I am currently looking for someone to share my house. This is the second time in two years I’ve done so. So as I did last time, I started by posting my ad on Craigslist. Amongst the responses is one eerily similar to one I received a two years ago:
[QUOTE=???]
Thanks for your response to my request about the room. I will like to tell you a little about me.. I was born and brought up in the UK …mom from India and dad from Spain. I’m very easy going person to live with. I’m 32 years old of age, am extremely clean, quiet and respectful, I’m very sensitive, intelligent, patient and caring person, have a good sense of humor and am easy to get along with. I don’t drink nor smoke, no pets, I’m a very busy woman also. I admit am not perfect but I try to leave things in a condition so that others are not inconvenienced.
I need to secure this room for myself before i arrive in the State as I’ll be moving in with my luggage. I must confess to you that you will enjoy my stay in your home. Well my name is Marilyn Hernandex, I am a chemist by profession and i am currently working with Southern General Hospital [removed by me].I am married with a kid.Although they will not be coming with me to the state. I will travel to Glasgow Scotland to visit them once in a while.
I will be in the States by Middle of the Month for the next one year and during my stay will be working with the United State Environmental Protection Agency on a private research work… It will be a great pleasure seeing you soon. I think you should let me know a little about you too. You can reach me at this no [phone number with English area code] anytime. I would have called you earlier but my phone cannot make international calls.
Sincerely,
Marilyn
[/QUOTE]
This sounds exactly like a woman(?) with a different name who contacted me two years ago from Turkey. Also, “would have called me earlier?” I never gave my own phone number out. What are they going to do, ask me for a bank account number to wire the deposit into then try to clean it out?
This could be an overpayment scam. They’ll send you a check for something more than the rent payment and ask you to forward the extra amount to their moving company or someone else they need to pay via Western Union. The check will be bad and you’ll be left repaying your bank for the amount you “forwarded”.
I don’t know much about international calling, but, could it be some kind of phone call scam? I get these weird call all of the time and I always wonder if they’re hoping I will blindly call back and maybe they’re making money from my call-back. . . somehow?
Here’s something I just found. Maybe it’s one of these?
9.International Phone Calls Scam: It’s not always easy to tell if you’re dialing an international telephone number. In most cases, you have to dial 011 to begin a call to a foreign country. However, there are locations outside the U.S. where telephone numbers may look like domestic long-distance calls, but are actually international calls and international rates will apply.
For example, 284 (British Virgin Islands), 242(Bahamas), 246(Barbados), 268(Antigua/Barbuda), 345(Cayman Islands), 664(Montserrat), 670 (U.S. commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands), 758(St. Lucia), 787(Puerto Rico), 767(Dominica), 809(Dominican Republic), 869(St. Kitts & Nevis), 868(Trinidad & Tobago), and 876(Jamaica) are all area codes in the Caribbean.
The scheme: the scammer often leaves a message typically asking consumers to call what appears to be an ordinary long-distance telephone number to confirm a lottery prize, or to get information about a relative who has been injured in an accident. In each case, you are told to call the number right away. Since there are so many new area codes these days, people unknowingly return the calls. Once the number is dialed, the scam artist will try to keep you on the phone as long as possible to increase the charges. Unfortunately, when you get your phone bill, you might find that you’ve been charged $2500 per minute.
If you are asked to call unknown number, google the area code to check if it’s local. Also, ask your cell phone and land line companies to put a block on international calls. This way you will hear an error message when you try to call an international number.
They could be fishing for a sucker. If you respond they’ll think you’re ripe for picking. This could be an identity theft type scam, or just an attempt to clean out your house at the earliest opportunity, or you might find out after starting down this path that Marilyn Hernandex has her money tied up in a Nigerian back account and needs your help to get it out. Just do not respond.
Q) What is the scam?
A) TMI (Too Much Information)
You have to look for the red flags.
When someone goes into so much detail (and mentioning all the exceptions [geez, your example sounds like soap opera]), they are trying to convince you to take the bait.
Most likely an overpayment scam.
Just ignore this communication and do not bother to reply.
When in doubt, google the first few lines of the suspect email. If it is a scam, you often find lots of other people with emails worded nearly the same. I googled yours, and found this on a webpage about craiglist scams. This post was from Aug 2011.
I saw a post from someone who followed through on an email like this, and it is an overpayment scam and everyone suspected. The emailer offered to pay double the first month rent, and asked for the renter to send $200 of the extra to a friend who they owed money. The renter would get to keep a few hundred for their trouble. The cashier’s check sent for the rent would obviously bounce.