Help Me Scam a Scammer!

[DETRoadster]

OK BP team, I need some help. Good buddy of mine has a rental house in Seattle, advertised on Zillow. he just discovered an ad for his house on CraigsList, posted up by some scammer. The scammer even went so far and to pull property records to get my buddy's name and then use that name in his bogus listing and e-mail address! Scum!

I think the way the scam works is that the scammer asks for money up front to process the application of something. My buddy has already set up a fake e-mail account and is ready to reach out. Give me some ideas to pass along to completely shred this scammer!

[upstatedoc]

tell the scammer you are a nigerian prince lookjng to rent in seattle

[F30lolz]

Pass the info to Karen so she can speak to a supervisor.

[thebmw]

Contact the local police as well as the FBI. Be careful if you're going to take the law into your own hands. You never know what these psychos are up to. Also remember, some of these people are not even located in the US.

[DETRoadster]

Originally Posted by thebmw

Contact the local police as well as the FBI. Be careful if you're going to take the law into your own hands. You never know what these psychos are up to. Also remember, some of these people are not even located in the US.

You maybe don't watch the National news. Seattle police do literally NOTHING. Entire city blocks turned into lawless zones. Homeless camped out on every spare sqft of lawn. Open air drug dealing. Assaults, rapes, murders. it's complete anarchy up here. Meanwhile we are trying to defund the police. So yeah, they wont do a thing, unfortunately.

[smyles]

They may do nothing, but OP would have some kind of a defense argument if things later get serious.

[thebmw]

Originally Posted by DETRoadster

You maybe don't watch the National news. Seattle police do literally NOTHING. Entire city blocks turned into lawless zones. Homeless camped out on every spare sqft of lawn. Open air drug dealing. Assaults, rapes, murders. it's complete anarchy up here. Meanwhile we are trying to defund the police. So yeah, they wont do a thing, unfortunately.

I watch the news but damn, it's literally that bad? You never know what's real and what's fake on the news now. That said, they actually don't cover how bad it is in Seattle in the rest of the country. Gee, I wonder why! I would think they would do something in the nicer neighborhoods. But there's a distinct correlation between Sanctuary cities, crime, lawlessness, and the whole defund the police crap. We see it in Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle. Maybe the FBI will be more attentive.

[Dpc2u]

I knew a couple that almost fell for this scam, but fortunately they were not that dumb. Report it to the FTC and he should contact Craigslist to have the ad pulled asap.

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/article...-listing-scams

In this case the guy was brazen enough to meet them there (a lake house with no close neighbors) and show them around, but said they couldn't go in as the tenant hadn't moved out yet. He then asked for a deposit. The local police did get involved and it turns out the owners of the house were out of the country for a month.

[DETRoadster]

You dudes are all providing some seriously mature and practical advice. I was hoping for immature and hilarious. Come on!

[Mingwan]

Depends on how much time your friend is willing to spend, and how stupid this scammer is.

Probably the safest and easiest thing you could do besides report them to the police is drain their time.

Because there’s a high probability that the scammer isn’t even located in the US (meaning you really can’t do much) and is using the application scheme via rental scamming in order to obtain more personal information for identity theft.

[FuzzyPeaches]

If he's local to the house, reach out to the scammer hoping that he's as ballsy as the other one mentioned here to get a meeting at the house. Then have the owner decide to "break-in" to his own house and start stealing shit.

[Smgs1992]

Have the scammer meet him there and kidnap him lock him in the basement for 3yrs then reveal that you are indeed the real prank master after the 3yrs is up.

In all seriousness call the police an IT guy to track the IP address and potentially a lawyer and sue the guy

[Wolf 335]

-He's likely asking for a electronic transfer of money.
-Insist that you meet in person to give him cash.
-Have them drive out of their way if possible and then cancel after they waited for an hour. Tell them something came up, a family emergency.
-Schedule to meet again on another day, and don't show up. This time your blinker fluid completely leaked out and you couldn't drive the car. Mechanic said is was not safe.

Inconvenience the scammer as much as possible.

Unfortunately that's all you can really do. Once he realizes the gig is up he will dump your listing and get another one.

Then there is always the good old way of dealing with things like this, if you can get him to meet you in person. Baseball bat to the Tibia (shin bone) and Humerus (upper arm bone).

Break both legs but don't break both arms so that he can at least pick up the phone and call an ambulance.

(if you decide to go with the good ol' method, make sure you're not emailing from your IP address and that you are using a burner phone.)

[King Rudi]

You want non-adult advice here? Why didn't you just PM me man? You know who/how I am.

Email bombs. Get the guys email address. Yes, there will be some shady downloading of a program, might I suggest the vidalia browser. I have a particular email bomb that automatically signs the end user up for free gay porn subscriptions and floods their email address with so much gay porn that it basically renders their email account useless.

EDIT:
Good people of bimmerpost: My apologies, but I will not be replying to any more private messages concerning email bombs.

[tcphoto]

The kill him slowly way is to keep making appointments to see the home, cancel for whatever reason and reschedule. You will need to use multiple email addresses but it will be inconvenient for him/her/it. Another way is to confirm that he will be at the property and if he enters then call the police. The best result would be to involve the police, have them pose as renters and arrest him on the spot.

[khpbiz@yahoo.com]

If you can get them to meet you in person, then you can get their photo and provide that to the authorities. Maybe then the police will act. If nothing else, then you can post the photos and share the truth.

[Sassicaia]

Tell him you represent a church and are happy to send him money, but need an initial payment of $75 to cover the transfer of funds. Be kind, respectful and always default to the church's policy of needing payment in advance to cover the costs of money transfers.

Go the extra mile and tell him you need him to be a member of the church before you send it and in order to show loyalty you need him to take a photo of the churches logo on his chest. Make a fake logo and tell him to use a jiffy pen. Make the logo a camouflaged penis so he doesnt know.

post pictures

[King Rudi]

Originally Posted by Sassicaia

Tell him you represent a church and are happy to send him money, but need an initial payment of $75 to cover the transfer of funds. Be kind, respectful and always default to the church's policy of needing payment in advance to cover the costs of money transfers.

Go the extra mile and tell him you need him to be a member of the church before you send it and in order to show loyalty you need him to take a photo of the churches logo on his chest. Make a fake logo and tell him to use a jiffy pen. Make the logo a camouflaged penis so he doesnt know.

post pictures

Oh come on man, that shit is weak. He's a scammer, not a deacon. People that aren't religious aren't even going to bother wasting his time reading anything that has to do with a church.

Perhaps he should tell him he's the chief of police while he's at it and ask him to be a member of the FOP and get the emblem tattoo'd as well.

He could just pretend to be either Ozone or Turbo and tell the scammer that they are still trying to save Miracles, after all these years, ask for a donation and then breakdance for the guy. For those of you who are confused, I'm showing my age. The movie I'm referencing is Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo circa 1984.

[Joekerr]

Originally Posted by King Rudi

Oh come on man, that shit is weak. He's a scammer, not a deacon. People that aren't religious aren't even going to bother wasting his time reading anything that has to do with a church.

Perhaps he should tell him he's the chief of police while he's at it and ask him to be a member of the FOP and get the emblem tattoo'd as well.

He could just pretend to be either Ozone or Turbo and tell the scammer that they are still trying to save Miracles, after all these years, ask for a donation and then breakdance for the guy. For those of you who are confused, I'm showing my age. The movie I'm referencing is Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo circa 1984.

Sassy is trying to pull Church of the Red Breast here. But I agree, not going to work - completely different scenario and scam.

Meetings upon meetings that are not shown up for is a much better way to annoy the scammer.

[byroncheung]

Originally Posted by DETRoadster

You maybe don't watch the National news. Seattle police do literally NOTHING. Entire city blocks turned into lawless zones. Homeless camped out on every spare sqft of lawn. Open air drug dealing. Assaults, rapes, murders. it's complete anarchy up here. Meanwhile we are trying to defund the police. So yeah, they wont do a thing, unfortunately.

Even before all these, I think authority usually does nothing on these onlnie scams. My guess is there are just too many of these for them if they need to investigate them all. So I think they'd only action if there are actually material losses incurred.

Couple of years ago when I was refinancing my mortgage somehow my attorney email account was hacked and I received very realistic emails (including the mortgage number and amount etc etc) of wiring instructions from a scammer. I reported it to local police as well as FBI. What did they do? Absolutely nothing.

[Maestro]

Op as much as I like messing with Scammers when I can, and I have done a few in the past when selling cars on Craigslist.

However, in this case, the scammer has all the information he needs about who your friend is and where he lives. You know he is scamming others and using your friends information and those people when they find out they been screwed they will come after your friend first, even though your friend was not involved it is going to take time to sort that out. In the mean time your friend will have to deal with all the crap that will be coming his way.

I would get the ad pulled down as quickly as possible.

[Hawkeye]

I would be asking for a tour and meet up, and then have cops meet me out there. Could always have your friend leave the door unlocked so if they say you can't go in, just do it anyway and take a look around. If they follow you in just say they were breaking and entering. Oh, and make sure to utilize the 2nd.