..rev. andy..

Jesse and I found the most amazing house on Craigslist. We have never used Craigslist before but this house was great. 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom, living room, dining room, den, washer/dryer, backyard (for our puppy we will be getting!), and located about 11 miles from Jesse's new work. Perfect!

I email the guy and ask him about the house. Tell him we want to move to the area and that we want to know if he owns the home, how much for rent, when available, etc. In the mean time I email my mom the link so she can check it out.

I get an email back within 24 hours from the owner. The email has a lot of errors-things spelled wrong, punctuation, just overall bad grammar. I am a little weirded out by it but reply back. The part that weirded me out the most was in the last paragraph. This is what he says: Looking forward to hear from you with all this details so that i canhave it in my file incase of issuing the receipt for you and contactingyou.Await your urgent reply so that we can discuss on how to get thedocument and the key to you or come and see you in person,please we are giving you all this base on trust and again i will want you to stick to your words,you know that,we do notsee yet and only putting everything into Gods hand,so please do notlet us down in this our property and God bless you more as you do this.Thanks and you are welcome call me +2348081342851.
Who mentions God in a business transaction? Soo weird! Ohhh did I mention he is in Nigeria on a crusade. What a great Reverend!! ;)

Well, we reply back and say we want to see the house before we sign anything. I am starting to feel bad about this..well not starting to feel bad, I already was thinking that something was not right. So I call my mom and I ask her if she looked at the house. She loved it too! I tell her about the email I got back. She then says "Melissa, you have heard about the Nigerian scams with banks right?" My reply "Nope" Well she goes on to tell me about them and then to tell me about people finding rental properties online and then posting them on Craigslist with their own information not the real renters info. The people eat it up! They send the check and bam! Scammed!

Well I decided that this was just too weird and started looking into it. Sure enough the emails fit the exact description of other scammers and then the item was flagged on Craigslist! I then found the house on a real renting site for much much more then what it was on Craislist. I knew that sick feeling in my stomach was for a reason, thanks mom for always teaching me to follow my gut! And for telling me about Nigerian scams :)

Now, don't think that Jesse and I would have blindly signed a contract and sent money to a random Nigerian bank..I am telling you about this because who knows what these scammers are capable of! Just be careful when looking to buy anything online and only do things locally! My lesson has been learned!