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Classified Ad Scams: Renting an Apartment
Scams and scammers using these names: Rev.Nicolas Mogan, Gramercy Park
Apartment for $600, all utilities included???
Are you looking to Renting an Apartment?
Did "Rev.Nicolas Mogan" claiming to be from bbb contact you? Note that he says:
"that is why we took the keys and document along with us here in west africa.Pls I want you to note that,I am a kind and honest man and also I spent alot on my property that I want to give you for rent".
That's a clue to a scam right there!
Here are the clues that this is a scam:
- First, you will notice the syntax and grammar. Often, is it
not pathetically bad, it's just plain strange. It looks like it was written by
someone who is not a native English-speaker, and writes very rarely in
English. No Reverend we know has spelling and grammar this bad. One could
say it's god-awful! This is very typical of scammers, who largely are in Nigeria and
have little formal education and probably none in English.
- The scammers NEVER can meet in person. They may have a $50,000
boat to sell to you or want to buy a $45,000 car from you, but somehow they
are always "out of the country" on business, in in the army, whatever.
In the real world, anyone buying or selling something for more than a few
hundred dollars, wants to see it first. And especially when renting a
house or apartment!
- The scammers typically ramble on about issues ("that is why we took the keys and document along with us here in west africa.Pls I want you to note that,I am a kind and honest man and also I spent alot on my property that I want to give you for rent") that are irrelevant
to such a sale or rental; such as, how they are doing this for charity, or
recently moved to the UK, or are traveling in Africa right now. You as
a seller / landlord, don't and shouldn't care about these issues: you are
trying to find a legitimate buyer or renter for your item at a fair market
price. The scammer knows this and is merely trying to cloud the issue
and provide excuses for not complying with the basic requirements of a sale.
He's also trying to engender trust; one of the key elements of any con game.
- Scammers frequently refer to "trust", "faith" and God; in ways that no
rational person in western Society would ever do in a business transaction,
as in, "I know I can trust you", or "my faith in God tells me to enter this
agreement with you".
- Look at the huge number of misspellings, weird use of capital letters, poor punctuation and made-up
words. Again, this is typical of the scammer filth
who live and operate in Nigeria.
An actual email that illustrate this type of CraigsList scam:
Any highlighted passages below
are to draw your attention to typical scam clues:
Email 1 - from the victim:
I replied to a rental ad on craigslist, to inquire more about the place
and below is the e-mail I received from the lister of the ad. Since $600 was
a too good to be true for a New York 1-bedroom, I searched the net for
similar scam mails, found a couple similar ones, and wanted to report it
here.
Email 2 - from the scammer:
Thanks for your response to my
aprtment,it is my
gladness to hearing from you.I am Rev.Nicolas Mogan ,the owner of the
aprtment you are making enquiry of.Actually I resided in the house with my
family,such as my wife and my only daugther before
I got posted to west africa nigeria to complete my missionary work with God.Our one bedroom
apartmnt is still available for rent and I hope you are okay with the
price
of $600 with All the utilities like Electricity, Water, Internet, Satellite
TV, Air conditioning, Clothes Dryer, Telephone, Hydro, Washer, Security and
heating.
We try to look for an agent that we can give the
document before we left but could not see and we are as well as dont want
our aparetment to be use any how in our absence that is why we took the keys
and document along with us here in west africa.Pls I want you to note that,I
am a kind and honest man and also I spent alot on my property that I want to
give you for rent,so I will solicit for your absolute
mentenance of this
apartment and want you to treat it as your own,is that taken,it is not the
money the main problem but want you to keep it tidy all the time so that I
will be glad to see it neat when i came for a check up.I do that once in a
while.I also want you to let me have trust in you as i always stand on my
word.
So I hope you can promise us to take very good care
of our apartment.So get back to me on how you could take care of our
apartment or perhaps experience you have in renting an apartment.Here is the
full address of where my apartment is located at
24 Gramercy Park South, New
York NY 10003
I look forward to hearing from you ASAP so that I
can forward you an application to fill out and discuss on how to get the
apartment for rent,also are you ready to rent it now or when?
Thanks and you are welcome
Best Regards
Rev.Nicolas Mogan
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