Rental Scammer - [email protected]

I responded to an advert for an apartment to rent in 25 Westbrooke Dr, Sandton listed on private property website. I emailed the contact person for more details and he responded that he's Daven Morgan from London and he bought the apartment for his daugther during her studies in SA .......... I thought the deal sounded too good to be true and decided to go to the address to view the apartment from outside as it's not far from my workplace. And guess what I found , there is no number 25 in Westbrooke Dr. Realising this is a scam, I searched the internet using the email 'Daven Morgan' sent me. The results were overwhelming, there are so many similar scams out there. Hence I decided to share my story to warn other people. I have since sent an email to private property website administrators to remove the listing from their website.

Here is an email from Daven Morgan responding to my enquiry:

Daven Morgan <[email protected]>
Jan 2 (3 days ago)


Hello,

I just read your message regarding my apartment.
Sorry if my answer comes quite late, but your email arrived in my spam folder, and I couldn't see it until now.
I bought this apartment for my daughter during her studies in South Africa, but now she's back home permanently, so I'm renting the place for unlimited time.
The flat is fully furnished and renovated, exactly like in the photos.
You can use my furniture, or you can also use your own if you prefer. If you decide to use yours, you will have access to a large and well ventilated cellar, where you can store my furniture.
Also, very important, the utilities (cold/hot water, electricity, wireless broadband Internet, digital TV, 2 parking spots in garage, air conditioning, dishwasher, garbage disposal, microwave, refrigerator, washing machine, etc.) are included in the price of 5100 ZAR/month. The deposit is also 5100 ZAR, and you get it back, when you decide to leave the apartment (you will have to give me at least 30 days notice). As for me, you can rest assured that I will never ask you to leave the apartment.
Before we go any further I would like to know how many persons you intend to share the flat with, and for how long.
Now, a little bit about myself: My name is Daven Morgan and I'm a 49 years old graphic designer from London, planning to retire in the next 5 years.
I have a lovely wife, Christine and my daughter, Linda. I am very proud to say that soon I'm going to be a grandfather .
Another member of our family is a six year old Labrador Retriever which we all love, so, since I'm a pet owner myself, I will have no problem if you want to keep a pet in the house.
The only inconvenience is that my job doesn't allow me to leave London even for one single day. We just hired some new staff and I'm in charge of their training, so my schedule is pretty hectic right now.
But this won't affect the rental at all. I can make arrangements to rent the apartment from London (on my expense of course).

Looking forward to hear from you soon.

All the best from Britain!

Thank you, I have received exactly the same email. Also I thought it was concerning that I didn't get any contact details, I wanted to Skype with Daven but no contact details was given. I was concerned that he wanted to courier keys to me, surely the norm would be an estate agent if your letting a property in SA whilst living in London? He wanted rent and deposit paid in advance before you get the keys to just view the apartment. Really?! Please be careful people, I cannot confirm this is not the real thing but having seen the previous listing here and online I was concerned and had to let you know that really appears to be up dodge ally.

Here is Daven's second email to me:

Hello ,

First of all , I want to tell you that if you are ready to proceed with this transaction I will need to inform you the steps about how this service works
You will have 2 days to inspect the apartment before your final decision to rent . I will pay the shipping costs.

This is how they work :


1) I will make the delivery papers at TNT . After that I will send you a copy of my passport .


2) After I will make the papers for delivery they will require for your payment confirmation of the first month and the guarantee deposit(5100 ZAR +5100 ZAR= 10200 ZAR) to the company .TNT will send you a delivery notification to let you know they have the Keys and the papers in their custody .
Also TNT will give you further instructions about the money deposit .


3) After the payment is confirmed the delivery process will start and when you will receive the keys, you will have 2 days inspection period before your final decision to rent .


4) If all is in order, you will instruct TNT to give me the money. Further rents will be sent directly to my bank account.


5) If you refuse to rent the apt , TNT will give you a full refund (10200ZAR) and you will give them back the keys and the contract.


If you are interested to rent the apt please send me your information, so i can make the deal:



Name:..................
Address: ...............
City: .....................
Postal Code: ...............
Country: ..................
Phone number:...............


Thanks
Daven Morgan

Welcome to both of you!

@Cgreyvenstein: I can confirm that he is absolutely a scammer, without any doubt. The first email alone is enough, but the second email shows they are following the typical fake escrow route.

Thanks guys.

This confirmed my suspicions. I received the exact same email regarding another property. It was definitely too good to be true. And the name did not tie up with the email address.

Ray

Hi There.

Contacted the same guy. Then decided the deal is too good to be true and found this when I googled him.
Picked up on it after the second mail when certain questions was ignored for the same cookie cutter emails as posted above.

Going to put some effort into making sure he doesn't use that email address again.

Going to put some effort into making sure he doesn't use that email address again.

Hello Aelf and welcome to scamwarners.com

I am going to guess from this quote that you either intend to report the e-mail account for abuse or sign it up for as much spam as you can find.

This is not a good idea ! - It will only take the Scammer two minutes to open a new e-mail account and continue his activities (he will already have noted the details of the people that he has been dealing with).

Once he starts with a new e-mail address he will be lost to Web Searches for some time to come.

Wow I have just been corresponding with the same guys and had I paid the deposit it would of been an amount I caannot replace. Thank heavens I decided to investigate