BEWARE OF VACATION SCAMS:
JOSE & TERRI RENTALS
IS THE SCAM THAT SPARKED THIS SITE
BUT THERE ARE 100'S OUT THERE
BE AWARE OF THE FOLLOWING:
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The rental property address may or may not exist. All the emails will sound about the same.
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"Owner" is out of state or country.
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Keys were left with neighbor or taken with "owner".
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Under priced for area.
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Odd spelling, grammar and syntax.
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Wants payment only by Western Union, moneygram or PayPal
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Paypal protection does not cover transactions that include a deposit and the balance later, nor does it cover RENT!!
- Insist on having a friend see the place and for renter/owner to provide ID and proof of ownership!
- Google street view the address – look for clues then call the building!
- Check the email header and look for the last "received by" - for example Received: from [41.155.0.235] by web114213.mail.gq1.yahoo.com via HTTP; Sun, 12 Jun 2011 07:11:31 PDT
- Go to a site like http://www.melissadata.com/lookups/iplocation.asp and enter the ip address, in this case 41.155.0.235 which comes back as IP Address Location
IP Address41.155.0.235 CityLagos State or RegionLagos CountryNigeria ISPDial Pool Subnet for Lagos Subscribers. Latitude & Longitude6.453056 3.395833 MapG MapV DomainSTARCOMMS.NET
- Throws in religion and/or cleanliness as important.
- Ads will often advertise: Cats are OK - purrr, Dogs are OK - wooof
- Sense of urgency, will send information via overnight shipping, wants you to send money to him immediately.
- Many are now offering free pick-up at the airport.
- Uses free email service such as yahoo/gmail/hotmail/rocketmail/aol
- Posting here, there and on every scam-warning-fraud-watching site you can find, get the scammers email and scripted emails out there for others to find. When you find a property for rent, google the property address, sender's email address, phone number, sender's name and even parts of the email itself. While the scammers change their email addresses as they get shut done, the scammer will usually keep the same scripted emails. In fact, hundreds of scammers will use the same email scripts.
- There are also scammers who have set-up rather crude websites.
SCAMMERS ARE USING OTHER VALID RENTERS
DESCRIPTIONS AND PHOTOGRAPHS.IF YOU SEE BEAUTIFUL PHOTOS, LIKE BELOW... AND THE PRICE IS LOW COMPARED TO LEGITIMATE ON LINE RENTAL AGENCIES,
IT IS MORE THAN LIKELY A SCAM...THE BELOW 1 BEDROOM UNIT WAS ADVERTISED FOR $65 A NIGHT!
THE 2 BEDROOM UNIT BELOW WAS ADVERTISED FOR $110 A NIGHT
AND SAID IT SLEPT 8.
THE EXACT SAME PHOTOS WERE POSTED A FEW MINUTES EARLIER AND
THE AD SAID IT WAS A 1 BEDROOM APARTMENT
THAT SLEPT 5 FOR $65 A NIGHT!YOU GET THE IDEA...
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, $150 a Night - 2 Bedrooms
BE SURE TO GOOGLE DESCRIPTIONS TO SEE IF THEY
MATCH LEGITIMATE RENTAL DESCRIPTIONS.
FULL SENTENCES CAN BE GOOGLED.
DO NOT DEAL WITH ANYONE WHO ONLY ACCEPTS
MONEY GRAMS, WESTERN UNION OR MONEY ORDERS!!!
PAYPAL IS SUSPECT AS WELL:
THIS POST WAS CITED FROM THIS WEBSITE, SEE MORE:
http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-206-339-0186
"oh my gosh, i cant belive this. My name is Maxine Bingham, but i am not the one scamming you. My email address is supermax20747@yahoo.com. I met a gentleman on a dating website and we had been corresponding for awhile now. I told him he could use my email address for his business on paypal my stupidity. He has also scammed me out of money. I closed my account on paypal once i found out he was scamming me and reported him to the FBI. The name he gave me is Sean Jimson Farrow. I am so, so sorry"
OTHER SITES THAT WARN ABOUT SCAMS:
THIS SITE HAS A LARGE LIST OF EMAILS USED FOR SCAMMING:
http://reverendannie.hotblack.myfreeforum.org/ftopic764-0.php
GREAT SITE:
http://scamalicious.com/index.htm
http://rentalscams.org/