How to deal with Scams: Fight bullshit with bullshit.
Now darlings, who would like to come forward and admit to falling for the various interweb scams that curse our inboxes on a seemingly hourly basis. I thought not. There must be some of you though who haven’t quite adapted to the Skynet-is-on-the-horizon digital age and believe they really have won the Spanish lottery they don’t remember entering. Surely though it is safe to assume that if you are on tumblr most of you have reasonable grasp of the world wide web and are probably posey, media darlings fannying around with a macchiato to boot.
Spare a thought for the less digitally competent for a moment, yes I understand this is breaking a habit of a lifetime dear narcissists’, as these scams do continue to dupe people less accustomed to living out their entire life on the internet. During a routine flat hunt on Gumtree, I found one flat seemingly too good to be true, still, ever the delusional optimist I decided to enquire. What ended up occurring was that I had found the most laughable scammers this side of Craiglist, so being somewhat of a chronic piss taker, I decided to have a little fun with it. Hell, I even decided to throw in a pretend life partner seeing as we are currently residing in the land of make believe and kids, he is bang tidy. Word.
This is the first response I received to my flat enquiry from ‘Cindy’.
From: cindy.water@live.com
To: misspip@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: Reply to your ad: Magnificent and lovely ONE Double bedroom flat in The Waun-Y-Groes Ave, Rhiwbina, Cardiff
Thanks for the reply and the sincere interest you have in my flat. I spoke with my lawyer on phone just now concerning your stay in my flat and we both agreed to have you in my flat as long as you’ll take good care of my flat as how it is. However, it is unfortunate that my past bitter experience of inviting people to come and view or reserve my flat without any form of confirmation of their financial ability and not keeping up to time as at when scheduled, has brought about great loss to me. I have traveled all the way from Ireland to take some interested candidates round my flat because that’s where i work with M. Gould (Scunthorpe) Ltd.
Some outside tenants do not have the money to pay the rent and yet they disturb the landlord to arrange a viewing with their friend or relative who are in Cardiff, also some do not meet up with the appointments which has led to the dismissal of some landlords in office by their employers.
Henceforth, my lawyer and i have decided to carry out a simple test on financial ability to pay for my rent before coming for viewing. I would not ask you to send your bank statement. At least 1 month rent and security deposit which is £ 400 which is refundable after your 1 month stay in my flat, would be required from you to transfer through Western union money transfer agent to your trusted friend or relative in UK premises.
Once you have done this, scan the receipt to me and if you do not have scanner, you may write out the details on the receipt as i will send it to my lawyer to verify if it’s truly genuine and available in your friend’s custody, after verification, then we can proceed for the viewing and you can as well tell your friend or partner to pick up the money and also, i will refund back to you the cost of transfer when we meet.
I look forward to reading from you soon.
Regards
Mr/Mrs Water
Now, Cindy love this is the oldest Western union scam in the world cup cake, where is the originality, the creative flair? This is just lazy scamming darling; i’ve read more convincing Tory candidate manifestos. Below is my first response to these jokers.
From: misspip@hotmail.com
To: cindy.water@live.com
Subject: RE: Reply to your ad: Magnificent and lovely ONE Double bedroom flat in The Waun-Y-Groes Ave, Rhiwbina, Cardiff
Dearest Cindy,
Many thanks for your response. I am sorry to hear of your plight concerning people’s financial dishonesty (people can be such scammers right?) How very interesting that you work for M.Gould, I told my partner about this, as I informed him that we would have very respectable landlords for a change but instead of gratitude he is once again finding something to complain about and he started being a whiney little bitch that he couldn’t find an Ireland office for M.Gould. The tiresome idiot even went to the trouble of phoning them up bless him, he is ever so paranoid and was informed that they have no Ireland office and indeed no employee under the name Cindy Water, I assured the company obviously that this must be some sort of mistake and gave them your email address in order to sort the matter out. I’m sorry to say your employers seem most incompetent if they can’t even recognise an employee’s name for the love of Christ.
Of course we will comply with your request for a bank statement and deposit, yet again my other half insisted on passing this email on to our lawyers to make sure things are done on the straight and narrow and our lawyer had the audacity to suggest that this was a fraudulent email and not to provide any personal information, as in his word’s “No landlord would expect a deposit to be paid without a tenant even seeing the property.” The cheek of the man! I informed him that it must be a real email and a real flat as you had attached a very nice picture of you and your frankly rather scumptious husband. I certainly don’t pay my lawyer to think for god sake, I am intelligent enough to spot a scam.
My idiot lawyer it seems is just as paranoid as my partner as he contacted the cyber crimes unit and their clearly deranged head of department has informed me that he is tracking the IP of your email address. I demanded that the police stop their pointless investigation and pointed out that you are a sincere landlord and had even sent me pictures of the property and therefore it could not possibly be a scam, gosh the filth are so willing to assume that everyone’s a criminal, it saddens my Christian heart I’ll tell you.
In order to put my partner’s tragically simple mind at rest could we have your lawyer’s contact details so that he can speak to him and stop this incessant whining, at least till he is distracted by some high definition midget porn.
Kind regards,
Pip
Poor Cindy seems oblivious that I am taking the piss somewhat and even responds to me, the poor lamb.
From: cindy.water@live.com
To: misspip@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: Reply to your ad: Magnificent and lovely ONE Double bedroom flat in The Waun-Y-Groes Ave, Rhiwbina, Cardiff
Thanks for getting back to me. I wouldn’t want you to get me wrong, the idea of making a confirmation of your financial ability is not only my idea, my lawyer and i decided to use that process and i can’t violate my lawyer procedure. I am a God fearing woman and i am not after your money. I have my own work and i earn enough money for my family and also to help the less privilege.
However, i didn’t want to collect any money from you as long as you have not sign a contract neither have i taken you round my flat. All what i request of you is to transfer the deposit to someone close to you through Western union money transfer agent , once you’ve done that, you get back to me with a scan copy of the transfer receipt so that i can forward it to my lawyer to confirm if the transfer is valid.
After the confirmation might have been made by my lawyer, i will ask you to tell you friend to pick up the money and schedule a convenient day for the viewing. If eventually you don’t want to proceed with the rent, i promise to return the cost of the transfer without any deduction.You can call my husband for further discussion +447031824567
I look forward to reading from you soon.
Regards
Mr/Mrs Water
Ok, so dumplings guess who turns up in a Google images search? Our friend Cindy and her beloved. On a Sperm Donor’s website in America no less. Smooth Here is my final reply, as you know, I have a job and shit.
From: misspip@hotmail.com
To: cindy.water@live.com
Subject: RE: Reply to your ad: Magnificent and lovely ONE Double bedroom flat in The Waun-Y-Groes Ave, Rhiwbina, Cardiff
Dear Cindy,
Of course you are honest, I myself am I very good judge of character, I am also a righteous woman of god and can totally empathise. In fact my most favourite verse is Matthew 8:28-34
“When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”
I thought it sort of sounded like hooded youths of biblical times getting their ruddy arses kicked my god almighty. I love how god is all loving and forgiving and shit yet can also be badass when he needs to bring the smack down, don’t you?
Anyway I digress; of course your solicitor is only doing his job. I did try and explain this to my solicitor who is quite adamant that he wants the name of your solicitor, his firm’s name and his contact number as he is still bloody adamant that you are a con artist and that getting myself to transfer money to a friend’s account though a Western Union agent is “absurd” and that you would use the information given to somehow rob me of all my money. He said that’s how “criminals” work. How outrageous and slanderous I told him, of course your not criminals, criminals don’t use Gumtree, it’s a website for nice people selling broken TV’s and offering “night time hours only” type jobs.
The swine even went as far as to suggest that you would not keep your promise to return my hard earned money and the poor deluded fellow said that “business transactions are not founded on promises from people you have only dealt with via email.” What a suspicious bellend, what an awful thing to say, of course you would return my money , as you clearly stated you are not after my money and I always believe everything strangers tell me in emails, if it’s on the internet than it must be true. It’s the internet for Christ sake.
To be honest my sanctimonious partner has not helped matters, he is in cahoots with the damn solicitor and continues in his paranoia bless his wretched soul. In fact do you know he was on Google last night and found the picture of you and your husband that you had so kindly emailed us, on the Internet. I said well that’s marvelous, obviously our prospective landlords are very important people to turn up in a Google images search. He became quite hysterical and showed me that your picture was on a sperm donors website in America, in fact here is the link http://www.spermdonorsinc.com/Couples.html
My other half seemed to believe that you had just copied this picture from this website and were fraudulently using it as part of some elaborate email scam. I assured him that you were just a nice well-travelled, probably infertile couple who obviously were on the lookout for some high quality sperm and there was nothing to worry about. There is nothing shameful in that, in fact I think you were most brave in putting your picture on a sperm donors website, that takes gumption my friend. Something my partner and idiot solicitor are obviously lacking.
To put my partner’s deluded mind at rest I once again respectfully request that you send your lawyer’s name, his firm and contact details so that my solicitor can speak to him. My rude solicitor keeps saying he doesn’t wish to ring your “thieving, scamming make-believe husband” on a mobile number and is requesting contact details for your lawyer. Also those insufferable douchebags at the cyber crime investigation unit have taken the number you kindly provided, not to worry though I’m sure they will give up when I send them a picture of you and your husband on a sperm donors website proving you are in fact a real couple. Your picture is on the Internet for the love of baby Jesus, how could you not be a real couple? I sometimes think the country is going to the wall with such a paranoid and deluded police force.
Kind regards,
Pip
Sadly ‘Cindy’ failed to respond, but hopefully this will serve as a warning sugarplums. If it is too good to be true, then it definitely, probably is. So don’t fall for scams kids, stick to porn. You know where you are with porn.
‘Cindy’ and Husband. Original picture is on http://www.spermdonorsinc.com/Couples.html
