My cousin in law is a Realtor in San Francisco. He gets an online lead the other day and responds to it in a commendable five minutes. Here's the email...
Looking to buy or rent
I am Mr. Takeuchi Keigo a Japan origin I need a 4 bed room single family home to buy, in any nice Area in Lose Angeles a garage and 2 bath with or without swimming pool price should be between $800,000 to $100,000,00 please send me some listings.
He passes the lead onto me and I jump right on it. The next day I get the following response…
Thanks so much for your email, I will like to offer address inserted here from the listings I sent because I love the curb appeal of this property, please send me the contract with docusign for me to sign and return immediately this will be my retirement home and it will be a cash buy.
1. I will want to close on 19th August, 2010
2. I want to put down $23,000.00 Earnest money + $250,000.00 down payment towards home.
3. I want to put contingency on inspection on the contract.
My legal name is Takeuchi Keigo of 2000 Sheppard Avenue, Toronto Ontario Canada M3N 2J1 and I am single, I will not be in Canada before the closing date to wire the funds to an attorney so I will advice you to send me an attorney information for a check to be drawn to give enough time for check clearance since I won’t be in Canada to wire funds for closing.
Please forward me a purchase contract agreement in docusign format, docusign format is an electronic way of signing document. My Canadian Rep Mr. Edward Brown Esq will Issue payment in US Funds $273,000.00USD for the earnest money and the down payment for the property payable to your attorney, the check will be deliver to your attorney.
My Rep Mr. Edward Brown Esq can be reach at:1-416-824-1768, I strongly advice that I need an attorney to represent my interest in this transaction, my lawyer can pay to seller or title company so therefore I would like to deposit all payment with the lawyer.
Well as much as I wanted to believe that someone was willing to just jump right in and buy a property sight unseen, no questions asked, no phone calls etc and I had alluring visions of standing up in my weekly office meeting and proclaiming my newest online success story, the alarm bells went off and a short Google search turned up that this is a scam that has been happening across North America and as far as I can tell they use different names in order to try and stay ahead. You may see this email in this same format or using a different name, but the telephone number of 416-824-1768 seems to stay the same.
As always we have to be vigilant and it’s a shame that this is yet another scam directed towards real estate agents and our clients.
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