As some may already know, as of October 1st, our roommate Dawn will be moving on to other places, leaving us with a spare bedroom. Although the place is affordable with only three residents, they did it for the entire time I was in Australia, it becomes much more affordable with four. Finding a roommate in this current age is often difficult; fliers with dangling phone numbers are often untorn, people who are pleasant either live alone or are never allowed to leave by their roommates. In the modern age, one has to turn to the dark, unprotected venue for getting things from other people. In the modern age, one has to turn to the craigslist.
Oh, if only the craiglist was not a cesspool of scammers and murderers, whores and owners of worthless things with good PR. The craigslist does have wholesome, well-natured people, such as myself, but these are buried amongst all the crap, pretending to good.
Well, we luckily found such a good person: Tracy Fields. A kind-hearted altruistic soul who does humanitarian work with orphans. Tracy Fields, the young nurse who had just returned to her home in Mackay, Queensland in Australia only to find life in the real world not stimulating enough, so wanted to head the US to mix things up. Tracy Fields, the 5'7" occasional tennis player who doesn't drink or smoke, but is not bothered by those who do. She sounded like a perfect roommate. She sounded like the type of person with whom I could get along and share stories of my travels.
I found it odd that Tracy Fields's phone number had a land line prefix (03) but had 9 digits and was written in the phone number format we used in the United States. Landlines only have 8 digits such as (03) 45644394. I attempted to call and had no luck connecting. I found it odd again that she referred to the number as being a cell phone. Why did she say "cell phone" and not "mobile"? Well, I did refer to our "living room" as a "lounge" and our "downtown" as the "CBD" just to be nice and show off my knowledge of the lingo, she may have been doing the same. Why would she have a cell phone with an (03) prefix, not an (04) prefix like everyone else in the country? Finally, if she was from Queensland, shouldn't she have a (07) prefix and not a Victoria prefix. These things should have been warning signs, but they merely came off as odd.
She said she was from Mackay, a town where I have numerous friends and spent a total of three weeks. As a part of the package of photos of the house/pets/roommates, I inserted a photo of myself in Mackay, just for fun. She made no mention of the photo, did not ask to see if we knew mutual people, or make any comment at all about the fact I've spent so much time in her hometown. This was the first one that actually registered as suspicious.
The other tip off was her robotic use of the same email subject, "I am Interested!!". Yes, we know you are interested, you've made that clear in the prior two email's subjects as well as in the texts of the email. No "Re: I am Interested!!". No, "Contact Info". No, "Thanks". Just "I am Inerested!!" After pointing this out, Manda rationalized it for a second, then suggested we search for her on "the google"
Well, "the google" was not so rationalizing. "The google" said she was a craiglist scam. The website had her name as well as verbatim sentences from her emails. I politely told Tracy, that I "will be unable to live with you since you seem to be a fictitious person for the purpose of tenant fraud." I kindly thanked Tracy for wasting my time and made the offer to seek assistance from the law if further contact was made.
This was the scam: Apparently, there are very many people out there, from all over the world who are 5'7" don't drink or smoke, but are not bothered by people who do, and work with underprivileged orphan children. These mobs of people all would like to move to various cities around the United States and all have rich uncles that are more than willing to provide rent until they can break into the field of nursing. The clan of unrelated uncles all have the tendency of sending checks for more than the asked amounts. For some reason, they all have the ability to only notice the overpayment after sending the check (rich uncles are impulsive with their check writing). The niece, who we will hypothetically call Tracy Fields, asks people to send a check back for the difference. Of course, the rich uncle turns out to be not so rich and original check bounces. A clever scam, not too ambitious in its scope, but worth enough to spend the time on it.
The good news is that they only know my Name, email, phone, and address, all public info. I'll keep watch for any suspicious activity, but I think we dodged the bullet. Now, I have to reach back into the craigslist cesspool and find another potential roommate.
1 comment:
The same rich uncle wants to buy my lawnmower! His nephew Buge was very interested. BUT poor Buge is deaf, newly married, on his honeymoon, and moving to the aisa of Canada into an apartment. I guess that apartment you have to mow the grass...
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