To good to be true?

[Dakine 26]

I advertized for my rental house recently and had some one try to scam me.

The guy sent me a check for $3,000 via UPS overnite for the rent plus then he wanted me to send money [$900] to a delivery company to pay for his furnture delivery.

The guy also offered to pay me one years rent [about 17 K] in advance when he arrived here from England.

Turns out the guys checks will bounce in a couple weeks.

If I'd sent my check to the delivery company which turned out to be a phony company guess who would get my check.

Sure looked "to good to be true" for me.

Yeah it was.

No doubt some people are falling for it.

Same trip happened to 2 friends of mine since then selling different things on Craigs list. They seem to be targeting Hawaii maybe because it takes a week + for checks to clear here.

[trinket 30]

I guess there was something about this kind of check scams on this week's 20/20. Not craigslist but those work at home adds.

Glad you got out of it.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Holy moly. Good thing you were diligent. Anytime someone wants to rush the deal through makes me cautious. Craigslist is great...it is what it is and there are going to be scams. Out here, most people renting want to run their own credit check of the potential renter along with verifiable references.

[Dakine 26]

Holy moly. Good thing you were diligent. Anytime someone wants to rush the deal through makes me cautious. Craigslist is great...it is what it is and there are going to be scams. Out here, most people renting want to run their own credit check of the potential renter along with verifiable references.

Yeah things looked a bit "to good". I asked the guy for a financial statement and he siad he'd give me one AFTER he arrived. Flags started flying.

[Niels Bohr 72]

Geezes. How can people fall into this trap?

[EstebanTrabajos 7]

as the saying goes...

[Saddle Bronc 124]

Sounds like a variation of the "419" and lottery-scams.

[Peikko 1,575]

Scams are pretty easy to spot though. If anyone ever asks you to use part of a payment of a check to pay someone else for something on their behalf, smell rat!

[Sinergy 3]

sounds like the same guy who tried to scam me and Edi. Only thing different is FEDEX kept the overnighted payment bc it came up as a fraudulant acct on their system as this person used this acct numerous times to send payments. so the payment was being used from a fraud acct as well

[missmissy 38]

I have a house listed here in Jackson and a few weeks ago another agent called to tell me she had seen the house I have listed on Craigs's List - for rent. It had all of the pictures I had taken, the description I had written and even had an email address with my name in it @yahoo.com. Meanwhile, while I'm trying to track down the craigs list page, someone has met people at this house, pretending to be me and conned some people into giving her a deposit and promising she would be back in an hour with the keys to the house....

My clients were home while this was going on, called me, called the police but the folks that were scammed never got their money back. It all happened in one day too!

[HAL 9000 96]

Call the FBI.

[lostinblue 1,989]

Why anyone would rent a home to someone without an interview is beyond me.Never heard of this . just mail you a check and who cares what the home looks like.I will take it.

[rclouse 0]

My wife almost fell prey to something similar. They'd send you a check, you'd go cash it at one of those check cashing places, then keep 15% for yourself. We got one check, then I called the bank and asked them if it'd clear (they couldn't tell me the balance). And of course it wouldn't.

Looked up the address on Google Maps. Satellite showed it was a new development and just a dirt road so far at the address.

/TANSTAAFL

[bora bora 1]

I answered to an ad on craigslist about tutoring and the response was quite similar to what the OP wrote here. I knew it was a scam when I read it and deleted the e-mail...the response was supposedly from Germany.

[lucyrich 20]

At the top of most craigslist pages there's a link to a warning about scams. It's good info, but it only works if you read it.

http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams

Anytime someone sends you a certified check and then wants you to send part of the money on to some other third party, run away. They should pay you what they owe you, and then they should handle their own payment to their "shipper" themselves.