Gumtree Flats to rent scam

BrightonSun

Apologies if this has been covered before. My friend was recently looking and saw a place advertised in Brighton which seemed a bit to good to be true Emailed the guy and had this email back...After reading up it's where they ask you to tranfer a money to a friend and then scan the recepit to them to show you have the funds...Which they cunningly then claim from Western union etc. They are all over the Brighton Gumtree. So watch out!!

[STRIKE][/STRIKE]

Hello,
If you have 2 month rent fee right there with you , well, you can
use that as a proof to me by making a deposit to any of your family
or partner and show me a receipt as proof
and confirmation before i can go get my flight ticket . I traveled
two times last week to show the flat to some couples but they don't
have the funds at hand to pay and turn out

telling me stories that they will pay me when they got a good job..I
don't want to risk or waste my time coming down anymore if i don't
have a proof from who ever is interested
in my flat before getting my ticket to fly down..I am sorry for any
inconveniences but you just have to reason with me. I just don't feel
comfortable asking for payment upfront
before viewing my flat because its is not normal and does sound
illegal .So i prefer having a proof you have funds and will proceed
from there. Go to any Post Office close to
you and ask for western union Units or Money Gram Unit and do as
instructed below to any of your family or partnerin the U.K and get
back to me with a confirmation.
THIS WHAT TO DO BELOW....
Sender name: YOUR NAME
Senders address: Your complete address
Receiver's Name: Your family ,Fiancee name or partner
Receiver's address:
I was also made to understand that western union and Money
Gram takes some charges for the transfer and i am telling you that i
will return back to you the full transfer
charges whether you decide to rent the flat or not when we
meet...Meanwhile,I want you to get back to me with the attached copy
of the receipt given to you at the western
union Unit or Money Gram Unit before you pick back your money so that
i would be able to verify it from western union customer service or
Money Gram customer service
myself to know if you truly made the transfer or not...As soon as i
verify it myself,I will email you to go and pick back your money..Hope
this is clear now?.
Hope to read back from you.
Thanks.

rjhammond91

This scam was actually shown on "The real hustle" quite recently.. Don't really know why people would trust someone on gumtree anyway.. but thanks for the warning

brightonman123

not just brighton, i fear..

gumtree really do need to up their game, letting so many obviously spam ads go live...

foxwales

This has been going on on this site for a good few months now, they seem to be doing the rounds in all locations.

boliston

foxwales wrote: »

This has been going on on this site for a good few months now, they seem to be doing the rounds in all locations.

I also saw this on iplayer "The Real Hustle" and I'm amazed that anyone would fall for a scam like this. It seems a lot of trouble as a way to "credit check" someone when equifax do it for about £4. Someone might have multiple CCJ's yet still have one month's rent in cash so it would not even be a reliable credit check method.

nomoneytoday

There is a warning on Gumtree about the scam.

Dizzy_Ditzy

maybe its just me but the standard of the english on that email would put me off right away

Edinburghlass_2

My daughter got a similar email when she looked at some ads on Gumtree, thing is at 18 she looked at the pictures and thought the flat they were offering was lovely, and so it was, it just didn't belong to them

Even worse in my opinion is she has been looking at jobs recently and got a reply from one yesterday evening, that she had included her CV with, to say that the job had been taken but how about you do some money laundering for us and you will be well paid. Not actually stated like that of course. I reported it as soon as I read the email and just checked this morning and its been taken down.

triticale

There was about a dozen of these recently, large two bedroom flats, all apparently located at the entrance gate to York District Hospital :rotfl:

All had descriptions of 'beautiful, spacious flat', 'picturesque, modern flat' etc with limited description, nice pictures of some random flat.

All for £250-300 pcm each. :eek: You'd be lucky to get a room in a student house for that...

Quite annoying tbh when you are actually looking for somewhere, cluttering up the listings.

Enfieldian

Similar to the Autotrader adverts, 3 year old BMWs, Audis and Mercedes for £3,000.....

"My phone is not working, please email me at this address only" plastered all over the pictures.

Annoying when you are looking for a new car.

chomsky_2

I am new to MSE and as I was reading through the formus I thought I would post this so people don't get scammed! Me and my other half have been looking for flats and he almost fell for a Gumtree scam. He found an advert for a 1 bedroom flat complete with pictures of the furnished flat for only £400 a month. The Gumtree ad (which has now been taken down from the site) seemed legitimate other than the ludicrously cheap price and so he sent the landlady a message and below is the response from the scammer.


From: [EMAIL="cindy.water@live.com"]cindy.water@live.com[/EMAIL]
To: [EMAIL="XXXXX@hotmail.com"]XXXXX@hotmail.com[/EMAIL]
Subject: RE: Reply to your ad: Magnificent and lovely ONE Double bedroom flat
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:21:16 +0000

Thanks for the reply and the sincere interest you have in my flat. I spoke with my lawyer on phone just now concerning your stay in my flat and we both agreed to have you in my flat as long as you'll take good care of my flat as how it is. However, it is unfortunate that my past bitter experience of inviting people to come and view or reserve my flat without any form of confirmation of their financial ability and not keeping up to time as at when scheduled, has brought about great loss to me. I have traveled all the way from Ireland to take some interested candidates round my flat because that's where i work with M. Gould (S!!!!horpe) Ltd.

Some outside tenants do not have the money to pay the rent and yet they disturb the landlord to arrange a viewing with their friend or relative who are in Cardiff, also some do not meet up with the appointments which has led to the dismissal of some landlords in office by their employers.

Henceforth, my lawyer and i have decided to carry out a simple test on financial ability to pay for my rent before coming for viewing. I would not ask you to send your bank statement. At least 1 month rent and security deposit which is £ 400 which is refundable after your 1 month stay in my flat, would be required from you to transfer through Western union money transfer agent to your trusted friend or relative in Uk premises.

Once you have done this, scan the receipt to me and if you do not have scanner, you may write out the details on the receipt as i will send it to my lawyer to verify if it's truly genuine and available in your friend's custody, after verification, then we can proceed for the viewing and you can as well tell your friend or partner to pick up the money and also, i will refund back to you the cost of transfer when we meet.

I look forward to reading from you soon.

Regards
Mr/Mrs Water


Below is my reply to them, I replied as my boyfriend and thought I would have a little fun with it.

Dear Cindy,

many thanks for your response. I am sorry to hear of your plight concerning people's financial dishonesty (people can be such scammers right?) How very interesting that you work for M.Gould, I told my partner about this, as I informed her that we would have very respectable landlords and she couldn't seem to find an Ireland office for M.Gould, she even went to the trouble of phoning them up bless her, she is ever so paranoid and was informed that they have no Ireland office and indeed no employee under the name Cindy water, I assured the company obviously that this must be some sort of mistake and gave them your email address in order to sort the matter out. I'm sorry to say your employers seem most inefficient if they can't even recognise an employee's name.

Of course we will comply with your request for a deposit, yet again my other half insisted on passing this email on to our lawyers to make sure we are protected and our lawyer had the audacity to suggest that this was a fraudulent email and not to provide any personal information, as in his word's "no landlord would expect a deposit to be paid without a tenant even seeing the property." The cheek of the man! I informed him that it must be a real email and a real flat as you had attached a very nice picture of you and your husband. I certainly don't pay my lawyer to think for god sake, I am intelligent enough to spot a scam.

My idiot lawyer it seems is just as paranoid as my partner as he contacted the cyber crimes unit at South Wales Police and their head of department John Cherry has informed me that he is tracking the IP of your email address. I demanded that the police stop their investigation and pointed out that you are a sincere landlord and had even sent me pictures of the property and therefore it could not possibly be a scam.

In order to put my partners mind at rest could we have your lawyers contact details so that she can speak to him to put her poor mind at rest.

Kind regards,

N

As I was researching this I found that this is a really common scam and lot's of people have lost their money. I can see how people can be fooled as the gumtree ad my other half saw was very convincing. Hopefully the more people write about these scams though the more likely people will be wise to them.