Scam: kellyramn@gmail.com

An email from kellyramn@gmail.com regarding a room to rent caused me to find yet another scammer.

This was the email

I will like to rent your room kindly get back to me with the picture and condition of the house as i am ready to pay for it asap

Regard
Tran

with the 2nd email being

Hello,
Thanks for getting back to me,am a lady willing to rent/share the room
and i am at sea at the moment as i am a Maritime and Coastguard Agency
(MCA) employee in Canada but i got transfer to work and study part
time down there but due to the nature of my work, phone calls making
and visiting of website are restricted. I only squeezed out time to
check this advert and send you an email regarding this. i am ready to
rent it asap so tell me how much is the rent/share per month and how
much deposit do i have to pay. Please send me more period you wish to
rent this out.

Looking forward to read back from you soon
Regards
Tran

But it appears that this person will rent anywhere… Brisbane, Sydney even Japan…

A quick search for more information showed many results, such as these:

How does the scam work?

The most common one is where the renter sends you a deposit, by cheque.

They are normally overseas at the time, and need to secure your room or apartment etc, via mail.

You feel secure that they are paying in advance.

But, they send you too much money and ask you to refund the overpayment, by immediate transfer, via western Union or similar.

However, the cheque that they sent you is fake, but it takes a week or two before your bank tells you, and debit your account with the original credit transaction.  So you end up with nothing.  The original cheque is normally from a stolen cheque book, and the cheques have already been cancelled.

BUT, the money that YOU refunded them, is now lost..  You are now out of pocket, and they walk away with YOUR money.

And yes, this was tried on me before, but I told them I would wait until I had clearance from the originators bank before I could refund, and that this would take time. After that they never contacted me again.