Potential real-estate scam

I run a real-estate company in Romania.

A while ago, I had an email from somebody called George who said he wanted to invest 40 million Euro in properties. He said he was French and that his business was in diamonds". He asked me to find a property developer who would be willing to take cash and implied that he was laundering the ill-gotten gains of a smuggling operation.

After a round of correspondence, he asked me to bring my developer with me to Amsterdam. Since my developer was willing to pay our air-fare and hotel accommodation, we agreed.

In Amsterdam, George and his business partner picked us up in a nice limo. They both wore (genuine) Rolex quality watches and expensive clothes and they drove us to a very expensive restaurant and paid for everything. A deal was agreed whereby our developer would return in 10 days to receive a cash deposit, then we flew back home.

10 days later, we returned to Amsterdam. After waiting for several hours, I got a phone call from George, saying that his partner had been arrested at Zurich, carrying more than a million Euro in his briefcase which was supposed to be the deposit.

The deal was off, we returned to Romania, George's phone number no longer works and we've heard nothing from them since.

I've later heard of scams that have similar ingredients, but I can't work out whether we were victims of a scam. It cost me an international phone call, my developer friend paid for flights and hotels, and George bought us a great dinner. Maybe George was hired by the airline that flew us to Amsterdam (as most airlines are crooks).

I would appreciate your opinions.

It's impossible to say for certain, although you state that you believed that payment was from an illegal source and that they would be paying a large amount in cash, which on its own could get you into trouble with law enforcement agencies.

It is a good ploy by scammers to suggest that the money isn't entirely from a legal source, as that makes you less likely to ask questions and make checks on the people involved. Scammers come in all shapes and sizes and I have tracked down ones with very impressive and respectable connections.

When I worked in a bank, the minute I started to feel that I was being fed a 'line' I didn't react and went along with it so that I could hear more of the background. I would then make the necessary checks when they had gone.

The main likelihood would be the laundering of drugs money, though it could equally be the distribution of counterfeit notes. Large scale drugs operations often have so much money that they don't know what to do with it, and will make wild and extravagant purchases just to dispose of it. If you go into a bank nowadays with a suitcase full of cash, you might as well imagine the main alarm going off for the reaction it will cause.

Thinking more deeply, it's impossible to say what game they were playing, but the minute a person starts to suggest that their money comes from a source that is suspicious, warning lights flash. Not just because you have been alerted to a potentially illegal transaction, but because it's a way to deflect you from making enquiries.

Of course, there may never have been any money or a transaction. Their purpose could have been to defraud you in some way, or to learn from you how such a situation would play out so that they can pretend to be property entrepreneurs themselves in the future so that they can work scams on buyers. You, therefore, need to think whether you have provided documents that they could use, and that might damage you or your company.

Thanks for your help.

I didn't give them any documents and was very carefull to keep my emails neutral and business-like. Maybe they were genuine, I'll probably never know. A short while afterwards, I read an article describing a gang of crooks who ram-raided posh jewellery stores all over the world. They were nick-named "The Pink Panther Gang" and there were many correlations between where my lads claimed to have worked and the places where these heists took place - maybe it was them. (Google "pink panther gang").

Either way, once bitten...