Scam on wg-gesucht and AirBnB [email protected]

Hey all,

Just coming here to inform you all of scam I ran into.

There was an announcement on wg-gesucht (a legit website for finding shared-housing in Germany). One of the offers, however, was some kind of scam where they demand money-down before a viewing can be arranged, and they claim to use AirBnB as an intermediary.

The e-mail accounts:
The account that corresponded about wg-gesucht: [email protected]
The e-mail account they claimed was AirBnB: [email protected]
They say to contact the false air-bnb adress with the following ID-code: 2D4KOB8D

The ID-code has also been uploaded to the actual AirBnB facebook a while ago, reporting it as a scam, so it seems it's just a generic number they use.

Hope to have informed you all sufficiently.

Welcome to Scamwarners filterman,

Can you post the emails sent to you. Please remove any of your personal information from them. Scammers often re-use the same script. Some people may do a search of the wording.

I'm happy to do this. However, I'm going to have to figure out exactly what I should filter out of the headers, and what to leave in, so this might take me a bit of time .

Hello,

I went through all the e-mails and the headers. I'm afraid I have no idea what information I should leave in the header, and what I should remove, so I decided to play it on the safe side, since these people do have my real name and telephone number, and left out the headers. Additionally, I only provide here the e-mails that sounded very formulaic or were addressed to multiple recipients. Again, since they have my name and phone-number I do not want to make it too easy for them to identify me.


First e-mail from Alysa, responding to a PM sent via wg-gesucht:

Hallo,

Die Wohnung ist ab sofort , schön, sauber, ruhig, hat alle Einrichtungen und die Versorgungsunternehmen ein Mensch braucht, einschließlich Stromversorger, Kabel-TV, Parkplatz zugewiesen, Wäsche in der Einheit, Klimaanlage, High-Speed-Internet, gut erzogene Katzen / Haustiere sind erlaubt.Die monatliche Miete 425€ mit allen Utilities enthalten ist (Wärme, Strom, Wasser). Für welchen Zeitraum Sie es brauchen und ab wann?
Ich kaufte diese Wohnung für meine Tochter während ihres Studiums, aber jetzt ist sie wieder zu Hause dauerhaft in London, so dass ich es mieten.
Wir nutzen den Platz nicht mehr, so können Sie es sogar für einen langfristig mieten.
Ich hoffe, dass können Sie mir einige persönliche Informationen über sich.

Grüße

Hi,

The apartment is now available , nice, clean, quiet, has all the facilities and the utilities a person needs including , fitted kitchen, cable TV, HiFi, central heating, bath, dishwasher, laundry service, washing machine.air condition.The pets are allowed.The monthly rent is 425€ with all utilities included (heat, electricity, water). The renting period is undefined.
I live in London and I have a small travel agency in Germany.I bought this apartment for my daughter during her studies, but now she has a new job as a corporate manager here in London , so I'm renting it out.
We will not use the place any more, so you can rent it even for a long term.
Let me know if you are ready to rent.

Regards

Second e-mail from Alysa, after interest was shown

Hi,
Last time when I wanted to rent no one showed up so I lost time and money.So I decided to make the transaction through AIRBNB (http://www.airbnb.com) .They have the key and the contract , we will use their sistem so you can inspect the apartment.They will act as a third party so the deal will be safe.
If you are ready to make a deal please email me with:
-arrival
-renting period
-name and address
-children
-pets, and Airbnb will send you a signed contract and an invoice with further details regarding the terms of the deal.
I require 1 moth rent+ Kaution=1250 euro.
Waiting for your e-mail and have a nice da!y

Third e-mail from Alysa, telling me to contact airbnb with a certain id-code

Hi,
It is not listed on Airbnb because it is a rent for a long period.They just work as a third party.
You can contact them at [email protected] id code 2D4KOBD8

First e-mail from fake AirBnB, after relaying the id-code and my interest

Yes we do have this apartment in our database.We work as a third party in this deal because the renter made a contract with us to rent the apartment in his name.We are a well known and big company,your funds are 100% secured. The deposit must be for 1 month +kaution in our trust account.
After the deposit is confirmed we establish a meeting to view the apartment.
In case that you decide to rent we make the contract ,in case you decide not to rent we refund your deposit in 24 hours.
If you are interested please email us with your name and address and we will issue an invoice.

Thank you,
Alejandra Queen,Trust and Safe AirBnb Department
http://www.airbnb.com

End of emails

After this I was sure it was a scam. I confirmed this by asking a few more questions, but then let the conversation die out. I do not think that any of these following e-mails were formulaic, so I leave them out here.

Hope to have been of help. If anyone is still interested in the headers, please let me know exactly what info you need from the headers, and I'll be happy to extract it for you.

Hello filterman,
Don't worry about posting the headers in this case. Just post the body of the emails after removing your personal information.

Filterman posted first

[email protected] is a free email address used by the scammer and is not associated with the legitimate website http://www.airbnb.com

Welcome to Scamwarners!

Post all the headers except:
*remove your name
*remove your email address
*if you run your own mail server, remove its name and, if it has an externally visible IP address, its IP address.
You can replace your name and address with "snip" or "me" or the like.

If any string of characters with no space is longer than about 132 characters, either insert spaces or delete the whole string. This often happens with the "b=" clause of domain key signatures (which we don't understand so I just replace the whole string with "aoeu") and some other header which may be X-RocketyMMF or something like that.

The scammer is more proficient at language than many of them, and wrote both English and German (neither is a machine translation of the other), but still shows traces of being African.