List Only - Apartment for rent- is this a scam?

Apartment for rent- is this a scam?

I posted an ad on Craigslist that I was looking for an apartment, and I got this response emailed back to me. Thought it seemed a bit out of the ordinary, so I wanted to get an opinion. What do you guys think? Legitimate or a scam?? ____________________ Hello, I resided in the house with my family, my wife and my only son. Presently we have moved out due to my transfer. Presently my house is still available for rent for $800UsD (rent already includes utilities).More so Now,I'm currently in Lagos,Nigeria for a missionary work. As soon as we settled down here, I had a thought of selling the house so I had to look for an agent, after getting one, we got a deal but later my wife advised against that. So I contacted the agent back and requested for my keys and documents.Later we decided to have the house rented out because of maintainance, we would have given the same agent this job also but the truth of the matter is that the agent would want to handle it professionally and the occupant may not be able to reason along with me later if I let him or her know that I'm letting it out because of maintainance.If you notice, you will discover that the price we are offering is far below standard price, this is enough for you to know that we are not after the rental fee but the maintainance. I know there is no way I can be sure that you are the right person to live in the house because we won't be able to see physical before sending you the keys and the documents to occupy the space. But I just have a feeling that anyone who knows what it takes to put the kind of structure down should know that maintaining a building is mandatory, so if you belief you can take good care of the house and handle it like yours then I will be more than happy to let you rent the house. The house is available for rent at the moment so you are free to move in as soon as you wish to...A Deposit of $800 (which happens to be the security deposit) is required before moving in.....Feel free to call me for more information and arrangements on how to get the keys and other necessary documents delivered to you.Please if you are ready now to occupy the house and believe you can assist us in maintaining the house, kindly provide the information below for record purpose.. PLEASE TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF Application Form Full Name__________________________________________________ Home Phone ( ) ________________________ Date of Birth_________________________________ Other Phone ( ) ___________________ Current Address_______________________________Apt#________ City__________________ State______ Zip________ Reasons for Leaving____________________________Rent $__________Phone ( ) ____________________________ Are you married____________________________ How many people will be living in the house____________________________ Do you have a pet____________________________ Do you have a car____________________________ Occupation____________________________ Your Exact move in date____________________________ How soon can you make the deposit payment________________________ How soon do you want to receive the keys and documents of the house________________________ For more inquiries, please feel free to reach me on any of the numbers below ( +234-703-685-8409 OR 011-234-0819-171-0310 OR +234-0812-749-2891)

Public Comments

"Now,I'm currently in Lagos,Nigeria for a missionary work."\\ Run. Now. There are no bigger red flags on apartment rental than "craigslist" "Nigeria"+"Missionary" Run.
Yes, that seems very much like a scam. Never give your information out over the internet. Also, the phone numbers listed are a dead give away.
Its a scam. We got one of these emails and when i say one of these I mean the exact same one a couple years ago when looking into renting a home. just delete it and dont respond
Have you noticed that the phone number is not from this country? Do you want to give money to a landlord that is not in this country? Just the fact that you are "asking" if this is a scam, means that you may possibly have an inkling that it may be. I go by my instincts. Well now I do. I never used to. OOOOOOHHHHHH wait. I just reread it. Third line down. It is a scam. I saw a whole show about this scam. Good luck in your real legite hunt for a place.
he forgot to say "please send me a $10,000 deposit which will be refunded when you find me." and if you find your bank account emptied, do not come to Africa to bother me.........
i promise you this is a scam. 110% sure. We had a house for sale and someone just like this actually tried to rent it. You will not receive the keys to actually see the place until you have wired them the deposit. I also bet the house is for sale. They tell you that you can drive by it but can't get in.
100% scam. There is no possibilty it is legit. You can even do a search here, there are dozens of people who posted this exact letter.
100% scam. There is no apartment or house for rent. There is only a scammer trying to steal your hard-earned money with stolen pictures of someone else's dwelling and a fake story of being out of town/state/country doing charitable works. The next email will be from another of the scammer's fake names and free email addresses and will demand you pay for rent and deposit, in cash, and only by Western Union or moneygram. The scammer might suggest you "send" money to a friend or to yourself and then send a scan of the receipt to the scammer as proof you have the funds. The scammer will simply that take scanned receipt or just the MTCN# (money transfer conttol number) into Western Union or moneygram store and pick up the cash you thought you were sending to a friend or yourself. Western Union and moneygram do not verify anything on the form the sender fills out, not the name, not the street address, not the country, not even the gender of the receiver, it all means absolutely nothing. The clerk will not bother to check ID and will simply hand off your cash to whomever walks in the door with the MTCN# and question/answer. Neither company will tell the sender who picked up the cash, at what store location or even in what country your money walked out the door. Neither company has any kind of refund policy, money sent is money gone forever. Now that you have responded to a scammer, you are on his 'potential sucker' list, he will try again to separate you from your cash. He will send you more emails from his other free email addresses using another of his fake names with all kinds of stories of great places to rent, lottery winnings, millions in the bank and desperate, lonely, sexy singles. He will sell your email address to all his scamming buddies who will also send you dozens of fake emails all with the exact same goal, you sending them your cash via Western Union or moneygram. You could post up the email address and the emails themselves that the scammer is using, it will help make your post more googlable for other suspicious potential victims to find when looking for information. Do you know how to check the header of a received email? If not, you could google for information. Being able to read the header to determine the geographic location an email originated from will help you weed out the most obvious scams and scammers. Then delete and block that scammer. Don't bother to tell him that you know he is a scammer, it isn't worth your effort. He has one job in life, convincing victims to send him their hard-earned cash. Whenever suspicious or just plain curious, google everything, website addresses, names used, companies mentioned, phone numbers given, all email addresses, even sentences from the emails as you might be unpleasantly surprised at what you find already posted online. You can also post/ask here and every scam-warner-anti-fraud-busting site you can find before taking a chance and losing money to a scammer. If you google "fake apartment rental", "fraud Western Union house rent scam", "fake craigslist apartment rent scam" or something similar you will find hundreds of posts from victims and near-victims of this type of scam.