Room for Rent Scammer - [email protected]

From: Manuel Medina Jimenez [mailto: [email protected] ]
Sent: 06 May 2010
To: Michelle
Subject: Re: Flat,


Hello,
My name is Jose Miguel Jimenez Medina and I am from Spain and the flat is still available for rent. I had an aunt in UK and after her death she left me her apartment from UK a few years ago.
The flat was redecorated last year and the flat is looking very nice and clean. The property has a fully furnished kitchen,clean and well tidy sitting rooms,laundry room,and fully furnished with home utilities like: electric shower, Lounge,Vacuum Cleaner,Toaster, Owen and microwave, dryer, iron, washing machine , refridgerator , dishwasher, powershower, heater, cable ready,tv set and dvd player,internet connection, equiped kitchen and everything a house needs. I m interrested in finding someone clean who can take care of this house more then getting money from renting it if you know what I mean.
Till last month the apartment was rented by some students from Germany and now they left and the apartment is available again for rent. The price I want is £440 per month,bills and council tax included and I am intrested in a long term agreement!
If you have the money I could come in the next few days to show you the apartment and maybe sign the rental agreementif you like it but first I have to be sure you are honest you really do need a place to live because two weeks ago a person from Cardiff told me he is really interested and he asked me to go to Cardiff to meet him and sign the rental agreement and when I arrived there no person showed up to rent my place and I lost time and money for nothing.
I will wait for your e-mail,Miguel Jimenez

The thief will tell you that you can rent his accommodation only if you can prove that you have genuine interest. He will ask you send money by wire transfer (normally Western Union) to yourself or a member of the family to show that you have sufficient finances and that you are not a "time waster".

Another variation of this scam is that you need to send (by Western Union) money in order that the keys and other documents can be couriered to you

He will ask you to send him the transfer details.

Make no mistake ! Western Union Transfers can be picked up virtually anywhere in the world and with the minimum of identification. They are almost impossible to trace once the money has been collected. You will never get to see the accommodation or your money again.

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

Hi,
I have recently had "contact" from this scammer too, when i enquired about a too good to be true flat to let.

The email he sent in response to my initial enquiry is exactly word for word as what you posted above.

I then sent him an email saying i was no longer interested in the apartment as the deposit and advance rent would be too much and he then sent me another email saying that he would reduce the money required to secure the flat, however i would need to post some money via western union which i would "get back" in order to secure the flat - as soon as i saw that it immediately set off alarm bells - so i googled the name and have come across this post (so glad i did!!)

I have contacted the website which has the ad for the flat posted to advise them that i believe it is a scammer at work and hopefully they will be able to remove the ad (its on houseladder.co.uk) before anyone does get scammed.

The individual(s) posing as Jose Manuel Medina Jimenez has posted numerous property for rent ads. Searching for the string "DSS welcome" (as he's targeting desperate individuals) as a proprty search reveals a number of re-posted ads with identical photos, slightly amended descriptions and different rental amounts.

He's also operating with the mail address "[email protected]"

Tracing his originating mail IP doesn't reveal anything suspicious as it's sent from a Google hosted service, but I'm in dialogue with this person right now regarding a property in Norwich, has anyone got any tips so that I can extract more information that could prove useful to the police etc?

Many thanks

Paul

Hi Paul

Welcome to Scamwarners

has anyone got any tips so that I can extract more information that could prove useful to the police etc?

Yes, I do, if this person has any of your real identifiable information, if you have used the email address you use for your every day emailing then the best thing to do is to stop emailing and completely ignore them.

If you have any information then making it public will be a huge help but please do not gather any further information once you know its a scam.

These scammers are criminals and they can be dangerous, they will often make threats which in most cases are baseless but if they knew where you lived, a death threat certainly wouldn't be very nice.

It is also worth pointing out that most scammers operate from countries where the system is suitably corrupt to allow them to scam with virtually no chance fo being caught regardless of how much information you can gather on them, your police will have no jurisdiction, the scammers local police will have no inclination and I haven't started on how you need to go about proving the crime.

If you do want to "Bait" the scammers, then that ok too, but please do so safely, you can learn to safe bait at www.419eater.com