Another possible scam

[Holly1]

Hi all, this is a bit complicated but I think worth passing on. There is someone trying to rent gites as a scam and sending enquiries to numerous gite owners. I had already replied to this person when I received the warning message from the advertising website, and have since received a detailed personal reply from the person. I will paste the latest email from the advertising website which explains the situation in  more detail.

Beware if you receive anything similar!

Here goes.....

We recently advise you of a potential scam by Piet Thoney. From what information we have gather so far, it appears this is a scam and it works like this.

They contact you pretending they want to rent your property for a long period of time. They try to gain your confidence by asking for a discount off the price of the rental and quoting an expensive piece of equipment. In this persons case it is a Pentium laptop computer.

They pretend they own a business and need to view the property before he brings his family. It looks like at that stage they will try and give you a worthless cheque already made out to you but this cheque will be for a lot more than it should. They will then request that you pay them back the amount they over paid you. We are not sure if they will request this to be paid in cash but we suspect they will. When you bank their cheque it will not be paid and your bank will advise you that the cheque they paid you with is worthless.

ONLY IF YOU HAVE REPLIED TO THIS PERSON

If you have already replied to this person, you should tell them out straight that you will not rent your property to him and that you know what he is trying to do is a scam. Maybe you should inform your local police before you reply to him again as you might be able to weed him out with their help by pretending you will rent your property to him and arrange to meet in the general area but do not under any circumstances pass on any address or landline details to this person. If he keeps emailing you, simply tag his emails as SPAM or if you are using Outlook or Outlook Express simply highlight his email, click on the Message tab at the top of your screen, scroll down to Block Sender and this will delete all his future emails from his email address. Be careful in the future as you may be contacted by another person using a different name and email address but the motive will be the same.

This is one of the reasons we do not recommend payment on arrival. You should always insist on payment before any address details are given out and ensure any payment is cleared by your bank first. If you insist on this procedure you will not have to worry about this type of scam. If you accept payment by bank transfer, never give out your normal day-to-day bank account details. What you should do is open a second bank account and only use this account to receive payments for your bookings. As soon as any money arrives into this account, simply transfer it into your normal day-to-day bank account so there is never any money in this account.

If you have not replied to this person, DON'T!!!

We have already emailed this person advising them we know what their scam is and what they are up to and that we have warned our advertisers

 

[Smiley]

Hello Holly, received this request:

 

Hola,
> I am emailing you to request further information on your property as
> featured on the site.The dates I am interested in are August 1st 2006 till
> Sep 30th 2006 and there will be people in our party the number of peopel
> in our pert will be 3 in number and can we make uses of Pentium 4 Laptop
> and its will not need connection it OK im hope that we can bring this
> along during our stay in the property all these details i needs.Please
> could you email me with your availability around this time along with any
> further information and if the time i book from is not open let me have
> the date and the time that the property will be open for 2 months ok.
> Many Thanks,

The Pentium 4 seems a bit strange, eh??

 

Reckon it could be linked???? Came through    www.theholidayhost.com

[Holly1]

Hi Smiley,

Yes, it's exactly the same email that I received initially. I suggest that you don't reply at all but alert www.theholidayhost.com . Perhaps they might be interested in reading the above warning mail that I got too? I have a copy of the follow up email that is sent out by the scammer as well, email or PM if you want a copy of that.

HTH

Holly