Rental Scammer - [email protected]

It's happening in Cardiff! I'm relocating to Cardiff and i've already encountered one fraudster basically through terrible English and the mention of Western Union I put two and two together and just didn't reply. However, I placed an ad on Gumtree and someone replied with an email address referring me to a Claire Baker [email protected]. I emailed and was sent photos of a lovely flat as usual. I did think the price was too good to be true but I enquired further. Plus, probably a generalisation, but the English in the emails was perfect and the messages coherent to what I was sending. Then yesterday she asked for the standard:

Your full name:
Present address:
Confirmed move in date:
Contact number:

So I sent her my current address, but not in the UK in Spain (as I know ordinarily this would cause problems for a landlord). I also asked about the 'fellow tenant' and she sent me an email address and name; Hannah Mason [email protected], I knew instantly something was wrong as they both have the same email address. Today I received the 'tenancy agreement' from Myers, Fletcher and Gordon and the picture of a beach at the top instantly put my mind at rest. Then I googled it and found this thread. It's so annoying because i'm not usually gullible and I can normally tell if i'm being scammed, I do hope these people are stopped! Did anybody do anything about it? Alert the police? Or maybe sent a threatening message back to these fake email addresses?

Sending a threatening email to a scammer is not recommended as he may have some of your real life details.
Could you please post here the emails that he sent to you, after removing your personal details.
Thanks.

Happened in Bristol as well. Posted an advert on GumTree that we were house-hunting, and got this reply:

From: David
I am very delighted to inform you that i have a tastefully furnished accommodation that perfectly suits your requirement, kindly contact my wife via clairebr1234 @hotmail.co.uk for more details

Many thanks

I didn't like the look of it and so googled the email address, which brought me here- glad I caught it before we went further!

It's a shame- I've generally been quite lucky with Gumtree.

Exactly the same thing happened to me in London today - identical email and text. I thought it was a bit suspect so I googled it and found this thread, thanks for posting it or I might have been caught out too. I've reported it to gumtree, but thought it would be useful to put on here too!