My First Craiglist Scam

Craigslist is a great resource when looking for an apartment to rent. I've tried other sites, but Craigslist just seems to be the best. Even though it is a good site, you have to be careful. Craigslist is known to have scams. Today I experienced my first Craigslist scam. It was momentous. I know for years to come I will be telling my grandkids the story of how I narrowly escaped a Craigslist scam! (I may be embellishing for dramatic effect.)

As I have previously mentioned, we are searching for a summer rental. After looking through apartment listings in the area,  I found a listing for a four bedroom summer rental for $1100. Now I know what your thinking, that is really cheap doesn't that seem like a red flag? And it did. But we decided just to look into. It couldn't hurt? So I sent an email asking for more information on the property.

The next day I received a long email response (containing many spelling and grammatical mistakes) explaining how the landlords are missionaries in Africa. They asked us to answer a couple questions before they would make a decision. Again we were a little suspicious, but they didn't ask any questions that required personal information or money. So we emailed back with a response that explained why we wanted the house and how many people would be living in the house. 

Out of curiosity, I drove by the house to check it out. It was clean and seemed perfect. It also had a for rent sign in the yard which was a good omen. Later they emailed us back, telling us that to receive the keys to the house we would have to send our security deposit to them by money order. We would send the money to Nigeria because, duh, they were missionaries in Africa!  And that's when we finally accepted that it was a scam, like we suspected all along. Don't worry, we did not send the money. We know the rules. It's a scam if someone tries to get you to send money. I think we were just hoping that it was real because it was so darn cheap!

So there you go. The story of my first Craigslist scam. Moral of the story, if someone asks you to send money to Nigeria, it's probably a scam.