Internet Scamming; i.e appartment scamming.

jennifer j

jennifer j

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20
Hi everyone! :) So my family and i are lucky enough to own a home however, over the weekend a colleague was unfortunately a victim of an appartment scam. He had just moved back from abroad and was in desperate need of a place to stay. They had asked for a deposit and sent him a fake "contract" to sign. I am sad and i guess people need to be really careful with the internet nowdays. It would be interesting to know your opinions on Internet-scamming in general.
 
Yeah, there are scams being played to people tryng to rent a property. Last summer I think I prevented somebody from loosing £800. This girl I know, fresh from university and on her first job, trying to rent her first property. She sent me a message about the good news that she found a small house for £300 a month and if she paid by today she would save £100. I immediately said that sounded doggy to me and asked her not to pay any money yet..... she forwarded me the communication she had had with the property owner so far and the scam became more evident..... she was being asked to send the money to South Africa. She could not view the house until the other tenants left ( in two weeks time ) and asked as a favour not to try to ask the tenants to let her see the house as they were a very busy couple..... etc. For starters, you cannot even rent a room for £300 a month in that area so the rest was very suspicious.
The alarming thing is that she was ready to hand over the money..... the excitement of having her own place prevented her from seeing the bigger picture.

You can't never be too careful these days...... it's very sad :(
 
Merkurologist said:
Yeah, there are scams being played to people tryng to rent a property. Last summer I think I prevented somebody from loosing £800. This girl I know, fresh from university and on her first job, trying to rent her first property. She sent me a message about the good news that she found a small house for £300 a month and if she paid by today she would save £100. I immediately said that sounded doggy to me and asked her not to pay any money yet..... she forwarded me the communication she had had with the property owner so far and the scam became more evident..... she was being asked to send the money to South Africa. She could not view the house until the other tenants left ( in two weeks time ) and asked as a favour not to try to ask the tenants to let her see the house as they were a very busy couple..... etc. For starters, you cannot even rent a room for £300 a month in that area so the rest was very suspicious.
The alarming thing is that she was ready to hand over the money..... the excitement of having her own place prevented her from seeing the bigger picture.

You can't never be too careful these days...... it's very sad :(
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I guess the theory "desperate times call for desperate measures" applies in such circumstances.
 
Myself and the OH got 'scammed' roughly a year ago purchasing our first house - issues with the house known to the vendors were hidden for the survey, not picked up during the survey, not declared on the vendor's documents and entirely missed by myself/OH/her family/my family.

£7,200 in repairs later and we're finally past it. Not an internet scam, but a tale to exercise due caution. I'm usually the 'level-headed' one but entirely missed any warning signs. In retrospect, there were hints of something being wrong but nothing glaring.

The good thing about the internet is you don't necessarily need a knee-jerk response. You can give yourself time to mull things over, or consider how you're going to approach a response. Don't be afraid to ask questions, even if they might come across offensive. You, as the buyer, are the one in a position of power. The vendor can't do anything to you until you're willing to part with your money.

Back to your anecdote, @jennifer j , it's a shame that someone has gone to the whole effort of generating a fake contract and suchlike. Unfortunately, it sounds like a sad situation in which someone has had to make that quick decision to have a roof over their head. Fortunately (sort of) it's a lessen learned and hopefully will prevent further, similar situations. There are more and more ways to send money securely and more people are becoming aware of scams.
 
@jennifer j Sad to hear your colleague was scammed, good to warn people about it!

@Merkurologist I had a similar thing last week, trying to sell my car I got an email from a 'David' saying he had a paypal deposit waiting to be released with an added amount to compensate for a drop-off. He first needed me to make a small payment towards him of about 300 euro for some reason and transfer this to a Western Union bank in New Delhi.. Right, seems legit;)

Bit of knowledge and research is needed though to make deals via the big bad interwebs.

Reminds me of this hilarious Ted Talk:

 
Benz3ne said:
Myself and the OH got 'scammed' roughly a year ago purchasing our first house - issues with the house known to the vendors were hidden for the survey, not picked up during the survey, not declared on the vendor's documents and entirely missed by myself/OH/her family/my family.

£7,200 in repairs later and we're finally past it. Not an internet scam, but a tale to exercise due caution. I'm usually the 'level-headed' one but entirely missed any warning signs. In retrospect, there were hints of something being wrong but nothing glaring.

The good thing about the internet is you don't necessarily need a knee-jerk response. You can give yourself time to mull things over, or consider how you're going to approach a response. Don't be afraid to ask questions, even if they might come across offensive. You, as the buyer, are the one in a position of power. The vendor can't do anything to you until you're willing to part with your money.

Back to your anecdote, @jennifer j , it's a shame that someone has gone to the whole effort of generating a fake contract and suchlike. Unfortunately, it sounds like a sad situation in which someone has had to make that quick decision to have a roof over their head. Fortunately (sort of) it's a lessen learned and hopefully will prevent further, similar situations. There are more and more ways to send money securely and more people are becoming aware of scams.
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Can you chase the money through the small claims court?

That is very annoying though. It's very common to see these type of scams when buying second hand cars.
 
Merkurologist said:
Can you chase the money through the small claims court?

That is very annoying though. It's very common to see these type of scams when buying second hand cars.
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Unfortunately not. The vendors DIY'ed a partial repair prior to the survey. As they hadn't done it professionally they can claim they didn't know about it and 'my' arguments would be null/void. We went down the road of financial ombudsman against the surveyors as they missed it (which was surprising seeing as I picked it up, as a layperson, about a week later) but they'd used enough blanket statements to cover themselves, unfortunately.
 
Benz3ne said:
Unfortunately not. The vendors DIY'ed a partial repair prior to the survey. As they hadn't done it professionally they can claim they didn't know about it and 'my' arguments would be null/void. We went down the road of financial ombudsman against the surveyors as they missed it (which was surprising seeing as I picked it up, as a layperson, about a week later) but they'd used enough blanket statements to cover themselves, unfortunately.
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20 years ago I bought a relatively expensive house and at the time I followed the advice given on one specialist magazine and contracted the most detailed survey which was also the most expensive. When I read the report I was very disappointed. Every statement left the door opened for a potential problem in case there was a problem. That was a waste of money.
 
I guess the best thing is to be aware that Internet Scamming is alive! Over the weekend i came across a rather interesting blog post that talked about the different ways of online scamming. Romance scamming was named among them, i mean why would someone scam you, and on top of that rob you what you desire the most..Love? I am guessing the people who are victims of such scams are lonely people already, so for you to mess up with both their money and feelings is immensly heartbreaking! Times have indeed changed.
 
nlMike said:
@jennifer j Sad to hear your colleague was scammed, good to warn people about it!

@Merkurologist I had a similar thing last week, trying to sell my car I got an email from a 'David' saying he had a paypal deposit waiting to be released with an added amount to compensate for a drop-off. He first needed me to make a small payment towards him of about 300 euro for some reason and transfer this to a Western Union bank in New Delhi.. Right, seems legit;)

Bit of knowledge and research is needed though to make deals via the big bad interwebs.

Reminds me of this hilarious Ted Talk:

Click to expand...
Very funny vid :)
 
jennifer j said:
I guess the best thing is to be aware that Internet Scamming is alive! Over the weekend i came across a rather interesting blog post that talked about the different ways of online scamming. Romance scamming was named among them, i mean why would someone scam you, and on top of that rob you what you desire the most..Love? I am guessing the people who are victims of such scams are lonely people already, so for you to mess up with both their money and feelings is immensly heartbreaking! Times have indeed changed.
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There are some heartless people out there, times have changed indeed.
 
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