Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: possible scam to watch out for

[S. Kashdan (skashdan]

My standard response to all such inquiries, along with other inquiries about 
rentals and buying from people who aren't friends of community members or 
former community members who will vouch for them is to tell the person that 
we strongly encourage people to visit, so we can get to know them and they 
can get to know us before thinking of renting.

Sylvie Kashdan
Jackson Place Cohousing
800 Hiawatha Place South
Seattle, WA 98144
www.seattlecohousing.org

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Craig Ragland" <craigragland [at] gmail.com>
To: "Cohousing-L" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2009 3:23 PM
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ possible scam to watch out for



There are lots of variations on this... if you post rentals on CraigsList,
you'll likely get "inquiries" using this basic form:

Someone emails that they want to rent your space sight-unseen. They want to
send you a "certified check" for several months in advance (landlord thinks
great, a windfall). Before they send the check, they ask if you help them
out (for various reasons) by just sending some of the money on to another
party.

If you play, you get to pay.

After depositing their check and sending yours, you (and your bank) discover
that the "certified check" is fraudulent. The scammer hopes you will not
discover this until its too late to stop payment on your check.

The last "certified check" I saw was from a non-existent bank, but the
check's bar code was for a real bank, so it would have slipped right into
the system.

Craig

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 12:25 PM, Muriel Kranowski <murielk [at] vt.edu> wrote:

>
> Our external email account often receives a message that people are
> interested in our community and it's often evident that this note was
> broadcast from the FIC website to all or many communities. I'm okay with
> that, since they may not be very particular geographically.
>
> So, we just got a note from someone who says she and her spouse will be
> returning to the U.S. after several years of working (currently in
> Thailand), is interested in our community, would like to visit this 
> summer,
> and hopes we'll have a house to rent by then. It was probably not directed
> just to us, since neither our community nor our location was mentioned, 
> and
> it contained a number of misspellings.
>
> One of my neighbors felt suspicious that it could be a scam, though it
> seemed normal to me, misspellings and all.  Either way, I wanted to remind
> all good-hearted communitarians to never send money to someone who claims
> to want to rent or buy but for some reason or other, YOU need to send THEM
> some money. No, no, no, don't fall for that!
>
> And now back to your normal program.
>
>   Muriel
>   Shadowlake Village Cohousing
>
>
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