Room for rent scam [email protected]

Hi, I am finding this a bit like a scam…
I have a room for rent Ad in Gumtree Australia. And have received a txt, replied to it, and now this email came through:

"from: Katie cooper < [email protected] >
to:
date: Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 10:27 PM
subject: Re: North Bondi Room at O'donnell st.
mailed-by: gmail.com
signed-by: gmail.com

Hi
Many thanks for your response. I am 27 year old non smoker lady coming to Australia. I work as chef on cruise ship at the moment and i have limited time to surf the internet and also phone calls is also strictly limited due to nature of my work. Kindly make the arrangement for the total cost covering my first three months rent together with bond from 20th of July. I will also like you to get back to me with some photos of the room if you have them and your full home address for me to forward it to my mover to calculate the total cost of moving my little stuffs from USA. I will be waiting to read back from you. Cheers. Katie."

Searched for katie cooper and this name lights up on this forum….so I guess this scammer still active.

cheers

Hi and welcome rockersrevenge.
Thanks for posting & providing an update of this scammer's latest approach. It's definitely a scam, very glad to see you looked into it and avoided being scammed.
Good luck in finding a real tenant.

I got the same and they asked for my address to calculate the cost of moving and the cost for 3 months rent. I told them they could use any address in my suburb to calculate the cost of moving and provided the costof 3 months rent. They have then asked for me to provide my paypal details so that they can send payment through.

How is this a fraud? It does not involve checks.

The scammer wants to send you a fake Paypal payment. He has a fake Paypal address from a free email provider. The payment will look real. Its a screen shot of a fake payment. He will pretend to make an overpayment. He then will instruct you to pay a mover, shipper,agent or some third party mule. The fake Paypal email from the scammer would say that your Paypal funds will be released when you send the scammer (mover,agent or shipper) money via Western Union or Money Gram. In reality Paypal would never hold your funds.

Please post the email address and script the scammer used to help others.

Bryon

That sounds more logical as to how this scam would work.

This is the email I received from [email protected]

Hi Xxxxx,
Many thanks for your response let me introduce myself. I am 25 year young nonsmoker lady coming to Australia from Singapore. I work as chef on cruise ship at the moment and I have limited time to surf the internet and also phone calls are also strictly limited due to nature of my work. I will like you to kindly calculate the total cost covering my first three months’ rent together with deposit. I will also like you to get back to me with some pictures and your full home address for me to forward it to my mover to calculate the total cost of moving my stuffs to Australia. I will be waiting to read back from you.

Cheers
Jolene

Followed by:

Hi Xxxxxx,
Many thanks for getting back to me again. I am very social person that respect humanity and this make it so easy for me to get along with whoever that comes my way in life. I am arriving on 4th of August and stay more than a year in Australia working. I will be transferring the rent to you through PayPal and if you do not have one kindly set up an account with them in less than 5 minutes on http://www.paypal.com. I would have requested for your bank details but for the safety of you and me with giving bank details online, I prefer going through PayPal. I will be so happy to secure the room as soon as you get back to me with the PayPal name and email. I had attached pic of myself for you to know me. I will like to pay in advance through PayPal and my reason is that, I will be presenting the proof of my rent payment to my employer and also to the immigration at the port of entry into Australia.

Cheers
Jolene

This scammer is responding to so many ads on Craiglist that they are not reading what is posted.

From: < [email protected] >
Date: Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 11:31 AM
To: Xxxxxxx

is the room still available for rent??

Hi,
Warning to people!
I received text on my mobile then e-mail from Katie Cooper, looks this scammer is very active.

"Hi Stephan,
Many thanks for your response. I am 27 year old non smoker lady coming to Australia. I work as chef on cruise ship at the moment and i have limited time to surf the internet and also phone calls is also strictly limited due to nature of my work. Kindly make the arrangement for the total cost covering my first three months rent together with bond from 20th of October. I will also like you to get back to me with your full home address for me to forward it to my mover to calculate the total cost of moving my little stuffs from USA. I will be waiting to read back from you. Cheers. Katie."

Welcome to Scamwarners Stephan,

What email address did the scammer use with you?

Bryon

I just received the same text from [email protected] Did not reply. Gumtree ad had only just gone live. They sent a text saying "ONLY" reply to the email address, so that sounded scammy to begin with!

Hello!
Just the usual gumtree room for rent ad posting, it looks like Jolene has the power to reverse her age!
I'm sure a lot of women would kill for that... must be a side effect of scamming all night!
Her new email is [email protected]
Responce is as per below, luckily I found this site... though I would have stopped communication as soon as Western Union came up!

This is as of 28 January 2014 from Australia

First it comes as a text message, save it as a contact and when you try to call the number is actually 56 55 65 or something like that.

Email 1.

Hi ....,
Many thanks for your response let me introduce myself. I am Jolene 25 year young nonsmoker lady coming to Australia from Singapore. I work as chef on cruise ship at the moment and I have limited time to surf the internet but I will find time to call you. I will like you to kindly calculate the total cost covering my first three months’ rent together with deposit. I will also like you to get back to me with some pictures and your full home address for me to forward it to my mover to calculate the total cost of moving my stuffs to Australia. I had attached two pictures of myself for you to know me and I will be so happy if you can do the same. I will be waiting to read back from you.

Cheers
Jolene

Email 2.

Hi ...
Many thanks for getting back to me again. I am very social person that respect humanity and this make it so easy for me to get along with whoever that comes my way in life. I am arriving on 7th of Feb and stay more than a year in Australia working. I will be securing the room by transferring the rent to you through PayPal and if you do not have a paypal account kindly set up an account with them in less than 5 minutes on www.paypal.com. I would have requested for your bank details but for the safety of you and me with giving bank details online, I prefer going through PayPal. I will be so happy to secure the room as soon as you get back to me with the PayPal money request. All you need to do is to log into your PayPal and click request money, you will then send the money request of total 3 months to my email address for me to transfer the money. I will like to pay in advance through PayPal and my reason is that, I will be presenting the proof of my rent payment to my employer and also to the immigration at the port of entry into Australia.

Cheers
Jolene

Email 3. (I questioned the phone number)

Hi Ashley I would have called you earlier but it seems I lost your number here and kindly send it to me for me to have a phone conversation with you.

Cheers
Jolene

Email 4. (I told her I wasn't interested 'Katie')

Thanks for the humiliation Ashley.


Needless to say, she didn't email me back.

Looks like it wasn't housemate love at first type!

I damn glad that I found this forum otherwise I fell into the trap. I decided to post here to warn others. I felt so dumb to give my address / mobile.

I posted room rent on easyroommate. She requested my email address via easyroomate function.

Her email : jolene nguyen <[email protected]>

Email : 1

27 Jan 2014

i need a room to rent,kindly let me know if the room is still available .thanks

Email : 2

8 Feb 2014

hello do you stil have the room for rent?


jolene

---------------
On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 1:03 AM, jolene nguyen <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi ,
Many thanks for your response let me introduce myself. I am jolene,i am 26 years old young,single singaporean, nonsmoker lady coming to Singapore from Australia. I work at the moment and I have limited time to surf the internet and also phone calls are also strictly limited due to nature of my work. I will like you to kindly make the arrangement for the total cost covering my first three months’ rent together with deposit. I will also like you to get back to me with some pic and your full home address for me to forward it to my mover to calculate the total cost of moving my stuffs to Singapore. I will be waiting to read back from you.

Cheers
--------------

Email : 3

8 Feb 2014

hello

Many thanks for getting back to me again. I am very social person that respect humanity and this make it so easy for me to get along with whoever that comes my way in life,i am a very neat woman and i like a clean environment. I am arriving on 22nd of this month and stay more than a year in Singapore. I will be transferring the rent to you through PayPal and if you do not have one kindly set up an account with them in less than 5 minutes on http://www.paypal.com. I would have requested for your bank details but for the safety of you and me with giving bank details online, I prefer going through PayPal. I will be so happy to secure the room as soon as you get back to me with the PayPal name and email. I had attached pic of myself for you to know me. I will like to pay in advance through PayPal and my reason is that, I will be presenting the proof of my rent payment to my employer and also to the immigration at the port of entry into singapore.

Email : 4 (Asked : passport, family, employer, job title)

Hello

8 Feb 2014

Thanks so much,i am holding my spore passport,all my families mover back home to vietnam,i work with walton construction over here at the moment and i am coming to look for an office space over there for our new office,do get back to me with your paypal name and email address when you get back home,i wait to read back from you take good care and have a great weekend over there.


jolene

Looks as though Jolene is still hitting up gumtree, I am currenly in contact with Jolene who applied for a room I am advertising for rent.

I have to say though she is very good, her latested email to me is "I really need your Help"

"Can you please help me with the mover fees today and deduct it when funds arrived to your account, the reason why is that I will be charged more for the late payment. Your kindness will be highly appreciated and in abundant you will be blessed"
Then I received an email from Paypal or I thought I had it looks very legite and as this is my first time ever using paypal i would not have known it was not the real site,although I logged in and the site shows no money bending just the email I sent out although I had an email telling me I have money and it will take 3-5 days to clear and be deposited into my bank account. This got me thinking and then I received an email from Jolene advising me to make a payment of $875 for the cost of the shipping agent and a $100 for the western union money transfer charges .

It was when she emailed me with the details of the shipping company that rang the bell "Danny Beger with an address in Paris France I googled the addess and its an empty lot and the name does not match anyone" so I thought I'd google Jolene Nguyen as this is the name she provided and noticed all the other scams attached to her name and gumtree rooms for rent.

So thank you for posting your near misses as I had actually borrowed $1000 from my dad to make the payment tomorrow morning.

Its a bad thing being a trustworthy person sometimes you forget that not all out there are the same.

so thank you

this first came in as a text from +12139296579, where my email address was requested. I provided it, already 99% suspicious but also curious, and got this today, from: [email protected]


Hi XXX,
Thanks for your response, let me introduce myself.. I'm Michelle, 26 year single nonsmoker lady coming to Canada. I work as chef on cruise ship at the moment and I have limited time to surf the internet and also phone call is also strictly limited due to the nature of my job, but I will still find a chance to call you.
However, I will like to know the total cost covering my first three months’ rent together with deposit so I could plan my budget. I will also like you to get back to me with some more picture and your postal code address for me to forward it to my mover to calculate the total cost of moving my stuff to Canada. I had attached picture of myself to put picture to a message, I will be waiting to read back from you soon.

Thanks

(213) 929-6579
NonFixedVOIP (CA area code)
e.g. Skype or Google Voice