Rental Scammer - [email protected]

From: Christie-Leigh G <[email protected]>


Hi,

Yes i have rooms available and my apartment is a well furnished 2 bedroom apartment. One room is rented and the second bedroom is available for rent.

The apartment is located at 101 Dorset Street Lower, Dublin 1 which is in the city. There are nearby supermarket, restaurants and its just few minutes walk away from public transport.

You would occupy your personal room and there is a furnished living room which you would share, dining, kitchen with Internet (wi-fi) that you can access from any part of the apartment, washing machine is available too. The rent is 350EUR all bills inclusive and deposit of 450EUR is required and which you would get back after your stay in the apartment.

You can find attached the pictures of the apartment for you to know what it looks like.

I hope to read from you again soon.

Christie.

From: Christie-Leigh G <[email protected]>


Hi Michelle

Now you can find attached the contract and my passport as promised. you have to print the contract, sign it and have it scan back to me.

And regarding the payment, since bank transfer takes few days and there is only today and tomorrow for the working days before your arrival so i would suggest you make the payment to me by Money Gram Transfer because this way i can confirm the payment 30 minutes after you transfer it. this way i can quickly prepare myself to be in Dublin on Monday to welcome you and fix you into the apartment. below is my details you need to make the payment by Money Gram..

Name: Christie-Leigh Gericke
Address: 12 Artema Street, Kiev Ukraine.

So i look forward to receive the signed contract and the Money Gram receipt.

Have a nice day.

Christie.

This person asks for a deposit payment via Western Union, MoneyGram, pre-paid credit card or bank transfer with a promise that you can have the keys to a property that does not belong to him.

Sounds safe. It's not!

At other times, he will ask for proof that you are able to pay the deposit and rent due to a string of time wasters.
This proof is in the form of a Western Union or MoneyGram payment to a lawyer,a friend or family member.

In either case, if payment is made and you give this person the details, they will collect the money.
You will not hear from them again.

All the details such as names, addresses, pictures etc. that the scammer uses in order to back up his story, are stolen from elsewhere.

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 Craigslist, Gumtree or similar listing sites. If you receive any requests from 'Landlords' asking for some kind of payment 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.

[email protected]

Scammer seen using Fake Lost or Stolen Irish Passport Number :-

IRL PV331304

I replied to a number of roomshare ads on Daft.ie. Among others, I received the following reply in my inbox.

Christie Leigh <[email protected]>

Hi,

Yes i have rooms available and my apartment is a well furnished 2 bedroom apartment.

The apartment is located at 31 Cumberland Street, N, Dublin 1 which is in the city. There are nearby supermarket, restaurants and its just few steps away to Sean McDermott Street & Gardiner Street bus stations, so you can access public transport easily.

There are 2 separate bedrooms which each flatemate occupies one each and you would share living room, dining, kitchen with Internet (wi-fi) that you can access from any part of the apartment, washing machine is available too. The rent for each room is 370EUR all bills inclusive and deposit of 450EUR is required and which you would get back after your stay in the apartment.

The whole apartment rent is 740EUR and deposit of 900EUR is required.
 
You can find attached the pictures of the apartment for you to know what it looks like.

I look forward to reading from you again soon.

When I went to Daft to double-check the rental info, the posting had been taken down. I used Google's cache feature to see the original ad. That should have been my first red flag, but I was desperate enough to find a rental that I did not consider it a show stopper.

I see now that since email communications that go through Daft include bold warnings against scams and sending advance payment by Western Union, Christie was careful to steer our communication away from Daft.

Red flag number two is that it took four rounds of email to receive any photos of the place. When they arrived, the photo of the living room looked great; full of plants. Again, too good to be true.

Hi,

Good to know you are interested Unfortunately you can only see the neighborhood and the building from outside because i am not in Dublin right now which is the reason why i need someone to occupy the apartment.

You can check the neighborhood in person or via map, you also have the pictures of the apartment in the previous email i sent you. if everything is OK with you. let me know so we can get the necessary arrangement done after which i would travel down to fix you into the apartment.

Red flags number three and four were that Christie represented as if his/her own situation made it inconvenient to show the apartment before accepting payment. Again, Daft and others state loudly and clearly that viewing an apartment in person is standard procedure. It was about this time that I began to get suspicious, and I also had seen a couple of apartments in Dublin in person by this time.

Hi [finally used my name],

Attached again are the photos of the apartment. I hope you see them now?

And you can rent the apartment as soon as possible but if you are interested in renting the apartment and you want me to travel to Dublin to fix you into the apartment then we have to get the arrangement done and you make the payment of deposit and first month rent because this would give me the assurance that you would rent it. So i need the following details..

1) Your full name and address 2) Your move in date and move out date 3) Any means of your identity (Passport or ID card).

I need this details to prepare the contract because we need to legalize the rent by signing a contract after that you would proceed with the payment of the deposit and first month rent to confirm the reservation and an assurance towards the renting of the apartment. after that you would have the rental payment receipt in return for the payment made which you would have with the contract and i can arrive in Dublin to fix you into the apartment.

I look forward to reading from you again soon.

In retrospect, it occurred to me that the reason this person uses the same name to run this scam again and again is that it is the name on the bank account. Daft, ScamWarners and others advise against sending money via Western Union. Christie Leigh has gone through the effort to set up a bank account in that name, and is trying to make the most of it.

I received the 'contract' in a separate thread, which described itself as being "a legal contract between Christie-Leigh Gericke and" myself. Although I conducted a Google search against "Christie Leigh" and the email address [email protected] in the beginning, it was only when I Googled "Christie-Leigh Gericke" that I found this thread on this board. Thank you, red flag number five.

I stopped responding to Christie at this point, but received two more emails under separate threads, instructing me to contact Christie. I have given it a few weeks for the dust to settle (though I can't imagine Christie not reading this post on this board) before posting here. A Google search helped to save me from losing any money; hopefully I can help someone else who is desperate for a place to stay avoid losing money as well.