I recently saw a rental ad on craigslist for a condo in La Playa. They were asking for $950 for a two bedroom. I was pretty sure the rent amount was a typo. Out of curiosity, I sent an email asking the owner to reconfirm the price and to let me know if the property was still available for rent. Right after I sent the email, I did a little research on the web and found several other rental ads for the same property on other websites. All those sites showed the price listed at $2950 or $2900.
The next morning I got this response to my email:
Dear,Thanks for the email.
I am the owner of the 2 bedroom condo house and i also want you to know that it was due to my transfer that makes me and my wife to leave the house and we want to give it out for rent, We are looking for a responsible person that can take a very good care of he house for us, As we are not after the money for the rent but we want it to be very clean and a good person that will rent it and take it as if it were its own. So for now, We are here in LONDON,our new house and we have with us the keys of the house,
we try to look for an agent that we can give this documents before we left but could not see and we are as well as don’t want our house to be used any how in our absent that is why we took it along with us.
I and my wife came over to London For Department of Economics London, School of Economics work, so i hope you will promise us to take very good care of the house. So get back to me on how you could take care of our house or perhaps experience you have in renting home. We are giving you the first month free then you commence the payment of the second month.We want you to pay security deposit fee of$700 so that when you are paying for the second month fee you have to pay $900.fill the application and get back to me asap.
RENTALS APPLICATION
FIRST NAME:__________________
MIDDLE NAME: _________________
LAST NAME: __________________
PROFESSION: ________________
HOME PHONE (____) __________
(CELL)PHONE (____) __________
(WORK)PHONE (____) __________
KIDS _____ (YES/NO), HOW MANY ________
PRESENT ADDRESS: _____________________
CITY: _______________
STATE: ______________
ZIPCODE: ____________
HOW LONG DO YOU INTEND STAYING? ____________
WHEN DO YOU INTEND MOVING IN? ______________
HOW SOON CAN YOU HAVE THE DEPOSIT PAYMENT SENT TO ME___________________________
HOW SOON DO YOU WANT TO RECEIVE THE KEYS AND DOCUMETS OF THE HOUSE___________________________
DO YOU HAVE A PET: _____________
NAME OF PET: _____________
KIND OF PETS: _____________
DO YOU SMOKE? ______________
DO YOU DRINK? ______________.
I hope to hear from you soonest. Thanks
My number is +447024034823
Regards. God Bless.
Mr Steve.
Based on this response it was easy to conclude that the ad was fake and someone is running a scam. I was curious though how long it took the owner of the condo to figure out that someone was using his/her rental listing from the other websites to run a scam on craigslist.
