Scammers at the Olympics

Believe it not, there are scammers at the Olympics, and I ran into one of them online.

Due to the fact that volunteers must provide their own lodging, and because I didn't have a completely solid plan, I decided to put an ad on Craig's List at Whistler to see if perhaps, there was lodging available during my stay.

As I browsed the want ads, there was a house for a 2 week rental for $18,000. There were several condominiums for $4-8,000 for 2 weeks, and couldn't help but think that people who owned condos up there would be able to have a great vacation and avoid crowds in February if they didn't mind missing this incredible event! I have a timeshare up there, and had been on the waiting list to get in for 14 months, but had not received word that I had moved up to a rental position. So, I decided not to wait for my timeshare to come up, and began perusing Craig's List.

Almost immediately, I received a response to my ad. An email came back saying that he (I'm assuming this is a "he" ...) had a home a few blocks from Whistler Village. He sent the address and pictures of a nice home. I pulled up the address and plugged it into Google Earth, and could see the home, yard and did the "walk your person down the street" view and the place looked pretty nice. But something peculiar happened. There was an ad with similaries with the same address and the rent was much more than this person was offering. When I emailed back to him to say there was another renter, he said that the house had a rental unit with a private entrance in the front.

So, I go back onto Google Earth....Is there a private entrance on this house? It doesn't look like it from the "walk your person down the street" view. So, I write back and ask about where the entrance is, and more details about the house. I also ask him if he wouldn't mind sending more pictures. He agreed.

The next set of pictures arrive, and the inside bedroom really doesn't fit the house. You know what I mean when things just don't quite "flow" together? The room looks really bare, no pictures on the wall (this is a fancy house), and the bedspread on the bed barely covers the bed. Hmmmm, this isn't adding up very well.

Throughout this string of emails, we had negotiated a price, and I was to make a down payment now, and pay the rest when I got to the house in February. I asked him if I could meet him over the Thanksgiving weekend since we would be up there at that time. He then said that he was a missionary over in the UK and would not be there during that time. If you think that my suspicion monitor was going up, it was in full swing by now. He had asked me to send my sizable down payment through a wire at Walmart to the UK. "warning, warning, warning!!"

From this point, it was really just an exercise to see how much of a scammer he was and to what magnitude. So, I asked him what missionary group he belonged to. He told me the name, and I looked it up online. Hmmmmm, the website was from North Carolina. By this time I am not surprised that the things aren't adding up. Painstakingly, I emailed and said I was concerned that this might be a scam.

His reply was "you insult my dignity and my honor". I guess I was because he really didn't have any dignity or honor to be scamming me out of my hard earned money! I notified Craig's list about this scam. Unfortunately, Craig's list cannot stop or monitor such behavior so we all just have to be very careful to check things out before we send money to anyone.

I let him know that I would be looking elsewhere for housing.

About a week later, I began an email exchange with a wonderful woman named Michelle, who has a great place 5 blocks from Whistler Village. She has an RV pad with electric and water. Through many emails, and clearance from the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), I have found a place to stay, in our trailer, in a nice neighborhood, with the RCMP staying in the house next to me. We are meeting next week, in person, at the site, to exchange money and talk. But it seems quite a secure place and Michelle has been so nice to work with. It's like I have found a new friend.