I got this one over night, it's so bad its laughable!!
"hello,
how are you doing,am mr milly,i will want to know if you still have your apartment for rent,if you kindly get back to me cuz i will want to rent it for 2months ,so i will want you to send me your rentage amount for the 2months and also send me details about the house and also send me photos of the house if you have any,i will want you to send me your full address and contact numberso i could see if the location of the house is fine by me.because i will want everything to be done very fast.hope to hear back from you soon.
milly."
Its not as clever as that! It's the oldest one in the book.......I tell him the rent for 2 months is say 5000 euros, he says he has a friend in the euro zone that owes him money to the tune of 8000 euros. He then sends me the cheque for 8000, I bank it and in the meantime send him back 3000 euros - and, yep, you guessed it, the original cheque is a fake. But it takes the bank about a week to work that out, so not only does he get 3000 euros but I get done for bank fraud.
If you advertise anything of value on the net you are likely to attract this kind of scam, it's most used when selling cars.
I view these things as obvious attempts at fraud. They could also be small examples of money laundering.
Perhaps one course of action would be:-
1. Accept the booking as being strictly conditional on receipt and clearance of the cheque, i.e. confirmation from your bank that the cheque has become cleared funds in your account.
2. Confirm that you are happy to issue a cheque to a third party for part of the funds, once the cheque has become cleared funds in your account.
3. If the original cheque is not in your preferred currency make it clear that the amount received will be calculated at the current tourist exchange rate.
4. State that, for the requested facility, you will make a handling charge of 10% of the original cheque.
That might be enough to discourage them. I suspect you would never hear from them again.
The other, more obvious, course of action is simply to ignore them.
The most simple way is to ask for the money via a bank transfer, thay will then say we dont have this in our country, and they may ask if it ok by Westen Union BIGG ALARM BELLS SHOUD NOW BE RINGING!!! AND IT IS TIME TO WALK AWAY
