Room for Rent Scammer - [email protected]

[Michelle]

******

From: cindy water < [email protected] >
Date: 16 March 2010 07:40:07 GMT
To: Michelle
Subject: RE: Reply to your ad: One Bedroom Flat fully furnished for rent in Cowley Rd, Oxford, OXFORDSHIRE

Thanks for the interest you have in my flat. My flat is still available for rent and you can rent my flat as long as you pay your
rent at when due. Here are the necessary things you need to know about the rent and deposit.

Rent : £ 80.00 pw
Security Deposit: £ 400.00(Returnable at the end of a month stay in my flat) Utility bills inclusive ( water, gas, council tax, TV license and wireless Internet) Utility Cost : £ 0.00 pcm

However, my flat is fully furnished in and out with all necessary house use with secure parking place. At this stage that you want to rent my flat, i need to know some few question about you. Can you take care of my flat as it is? How many months do you intend to rent and pay for? Do you have references in Oxford?

Kindly reply for further information and i would like to know where you are coming from to stay in my flat.

Regards
Mr/Mrs Water

From: cindy water < [email protected] >
Subject: RE: Reply to your ad: Magnificent and lovely ONE Double bedroom flat in The Wilson Street, Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire
To: Michelle
Date: Tuesday, 16 March, 2010,

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 (Scunthorpe) 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 Middlesbrough, 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

The thief will tell you that you can rent his accommodation only if you can prove that you have genuine interest. He will ask you send money by wire transfer (normally Western Union) to yourself or a member of the family to show that you have sufficient finances and that you are not a "time waster".

Another variation of this scam is that you need to send (by Western Union) money in order that the keys and other documents can be couriered to you

He will ask you to send him the transfer details.

Make no mistake ! Western Union Transfers can be picked up virtually anywhere in the world and with the minimum of identification. They are almost impossible to trace once the money has been collected. You will never get to see the accommodation or your money again.

If you are reading this because you are looking for property to rent, and you are in contact with this thief you are probably searching Gumtree or similar listing sites. If you receive any requests from 'Landlords' asking for some kind of payment by Western Union before viewing, then it will also be a scam. Please forward the mail to me at the address in my signature line and I will investigate and list them if necessary.

Ha my other half almost fell for this scammer. instead I thought I would have a little fun with it.

From: [email protected]
To: xxxxxxx.com
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 (Scunthorpe) 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.

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 his 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 bank statement and 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 our local Police force 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


Cindy's response, god love her!!!

Thanks for getting back to me. I wouldn't want you to get me wrong, the idea of making a confirmation of your financial ability is not only my idea, my lawyer and i decided to use that process and i can't violate my lawyer procedure. I am a God fearing woman and i am not after your money. I have my own work and i earn enough money for my family and also to help the less privilege.

However, i didn't want to collect any money from you as long as you have not sign a contract neither have i taken you round my flat. All what i request of you is to transfer the deposit to someone close to you through Western union money transfer agent , once you've done that, you get back to me with a scan copy of the transfer receipt so that i can forward it to my lawyer to confirm if the transfer is valid.

After the confirmation might have been made by my lawyer, i will ask you to tell you friend to pick up the money and schedule a convenient day for the viewing. If eventually you don't want to proceed with the rent, i promise to return the cost of the transfer without any deduction.You can call my husband for further discussion +447031824567

I look forward to reading from you soon.
Regards
Mr/Mrs Water



Ok so guess who turns up in a Google images search? Our friend Cindy and her husband. On a Sperm Donor's website in America no less. Here is my reply to Cindy.

Dear Cindy,

Of course you are honest I myself am I very good judge of character, I am also a man of god and can totally empathise. In fact my most favourite verse is Matthew 8:28-34
"When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. "What do you want with us, Son of God?" they shouted. "Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?"

I thought it sort of sounded like yobish hoodies of biblical times getting their ruddy arses kicked my god almighty. I love how god is loving and forgiving yet can also be badass when he needs to, don't you?

Anyway I digress; of course your solicitor is only doing his job. I did try and explain this to my solicitor who is quite adamant that he wants the name of your solicitor, his firm's name and his contact number as he is still bloody adamant that you are a con artist and that getting myself to transfer money to a friends account though a Western Union agent is "absurd" and that you would use the information given to somehow rob me of all my money. He said that's how "criminals" work. How outrageous and slanderous I told him, of course your not criminals, criminals don't use Gumtree, it's a website for nice people selling broken TV's and offering "night time hours only" type jobs.

The sod even went as far as to suggest that you would not keep your promise to return my hard earned money and the poor deluded fellow said that "business transactions are not founded on promises from people you have only dealt with via email. “Poor chap he is so untrusting, what an awful thing to say, of course you would return my money as you said you are not after my money and I always believe everything strangers tell me in emails, who on earth wouldn't?

To be honest my partner has not helped matters, she is in cahoots with the damn solicitor and continues in her paranoia bless her soul. In fact do you know she was on Google last night and found the picture of you and your husband that you had so kindly emailed us, on the Internet. I said well that's marvelous, obviously our prospective landlords are very important people to turn up in a Google images search. She became quite hysterical and showed me that your picture was on a sperm donors website in America, in fact here is the link http://www.spermdonorsinc.com/Couples.html

My other half seemed to believe that you had just copied this picture from this website and were fraudulently using it as part of some elaborate email scam. I assured here that you were just a nice well-travelled, probably infertile couple who obviously were on the lookout for some high quality sperm and there was nothing to worry about. There is nothing shameful in that, in fact I think you were most brave in putting your picture on a sperm donors website, that takes gumption my friend. Something my partner and idiot solicitor are obviously lacking.

To put my partners poor mind at rest I once again respectfully request that you send your lawyer's name, his firm and contact details so that my solicitor can speak to him. My rude solicitor keeps saying he doesn't wish to ring you "thieving scamming husband" on a mobile number and is requesting contact details for your lawyer. Also those bloody police officers that came round as part of their cyber crime investigation have taken the number you provided, not to worry though I’m sure they will give up when I send them a picture of you and your husband on a sperm donors website proving you are in fact a real couple. Your picture is on the Internet for Christ sake how could you not be a real couple? I sometimes think the country is going to the dogs with such a paranoid and deluded police force.

Kind regards,

N


Oddly enough didn't get a response from her again.

Hi Chomsky and welcome here. Good for you for spotting the scam before you lost any money to it and thank you for posting the information on the scammer here for others.
What you're doing, responding to the scammer while knowing it is a scam, is called scambaiting. We don't encourage baiting scammers while using your real information. They are criminals, after all. Our sister site, 419Eater.com, is a scambaiting website. You look like a natural at this so if you're interested in toying with the scammers, please read there and you'll learn how we bait scammers anonymously. Additionally, while it was a bit funny, your information provided to the scammer, especially about image showing up, may have inadvertently educated him a bit and helped him to improve his scamming.
Please do continue to post scam emails you receive here on our forum to help alert others.

Hi there,

thanks for the advice, have never entered into dialogue with a scammer before, it's just we were sooooo frustrated as it seemed every flat we were interested in that was advertised on Gumtree and related sites was a scam. We would find an ad for a place, it would seem perfectly legitimate and then become clear after initial enquiries that it was a scam. I guess I was so fed up I thought, you have wasted my time and now I will waste yours (I am a writer so I suppose it was also a bit of fun). Thanks for the heads up though and if I receive any more scam emails will be sure to post so others don't get conned.

[Michelle]

'Cindy Water' telephone numbers:-

From: cindy water ([email protected])
Sent: Mon 4/05/10
To: Michelle
this my husband number +447031824567 or +447031822629