The latest international rental scam on Craiglist
An ad appeared today in the Paris rooms & shares section of CL, with the alluring title EUR400 / 850ft² – Clean Room w/shared Bathroom & parking Utilities included (Paris/Galande). Who wouldn’t “buy” it right away, so cheap and so centrally located? Well, let’s have a look at the ad itself:
APARTMENT FOE RENT — NICE LOCATION!!!
LIVING ROOM, EAT-IN KITCHEN, ELEC.
STOVE, REFRIGERATOR, W/W CARPET,
CENTRAL HEAT & A/C, CEILING FANS, OFF-STREET PARKING,
SITE LAUNDRY FACILITY.
For one thing, it is even better than you thought, it’s the whole apartment. But then, “site laundry”? What did they really mean? Let’s check.
Now, dear room hunter, search for the first line, fortunately printed with a typo, in your favourite search engine. Lo and behold, it – with the remainder of the ad – appears verbatim in many other cities in CL:
· Boston, as $494 Clean R00m w/private BBathr00m & parking Utilities included 11% OFF (Very large yard).
· Las Vegas, as $523 R00m Available immediately ___ Elevat0r,___ Carpet, Fireplace (Available N0W, Utilities,Internet,Cable )
· Los Angeles, as $511 Furnished Private Bed & Bath ********* In a Gated C0mplexxxxxxx (Walking Distance T0 Everythinggg!!!).
· New York, as $910 R00m Has a queen size bed. self-c0ntr0l heater, TV 5% OFF (Groceries Included).
· Orange County, as $770 LARGE BEDROOM » w/UTILITIES & Garage PARKING incld (Walking Distance T0 Everythinggg!!!).
· San Diego, as This is a cozy room Apartment with carpeted floor (as it had already been “flagged for removal”, the rental cost of this gem is unavailable).
as well as on several other rental sites. Isn’t it the dream place, which, like McDonalds or Starbucks, looks the same regardless of the city or the country it’s in?
If you still wonder what “site laundry” means, look at that ad: this is probably the legitimate source of the illegitimate copies. This copyist – once a medieval highly-esteemed profession found in abbeys and monasteries – didn’t cut-‘n-paste correctly the whole thing, forgetting the “on-” of the “on-site laundry” and not even bothering changing the case of the letters, probably because of lack of knowledge of their place on the keyboard. See what you can do all over the world with just a mouse and a few clicks?
This scammer, who calls himself Kelvin Rob and pretends to be “an engineer, Prensently in philippines to make some research”, turns out to be operating from Benin.
