Apartment scam/ roomscam/ rental scam/ London UK Craigslist

BEWARE OF
http://www.thepalacereservation.com
http://www.rentalapartmentcitys.com/id32.html
Sites reported for closure - Ralph
It's the SAME FAKE company

I am from Paris and I am looking for an apartment this summer and when I send them emails I received exactly the same answer.

De : thepalace reservation <[email protected]>
Objet : Rép : -93;40 / 1br - 102 George Street, Mayfair, London, W1U 8NT (CENTRAL LONDON)
Date : 29 avril 2010 19:59:09 UTC+08:00

Thank you very much for your inquiry.

For your travel dates we could offer you the following options:

Our HOLIDAY APARTMENT is £280/week.

We are available throughout that time. The cost per night is £40.00 a night,
so for 6 weeks the total is £1680.

This includes all utilities. There is a fully equipped kitchen. We supply all linens, and there is parking space.
There is high speed wireless internet for your convenience. If you are interested we take 40% and refundable £200 security deposit to confirm your booking and the rest of the balance on your arrival.

Or you may pay in full at the time of the booking. The amount of 40% would be £674 plus £200 security deposit making £874, we will secure and reserve the apartment if you make this deposit .

We accept money transfer or bank transfer only.

Please let us know if you are interested and we can go from there.

You can view more pictures and information on our website at:
http://www.thepalacereservation.com

Thank you and have a great day.

De : Rental Apartment Citys <[email protected]>
Objet : Rép : Book Now In Knightsbridge Studio Apartment per night £35 a week £230
Date : 2 mai 2010 01:49:37 UTC+08:00


Thank you very much for your inquiry.

For your travel dates we could offer you the following options:


Our HOLIDAY APARTMENT is £230./week.Studio

We are available throughout that time. The cost per day is £35.00,So
for 6 weeks the total is £1380.

This includes all utilities. There is a fully equipped kitchen. We
supply all linens, and there is parking space.

There is high speed wireless internet for your convenience. If you are
interested we take 40% and refundable £200 security deposit to confirm
your booking and the rest of the balance on your arrival.

Or you may pay in full at the time of the booking. The amount of 40%
would be £552 plus £200 security deposit making £752, we can confirm
your booking if you make the deposit . We accept money transfer or
bank transfer only.

Please let us know if you are interested and we can go from there.

You can view more pictures and information on our website at:

http://www.rentalapartmentcitys.com/id32.html

I began to be very suspicious! Plus they put the same pictures of the same bathroom for 4 different studios on craigslist, one of the address they use is the address of ParkInn Hotel, they only accept bank transfer, on of the domain name of their website is registered in Funchal something like that (I don't even know where the hell in the world is this country located) and on top of that thepalacereservation.com has disappeared from the web, the domain name is for sale ... thank God I didn't send them my money!
Same for http://www.upwardlodonlettings.com BIG FAKE!

Excuse my english I just want everybody to be aware of their wrongdoings
Nice try anyway

Oh and let me add
http://www.homeforhomes.com
Site reported for closure - Ralph

They posted on craigslist the same pictures to illustrate a bayswater apartment that they send me by email for a marylebone studio.

Hi Leyn

Welcome to Scamwarners

Thank you for posting this information, it will help to prevent other from being scammed, well done.

If you could please add the headers from these people is will be a huge help in getting these fake sites closed down.

If you need help to find the headers, please let us know which email provider you use (Hotmail/Gmail/Yahoo/Outlook/ect) and we can give you the instructions for finding them.

Please remember to remove your own name and email address when posting

Here it is
From rentalapartmentcitys.com

X-Message-Delivery: Vj0xLjE7dXM9MDtsPTE7YT0xO0Q9MTtTQ0w9MA==
X-Message-Status: n:0
X-SID-PRA: Rental Apartment Citys <[email protected]>
X-SID-Result: Pass
X-AUTH-Result: PASS
X-Message-Info: JGTYoYF78jEHjJx36Oi8+a6J0iEbrZtt8uADlv5nVvdW/v0Fxy+pHOTVXTst+NjDoKZAoqnKxnKA25QLbk7yJg+ROBI7ENxJ
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Received: by mail-ww0-f46.google.com with SMTP id 34so857803wwb.19
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Date: Sat, 1 May 2010 10:49:37 -0700
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re=3A_Book_Now_In_Knightsbridge_Studio_Apartment_per_n?=
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?ight_=A335_a_week_=A3230?=
From: Rental Apartment Citys <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Return-Path: [email protected]
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 01 May 2010 17:49:41.0795 (UTC) FILETIME=[AD54B730:01CAE956]

Hope you have all the information you need
Thank you for your help

That will be a huge help, thank you.

I have passed on the information and our site killers are in the process of killing these sites thanks to your help

I am not sure if this is a scam, so I thought I would post it to you readers to see what you think.

I am moving to London and I am currently looking for apartments to rent. I found two possibilities on Craigslist, so I emailed both people. I received the same response from both people even though the responses came from two different email addresses and names (fernando martorel and eddy lomax). I have pasted the responses below:

From [email protected]

Hello. My asking price is GBP 460 per month + bills and council taxes estimated at GBP 100 . I am requesting only 1 month of rent as deposit (GBP 560).
The apartment is very clean and I want to rent it to someone who will be careful and thoughtful.
Just to mention few, it includes:
Central Heating, Refrigerator, Ironing Board, Good wireless internet Connection, Washing machine, Dishwasher, Microwave Oven, Television with Built-in DVD Player, Coffee Maker, Double Sofabed in Sitting Room, Dining Area, Hairdryer, Internet connection, phone, washing machine with dryer, cable TV and most important a parking place.
I am working in Spain and I am here with my family. For viewing the best would be to reach an agreement and fix a date when I came back in country.
As beeing very busy with my work, time is very important for me, in conclusion no free time to waste. Before booking my plane tickets I would like to be certain about your rent intentions.
If there are any questions please feel free and ask me.
I would also like to know how many persons will occupy the apartment and for how long would like to sign the rent contract. (any pets? cats or dogs?)
Waiting for your response
--
From [email protected]

Hello. My asking price is GBP 440 per month + bills and council taxes estimated at GBP 100 . I am requesting only 1 month of rent as deposit (GBP 540).
The apartment is very clean and I want to rent it to someone who will be careful and thoughtful.
Just to mention few, it includes:
Central Heating, Refrigerator, Ironing Board, Good wireless internet Connection, Washing machine, Dishwasher, Microwave Oven, Television with Built-in DVD Player, Coffee Maker, Double Sofabed in Sitting Room, Dining Area, Hairdryer, Internet connection, phone, washing machine with dryer, cable TV and most important a parking place.
I am working in Spain and I am here with my family. For viewing the best would be to reach an agreement and fix a date when I came back in country.
As beeing very busy with my work, time is very important for me, in conclusion no free time to waste. Before booking my plane tickets I would like to be certain about your rent intentions.
If there are any questions please feel free and ask me.
I would also like to know how many persons will occupy the apartment and for how long would like to sign the rent contract. (any pets? cats or dogs?)
Waiting for your response
--

I have continued to correspond with the two people because I want to find out more about the apartments; since the first two emails, each of their responses have been completely different. Both have offered to meet with me for an apartment viewing. "Fernando" even gave me his phone number, which is a Spanish number, so that I could call him for more information. I cannot meet with them for apartment viewings yet because I will not be heading to London until August or September; "Fernando" has offered to hold the apartment for me, though.

I suppose the thing that kind of weirded me out about the situation is the identical initial emails; is this a scam or is it some kind of Craigslist response template that I am unfamiliar with?

ETA: I just did a search of the IP addresses of both senders. Since both senders have Microsoft emails, I searched for their "originating" IP addresses. The originating IP addresses of all of their emails are in Catalonia, Spain (one of the emails is from Almoster, Catalonia, Spain while the other six were from Reus, Catalonia, Spain). All of the originating IP addresses were different (is that weird?) except for one--I received an email from both "Fernando" and "Eddy" from the originating IP address of 81.184.136.88. Is that strange?

Hi tybbmesa, welcome to Scamwarners.

What you have received is most definately a scam and I am glad you spotted it.

Please dont reply further to either of them and eventually they will leave you alone.

Scammers will often steal each others scripts to use themselves so it is quite possible that one or both of these scammers have stolen the same initial email, it is also possible that both scammers belong to the same group, there eis no way to be absolutely sure at this stage.

Scammers operate from all over the world including Spain but by comparrison there are not all that many scammers from there, while it is possible that both were working from Spain, I cant help but think the IPs are wrong.

No big deal either way, regardless of where they are or even if they are the same person, both sets of emails are from scammers and the best thing to do is to ignore them.

If you could please post the headers minus any of your own details as well as any further emails you received it may well prevent somebody else from being scammed.

If you have any questions please ask

I am posting the headers from the first email I received from each person; let me know if you want the other five headers.

[email protected]

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Return-Path: <[email protected]>
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by mx.google.com with ESMTP id z14si12110108anl.148.2010.07.07.10.28.55;
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Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of [email protected] designates 65.55.34.80 as permitted sender) client-ip=65.55.34.80;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of [email protected] designates 65.55.34.80 as permitted sender) [email protected]
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Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Return-Path: [email protected]
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="_2b3bce3e-b4de-4618-afe4-d8fd9c87cb7a_"
X-Originating-IP: [80.32.46.150]
--
[email protected]

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Message-ID: <[email protected]>
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Thanks for the information,

They certainly do appear to be in Spain. As I said, this is not unheard of, just a little unusual to have 2 at the same time.

I am starting to think more and more that it is the same person, I do find it unusual however that there are differences after the first email which makes me unsure.

The one thing that is definate, it is definately a scam

There are many legitimate rental sites that you can rent from. Here in the states, there are (Removed * - Michelle)

Some of them have listings overseas or have sister sites overseas. I have heard good things about holiday lettings. If you google vacation rentals followed by the city you are looking for, you should find some legitimate rentals. It costs to be on the first page of google and I haven't seen a scam listing with placement like that

If you find a rental online and they don't have a listing at one of the major sites, that is a major red flag.

Best of luck

*The site names have been removed.

There are no doubt many 'legitimate' rental sites, but very few (if any) can guarantee that they are one hundred percent 'scam free'. - Michelle

This scammer has a new website: http://www.kingshomeapartments.com

He tried to sell me a studio in NYC for a week..looked up his email and found this.

Just a warning for everyone out there.

Kingshomeapartments.com = scam

Someone quote my post so the search engines index it better.

Welcome John23.

Thanks for posting this information. Kingshomeapartments.com is definitely fraudulent. It was already identified by our fake site killers. It's been added to the database of fraudulent sites kept by aa419.org and reported to it's hoster or registrar. The database entry is here: http://db.aa419.org/fakebanksview.php?key=51966

Confirmed scam where a e-mail from a lady from Germany living in U.K. with a daughter is pushing to rent a unit in Toronto area, paying a full year's rent upfront, no credit report and providing a fake ID and picture of herself and her daughter. BEWARE!

Copy and contents of e-mail from SCAMMER (African & from UK, possibly) as follows:

CONFIRMED SCAM FOR A TORONTO RENTAL:
"Thanks for the information. I got your mail this morning but i was busy, i sincerely apologise for any delayed response. I am relocating to Canada for investment purpose. My family has given me the power of attorney to invest in Canada. I will be investing in real Estate upon my arrival. I am a German citizen but based in the U.K. I am a contractor.

Like i stated in my previous email, i will sign only a year lease. I will be occupying this rental with my daughter. My Husband is on a Rig operations in Qatar,(Crude Oil Exploartion) he will visit us periodically. Probably twice or trice within the stipulated 12months lease. My daughter will be 8 years in a couple of weeks. Are there good schools close to this rental? What is the proximity to shopping mall?

What is the dimension of this unit. Is there any floor plan available? Do you have any idea on the utilities cost per month?

You can arrange for viewing with Mr Lance Paige. [email protected], Contact phone number for Mr Lance:647-895-2174.

Following my busy schedule this period,i will not have the time to follow up with credit checks so i have decided to pay for the 12months rent and all deposit in full. Mr Lance will take care of the payment prior to our arrival. I will like to view the lease agreement.For your information, i do not smoke and no pets.Mrs Munoz was my first and only landlady here in the U.K before we bought our home

These are my references.


Mr Lance Paige
647-895-2174


Eng. Edward Jamieson
EU Workforce Ltd
Pentax House, Southhill Avenue,
Northolt road, Middlesex,
South Harrow,
HARROW,
HA2 0DU
[email protected]
44-702-408-6784

Prof. Darryl Munoz
[email protected]
44-702-409-7704

I will be arriving on or before 15th of July. Please let me know when we can move in. I will mail passport copies of all accupants and financial/personal documents through a priority mail service. Please provide a mailing address on receipt of this mail. Names of Occupants: Mrs Doreen Luder Rustom. Eng. Ashak Rustom. Miss Evelyn Rustom. I will creat time to call. You may call me anytime tomorrow.01-44-702-402-6697.


Best regards,

Mrs Doreen Luder Rustom



******
2nd e-mail with ID of another person attached:

Thank you so much for your time, the contents of your mail were
clearly understood. I sincerely appreciate the informations.

I can assure you that i am completely satisfied with this unit. I
have instructed Mr Lance to effect and overnight the rents and
deposit. Please stop all future showings/advert placement on this
rental.

Please provide a mailing address on receipt of this mail. I will look
forward to the lease agreement.

I will call you before tomorrow morning your time. I look forward to
meet you soon. Let me know if you have a clear view of the attachment.

Best regards,

Doreen

hey
i'm new here and just stumbled upon this ad on craigslist:

http://london.craigslist.co.uk/roo/2464519514.html
--------------------------
£88 Spacous Single Room with own Bathroom&Toilet, with WiFi (CENTRAL LONDON, Westminster zone 1)
-------------------------
Single room vacant and available in my flat. You'll be having the room to yourself and access to the living room and kitchen. Area is a very cool, nice and its a people friendly environment. Flat is located very close to tube stations, stores, hospitals, clubs, bars, pubs and so on. Apartment is in a kinda family community where every one tries to please his neighbor little wonder we are known as the best city in London. looking for a female or male flatmate who wants to live in a peaceful,friendly,tidy and considerate Flatmates.

A bit about my apartment...

Area: 01- Central London
Availability: Now
£88.00Per week, £356.00 Per month Deposit: £300.00 (Refunded During move in)
(All bills inclusive: electricity, gas, cable, phone. internet access )
Maximum Move- Out: Short term/long term

House amenities:
3 Bedrooms, 3 Bathrooms,1 kitchen,2 stores
wireless internet facility,the apartment
Furnished, Air conditioning, Private entrance,
Private bath, Reading desk&chair, Phone jack, TV, Cable jack, Closet.

Sex: Female ( Straight )
Professional , Capricorn

Features include: Brownstone,very good Parking space available,
Dishwasher,Microwave, Kitchen access, Washing Machine.
Neighborhood: GYM, Alarm system, Cable ready,Washer/Dryer,

The nearest tube station to the apartment is station Victoria which is few minute walk from the step of my apartment. Close to it's owned " London School Of Economics And Political Science (LSE)" as well as "Kings College London ( KCL)" train stations, 10 mins from London Bridge.

Hope you like it? Get back to me if you would like to know more.
Cheers.........
-------------------------

what would you say? scam?
looks a little bit suspicious to me ?

I think this says it all:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22You%27ll+be+having+the+room+to+yourself+and+access+to+the+living+room+and+kitchen.%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a