Almost duped

Oh man I am SO PISSED right now. I can’t even begin to explain my anger. I am SEETHING. Partly at the fact that we came THISCLOSE to getting duped, partly because we have to start the search for renters all over again.

As I mentioned a few months ago, our renters for the past year moved out the worst possible time- 4 days before our wedding. We put the condo on the market for a couple of months but didn’t get any bites, so decided to put it up for rent again. So far, despite the fact that we have dropped the price $300, we haven’t had anyone sign a lease. We thought we had something promising when we received an email from a guy from the UK.

We had five showings of the condo set up for last weekend. CP wanted to cancel them so that his sister didn’t have to drive the hour to show them. I wanted to keep them just in case this “Lucas Taylor” fell through. Technically, it’s CP’s condo so I deferred to him. After emails back and forth with the guy, including sending him the lease and our information, he sent more information on himself, including his supposed landlord’s email and his UK boss’s phone number. CP tried to email his landlord- the email came back undeliverable. Mr. Taylor changed his email. He then told us that since his company would be moving him out from England, the company would pay for interior decorators to move in furniture, electronics, etc before he arrived. CP has had companies to do for him before, so he didn’t think that was weird. The odd thing was that the guy wanted to send us a large check for both the deposit and the interior decorators. We were supposed to take the deposit/first month’s rent money out and then forward the check along to the interior decorators.

I began to feel more weirded out about the whole thing. But CP had me send the revised lease to him. The guy wanted the lease to start February 15th, but didn’t seem to be in any rush to sign paperwork or get the deposit to us. We got an email this morning telling us that the deposit check was on its way.

CP emailed Mr. Taylor to tell him that we would need him to sign the lease before he or an interior decorator would be getting in the condo. He said that he also needed the landlord’s correct email address for the reference. CP even emailed me at work to try to have me call the international number given by Mr. Taylor to simply make sure that he did work for the large insurance company that he claimed to work for.

Luckily, I nixed that idea and decided to Google “Lucas Taylor” and Assurant (the company he supposedly works for). I had previously Googled Assurant and verified that it was indeed a real company. However, as soon as I put the extra search term of “Lucas Taylor” into the Google bar, the FIRST website that popped up was one on various Craigslist scams.

Sure enough, as I read through the comments, the emails at the bottom show that many others had received emails from “Lucas Taylor” (and other names). THANK GOODNESS I GOOGLED HIS NAME.

So I am relieved that nothing happened to us. But also PISSED. We cancelled five appointments to show the condo last weekend. That is FIVE chances that we would have had to rent out the place and get some money coming into our pockets. Now our place has to go back on Craigslist and hopefully we get some more bites. I’m guessing that the five people that were interested have either found places by now or will think that there is something wrong with our place and that is why the person that was going to rent dropped out.

*SMACKS FOREHEAD WITH PALM*

UPDATE:

CP has decided to file a complaint with the FBI. His email to me:

Don't say anything to "Lucas" just yet. I filed a complaint and said we are in the process of dealing with this guy and haven't lost money... I am hoping they use us in a sting!

He is such a dork! :-)