Room for rent scammer - [email protected]

The text is usually mentioned on this site, with little variations:

Hello ,

My name is Alberta Rubin and I received your email of interest for the rental of my apartment located in Rue du Bugnon 22, Lausanne.
I am a research engineer for a pharmaceutical company and I bought the apartment while working on a 4 year contract in Switzerland as an alternative to renting . I the only owner of the apartment , the apartment is paid in full and with no legal problems . The apartment is not inhabited since I am no longer living in Lausanne. You could be my second tenants .
My intention is to rent the apartment to nice , clean people and in order to do that I would like to know a little something about you , like how many persons do you intend to live in my apartment,do you have a steady income ,etc . I must tell you from the beginning that I don't have a problem if you are a student and I don't have a problem with pets (I own a little dog myself) and I appreciate sincerity .
Also here is a little something about the apartment and myself so we can get to know each other.
The apartment is the one in the pictures but the furniture has been moved into my private storage room . If you don't have furniture I can take it back with no extra costs for you .
The rent for 1 month is 1000 Chf (for the entire apartment) including all utilities (water, electricity, Internet, cable, parking, air conditioning, dishwasher, garbage disposal, microwave, refrigerator, private washing machine). You can rent the flat for any period of time (open end contract).
About myself, I am 54 years old and as I told you I am a research engineer for pharmaceutical products , currently living in Liverpool , my home town .
You can move in the apt in the same day when you receive the keys. The only problem is that I`m already in Liverpool but I hope that we shall find a solution.

Thank you for your interest and looking forward to a future collaboration and friendship.

Best regards,

Alberta Rubin

How can I detect some info about the sender? I use gmail, and I just could find that it was sent from GMT+2.

Hello Vitaliy, and welcome to ScamWarners. Thank you for posting the above scam mail.

The information about the location of the sender of an email is frequently found in the header. To find the header in your Gmail account, open that mail, as if you are going to read it, and then, on the right, you will see a 'Reply' button. NEXT to that, there is a down-arrow. Click on that, and then select 'Show Original'. That will open the header information.

If you can copy that and post it here (please look through it carefully first, and remove your own name and email address from it - they may be in several places), we will be able to see if the sender's IP address shows where they are located. It very often does!

Thank you for the hint. If you can extract some info and post here, it would be great. The information is the following:

Delivered-To: [email protected]
Received: by 10.103.182.1 with SMTP id j1cs30986mup;
Fri, 21 May 2010 13:34:51 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.227.134.194 with SMTP id k2mr1862300wbt.118.1274474091063;
Fri, 21 May 2010 13:34:51 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <[email protected]>
Received: from mail.gmx.net (mail.gmx.net [213.165.64.20])
by mx.google.com with SMTP id x2si3922308wbv.84.2010.05.21.13.34.50;
Fri, 21 May 2010 13:34:51 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of [email protected] designates 213.165.64.20 as permitted sender) client-ip=213.165.64.20;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of [email protected] designates 213.165.64.20 as permitted sender) [email protected]
Received: (qmail 9330 invoked by uid 0); 21 May 2010 20:34:50 -0000
Received: from 172.158.72.172 by www060.gmx.net with HTTP;
Fri, 21 May 2010 22:34:48 +0200 (CEST)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 22:34:48 +0200
From: "Alberta Rubin" <[email protected]>
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
References: <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: ImmoScout24 - Contact Form (Reference no. 1864591)
To: "XXX" <[email protected]>
X-Authenticated: #65423711
X-Flags: 0001
X-Mailer: WWW-Mail 6100 (Global Message Exchange)
X-Priority: 3
X-Provags-ID: V01U2FsdGVkX193eHUTZxd3HI9hAXwblRPW/gwbxocD7Twgfk5nXb
lDqSl2Jy701anGxmyK02/b/ffD+PZfWWb1NA==
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-GMX-UID: UNnDf5MXTiE+USwogWdwNcV9ZUVSRFd7
X-FuHaFi: 0.52000000000000002

Hello,

I am one of those extremely niave, technologically challeneged people... and I got this exact email while looking for an apartment. So it is a scam then? Should I not reply the email then? And will having opened the email on my computer put me at risk for someone hacking into my computer?

Its nice to be able to ask someone who knows about this stuff!

Thank you

Hello,

I am one of those extremely niave, technologically challeneged people... and I got this exact email while looking for an apartment. So it is a scam then? Should I not reply the email then? And will having opened the email on my computer put me at risk for someone hacking into my computer?

Its nice to be able to ask someone who knows about this stuff!

Thank you

Hi! I don't think they are so hi-tech that they put some threat code into the letter. Anyway if they are, having a good antivirus will eliminate this problem.
The scam here is that you will send money to them if you are naive enough and get nothing for it.

Vitaliy: Unfortunately with this particular header, the IP address 172.158.72.172 is an AOL IP address, so does not tell us anything. Likewise, the Client-IP address 213.165.64.20 is an IP address of Gmx.net - so, again, that is no help in locating where this email was sent from. This happens sometimes!

Sunkissed: Vitaliy is correct: the scammer only sent you that email in the hope that you would believe it and send some money to be stolen. I have opened thousands of scammer's emails, and all of them have been just ordinary text emails. Of course it is always wise to never open attachments from anybody that you do not personally know and trust. But an ordinary email will have been fine to open.

No, don't reply to the email, though. It is a scam.

The second message from the scamster:

Hi Vitaliy,

Thank you very much for your reply and for your willingness to rent the apartment . I agree to rent the apartment to you if you are still interested , of course . I promise you that you will love the place.
Of course you will have to see the apartment before discussing any other details because you can't rent an apartment that you haven't seen . Since I removed the furniture from the apartment I am willing to send you the keys so you can visit it and see if you like it or not .
The delivery for the keys (apartment keys , inter-phone , alarm) and viewing permit (signed by me) , will be made through an authorized courier and using a Moneybookers Escrow Account to make sure that we can trust each other .
I will explain the procedure if you are interested so please email me as soon as you read this message because I really need to take care of this matter.

Alberta Rubin

By the way I wonder why all of them use so uncommon typing: commas and periods are rounded by spaces, while in rules of typing it is just one space next to the symbol (. or ,).

Hi,

I also received a same mail regarding the apartment. I just wanted to check few things.

1)Where is the apartment mentioned to all who got this mail for, i received it for an apartment in Switzerland.
2) I also received a mail about the moneybookers account where i am supposed to deposit the money. And after i am done depositing, i would receive the set of keys to look at the apartment.

Please let me know if this is a Scam.

Rockquatic

Hi,

I also received a same mail regarding the apartment. I just wanted to check few things.

1)Where is the apartment mentioned to all who got this mail for, i received it for an apartment in Switzerland.
2) I also received a mail about the moneybookers account where i am supposed to deposit the money. And after i am done depositing, i would receive the set of keys to look at the apartment.

Please let me know if this is a Scam.

Rockquatic

Hello, Rockquatic!

The address of the apartment is mentioned in the first letter:
1. Rue du Bugnon 22, Lausanne (that is the South-West part of Switzerland).
2. Of course it IS a scam, cause on this forum there are lots of scam-letters published containing absolutely the same words (I wonder if the scamsters are lazy enough to create a new text?).
So don't let them scam you! But you also can play with them trying to find more useful information

Hello rockquatic - Yes, it is a scam.

Here is an example of a scammer's email explaining about using Moneybookers:

1 - I go to the MoneyBookers Office and leave the Keys in your name as the intended receiver.
2 - MoneyBookers will check the envelope to see if everything is OK with it and also the legal papers that will come along with the Keys.
3 - MoneyBookers will send you a delivery notification to let you know they have the Keys and the papers in their custody, in which you will be told that they have the Keys and that they checked it.
4 - At this point you will have to go to a WesternUnion Agent Location and make a money transfer deposit on the MoneyBookers agent name in London assigned with this transaction for the amount we agreed, the total amount you shall deposit is for the first month of rent.
5 - After you make the deposit you will have to send the infos about the money deposit to MoneyBookers (MTCN#, sender's name and address)
6 - MoneyBookers will verify the payment informations and if everything is in order they will deliver the Keys and the contract to you .

And this is what really happens:

1. The scammer pretends that they have deposited the keys and papers at Moneybookers. They don't really do this, though - because they don't have any apartment keys to deposit. Their story about letting an apartment is invented.

2. Moneybookers checks nothing - because there is nothing deposited to check.

3. The scammer now sends an email from a fake Moneybookers address, hoping that you will believe it is from the real Moneybookers.

4. The scammer, pretending to be Moneybookers, tells you about a fake Moneybookers agent who needs to receive your money. This is totally untrue.

5. If you make the money transfer to this fake agent, you will now be sending the payment information to the fake Moneybookers email address - which is really another email address of the scammer's.

6. The scammer, or one of their associates, collects the payment you made. And keeps it to spend on themselves. No apartment keys will ever be sent, because the scammer does not own a letting apartment - it was all untrue.

As Vitaliy says, the apartment mentioned in that email was also in Switzerland. But scammers pretend to own apartments that they wish to let all over the world.

Vitaliy: scammers are criminals, and when you respond to a scam mail, you are giving them your real life information. Therefore, drop all contact with them as soon as you realise it is a scam. You don't want to play around with criminals who know real information about you. Drop all contact, and they will go away.

It is possible to extract more information from them, in order to publicise it and help others, but this must never be done using your real email address and personal information. If you are interested in learning more about this, please go here:

419Eater

and also read this page which includes instructions about staying safe.

As Vitaliy says, the apartment mentioned in that email was also in Switzerland. But scammers pretend to own apartments that they wish to let all over the world.

Vitaliy: scammers are criminals, and when you respond to a scam mail, you are giving them your real life information. Therefore, drop all contact with them as soon as you realise it is a scam. You don't want to play around with criminals who know real information about you. Drop all contact, and they will go away.

It is possible to extract more information from them, in order to publicise it and help others, but this must never be done using your real email address and personal information. If you are interested in learning more about this, please go here:

419Eater

and also read this page which includes instructions about staying safe.

Thank you, Chris. I didn't answer to the second e-mail and I have no intention to do it after reading your post here You are absolutely right - it's better not to play with open fire.

quick search and found this thread..

Thanks Chris for the gmail header info!!