofed number is an actual number, and it can record the number that you called from before answering (or not answering).
So then it can move your number from the list ‘random cell phone numbers’ to the list ‘working cell phone numbers’ or even ‘working cell phone numbers that are gullible enough to call back from a scam text’. Those lists of verified, working, or responding cell phones are much more valuable lists, and sell to other scammers for a much higher price.
P.S. Anytime I hear someone say “this is not a scam” or “this is important; do not hang up the phone” or “Important Information Inside!” on the outside of an envelope – it’s absolutely a lie and I should not waste any more time on it.
It’s not necessarily a scam, per se. They probably will buy your house. But they’re going to pay a ridiculously low amount for it. I think they’re out in force right now. I got a call earlier this week from them asking about one of the properties I own.
They knew my name and asked specifically about one of the properties, referring to it by the street address. They asked “Would you be willing to consider selling the house”
I said, “Sure, I will entertain an offer”
Then they said, “Okay, how much would you want for it”
“That’s not how this works. You called me! Next time, have an offer ready. Goodbye. :click:”
I can’t imagine what kind of desperate people they must find if they’re making enough transactions to turn a profit.
The desperate person is probably the one calling you. They probably spent tens of thousands of dollars in tuition at a real estate “university” or paying for an online course that taught them all they have to do is call up people and get them to sell their houses and then they can flip them in an instant and get rich. They probably listened to all kinds of testimonials about how easy it is to get rich quick and all they have to do is call and ask and people will be begging to sell their homes.
This is a scam. It’s a fishing operation; out of 1000 inquiries like this, they might get one sucker, which will pay for their efforts. Your property is not individually targeted, but some program has combined publicly-available info with your address and generated a letter intended to deceive you in thinking you are special. If you aren’t aware of the copious info available online, you might want to do some research; your life isn’t as private as you think.
If you really want to sell your property, this would be the worst choice. Contact a reputable real estate agent instead.
Due to this thread, I’ve been paying attention to such “offers” to get an idea of the cons involved.
Got a spam email yesterday that said they were interested in my property etc.
Of course there was no name, address or anything to suggest that they knew who I was or where the property is or anything. It could have been mailed to a million people.
It probably was.
I assume that in the case of spam email, one of the most common goals is to get you to click on a link and go to a website where they will try to install malware on your device. But there could also be the usual pay something to find out more, etc.
Anyway, I checked the site’s DNS info. It was registered way back in Dec. 2019. So very long ago. They clearly have to be legit to have been in business that long!
I get a ton of offers for my raw land. The “sell it to us for free” was the most ridiculous but we’ve gotten offers for $300 - $700 for the 40 acres. All they need is one or two people not to know the value of their property and it’s worth it so not exactly a scam but taking advantage of ignorance.
We got a letter purporting to be from a couple looking for a house in the area and asking if we were interested in selling.
It wouldn’t have surprised me if this turned out to be a phony, and the actual potential buyers were one of those “we buy ugly houses” outfits.
Another time we got a moderately dubious come-on of this sort with only a phone number listed, no name. Out of curiosity I called the number to see if they’d identify themselves and got a recording asking for our information. I hung up, but a couple days later got a phone call from them asking if we were “still interested”. So obviously they had a way to track the numbers of callers. Pure sleaze.
My last name contains an apostrophe, which apparently makes automated attempts to get the name from the county database fail (I can do it from the website). As a result, I get any number of postcards that start, “Dear *** Name not available in database ***, I am interested in buying your house …” Good for a laugh before they hit the recycle bin.
A friend who is a retired legislator was a strong gun-control advocate, and was on a committee targeted by the NRA. He mentioned getting letters that started Dear <insert name of your legislator here>,. But rather than being computer-generated, they were laboriously hand written in pencil by humans! He always said that was good for a laugh, but didn’t have much influence on his vote.
You are aware of Caller ID, where your name and number shows up on their phone? And although you can hide it most of the time, you can’t hide it if you are calling an 800 (or 866 or whatever) number, on the theory that since the recipient is paying for the call, he deserves to know who called.
Besides, just because you were asked if you were still interested doesn’t mean they know you are a 2nd-time caller. It’s just a message. Maybe *everyone *gets that message. Much like the unsolicited email that says, “this is not spam!”
There are computer programs that create graphics that are intended to look like hand-written scrawls, even changing the shape of repeated letters. It’s hard to tell at first glance. Either that was what you got, or someone in a third-world country is being paid to do it.
