No, I am not trying to get a tenant, I am actually trying to rent my own rental house and if I am lucky I will get approved and get to move in soon!

What had happened was....I had my house advertised on zillow a few months ago and it has since been rented. I had a girl call me last week asking about the 'craigslist' and and she said she thought it was a scam...and it was. These jokesters pulled my images and house description off of the archived zillow ad and posted it on craigslist with the only way to contact them being via the craigslist "email" option.  The smart girl that called me was smart enough to google the address and find my archived ad with my phone number hence her calling me.  She also emailed them through the craigslist just to see what happened and they started with all of the "we moved away" jibberish which she ignored from that point.

Anyhow, I emailed them Thursday that I was interested and since then I have been wasting a ton of their time.  I did everything they asked for (using completely fictitious names, jobs, the works) and after completing their application and background check they approved me!  Excellent.  Next started the story about how they were now living in NY (I am in AL) so to secure the property I just needed to send them a deposit. They suggested paypal.  Just to be aggravating and see how they handled it I told them I wanted to next-day them a cashiers check. Nope...paypal only. So, being the deviant that I am I used my carefully crafted computer skills to make a fake paypal transaction page that I sent them showing I had sent them the funds.  Boy did they get excited. They eventually came back telling me they needed more transaction details because they had been calling paypal and the money was not in their account. So...I want deeper and created another "detail" transaction page showing even more details of that specific transaction ID, date, time, the works.  A bit later they came back again saying there were issues and to fix the problem...being demanding in many ways.  HAHAHA.  

I was equally as demanding that I needed their name and address for various reasons and that I needed confirmation they fedexed the keys to me, etc. just to banter back and forth wasting their time as much as I could.  They said they couldn't send the keys Saturday because my paypal wouldn't show up in their account and it was too late in the day, that we would wait until Monday.

Earlier they emailed me asking how things were going on my end getting the payment released with paypal.  I am plotting my next move so see how I can keep them looking and checking and thinking money is somewhere on the way...

Yes...I notified craigslist to remove the fraudulent posting, so they are being more persistent with me because I made the ad go away and I am the only one on the hook for this property address now.

You need to pull the IRS scam on them.
Get their phone number so you can talk.

Tell them to send you a buck so you can confirm their paypal address... then give them the cops address.  

that's why I said give them a cops address.

Dave wrote on 09/23/19 at 13:11:36:


I thought about notifying paypal, but unfortunately it isn't worth my time to aggressively chase it because they just use one-time email and bank accounts to set up the paypal transaction and kill it once the heat is on to them. They are smart and stay one step ahead with other active accounts waiting. I may still email paypal, but that's about all.

Since they didn't technically scam me and the posting has been pulled from craigslist, no "crime" has been committed and no one will waste their time pursuing it. Heck, people get taken for thousands and thousands of dollars on these scams and never get their money back because these crooks are very intelligent at what they do. Even if they did scam me for the $700 the local cops would never waste their time.

And for my next trick , I'm going to evict myself !

So I emailed them back yesterday telling them I was out of state for work to buy me some time. They emailed back last night to let them know when I was back home.  I emailed back this morning that I has just landed at the airport and had a long drive home (I appear to always be busy so they can't "ask" to call me). I also asked them why they took down the ad because I wanted to show my friend the house, and that I was concerned they rented it to someone else because I desperately needed to get the keys to move in Friday. Remember, I pulled the ad via emailing craigslist it was fraud.

They responded that they have me only as the tenant and they pulled down the ad since they have me only as the tenant and no one else.  Then they started in with the paypal situation that they still see no money, which of course they don't because it's all a sham I worked up.  They are demanding I call paypal now to resolve the payment issue and not only am I to pay the deposit now but the first month's rent to get the keys mailed to me by Friday.

Now...to plot my next move.  Trying to think of what to do that isn't too much of a time suck on my part but enough to keep them begging. I thought about faking a fedex shipping label and fake check to make them think I am overnighting a check to the fake address they gave me just to make them angry thinking a check is going somewhere that they can't get...and if it is a real address they will never see anything anyhow.  I just want to keep wasting their time.

I seem to remember : When I was setting up my PayPal account there was a thing about getting Verified where PayPal  checked out my bank account to make sure it was REAL .

The local DA might be interested , or PayPal might have their own Justice system .    Stew , give them  the info and let the professionals have a chance at the Scammers .   I know the two times I had folks try to take my funds and run , PayPal said "were sorry Mr. V , here is your $$$ back and we'll put our Lawyers on the rest" !  


PayPal's $$$ is based on their good name.  
Remember :   Jesus was getting away with trashing the Sanhedrin just fine till he went into the Temple and messed with the $$$ changers !     Translation : Mess with our $$$ and DIE !