I think I may have found a new twist on the Nigerian scam. I am helping a friend look for an apartment in DC, and I saw a posting on Craigslist that looked too good to be true – $600/mo for a 3-bedroom apartment in DC proper! So I sent the following e-mail to the address on the listing:

Hi, I am a little puzzled by your Craiglist posting. You are offering a 3br house for rent for $600/mo? Can you clarify on this? Where is the house located? I am helping a friend look for an inexpensive place in DC, he lives in NYC now so I am helping out because I know what is a safe neighborhood better than he does, etc.

Eight hours later, I received the following reply:

from: stevens.hook@yahoo.com
Hello Dear,

Thanks for the email. I own the apartment and also want you to know that it was due to my transfer to West Africa, Nigeria that makes me and my wife to leave the house and also want to give it out for rent and looking for a responsible person that can take very good care of it as we are not after the money for the rent but want it to be clean all the time and the person that will rent it to take it as if it were its own. So for now, We are here in West Africa and will be staying here for the next 4 years in our new house and also with the keys of the apartment for rent, we try to look for an agent that we can give this documents and the keys before we left but could not find, and we as well do not want our house to be used any how in our absence that is why we took it along with us. I and my wife came over to Africa for a missionary work, so i hope you will promise us that you will take very good care of the house. So get back to me on how you could take care of our house or perhaps experience you have in renting home. Hope you are okay with the price of $600 per month with hydro,heat laundry facilities, air condition and so on.This is the address of the Apartment (1311 28th Street Southeast, Washington DC 20020 )

SO IF YOU ARE REALY INTERESTED I WILL WANT YOU TO FILL THE
RENT APPLICATIONS FORM BELOW
RENT APPLICATION FORM
Pls let me get this answer.
1)Your Full Name
2)Your Full Address & Phone Number
3)How old are you?
4)Are you married?
5)How many people will be living in the house?
6)Do you have a pet?
7)Do you have a car?
8)Occupation?
9)What is your religion?
Looking forward to hear from you with all this details so that i can have it in my file incase of issuing the receipt for you and
contacting you.Await your urgent reply so that we can discuss on how to get the document and the key to you,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 not see yet and only putting everything into Gods hand,so please do not let us down in this our property and God bless you more as you do this.
Thanks and you are welcome
Regards.

There are so many red flags in this, it looks like Gay Days at Disneyland.

  • Obviously this person is not a native English speaker, but that’s not unusual; this city has a lot of different nationalities.
  • Hmm, they got transferred to West Africa? Do you get transferred when it’s missionary work, or do you get sent? I would have thought the latter, but I could be wrong.
  • Nigeria…I’m sure “scam” is the first word people associate with that country these days. Yes, missionaries do work there, but still – “Nigeria” just screams scam.
  • They took all the keys with them, well, that was prudent, but it also makes it impossible to inspect the house. Wouldn’t it have been better to leave them with a trustworthy neighbor?
  • The address – nobody ever writes “Southeast” like that. It’s SE, that’s how you write it.
  • Four years? You’re going to be gone four years?
  • You’re charging $600/month for a 3-bedroom in an area where similar apartments are $1300. Riiiiiight.
  • The last paragraph is so awful. “We are giving you all this based on trust” and “await your urgent reply” are straight out of the usual scams where some relative has died or whatever.
  • It’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of religion regarding housing. Craigslist doesn’t say anything about it – some other listing sites do – but if you say “you’re the wrong religion, you can’t rent from me” you will get your ass taken to court.
  • And if you haven’t figured it out by now, here’s the kicker. They expect you to send them $600 a month. Hello?!

So, yeah. This looks like a new – to me – twist on the usual Nigerian scam. I think I’ll take it over to Scam Victims United and see if anybody’s heard of it before. And if I’m wrong, I’ll eat my hat. The one I’m going to sew out of baby spinach leaves, of course.

Added: I can’t find the posting anywhere on Craigslist now. Gee hmmmm.

More: Aha! Found it.

Added 10/20/09: Almost two years after I made this post, Snopes has weighed in on the matter.