Q. How much fun can you have flat hunting?

A. It depends on how many people try to scam you, how bad they are at it and how long you’re willing to string them along.

Let me introduce you to Emilly aka Sylvia aka Emma aka….

I picked this lovely lady up on a popular flat-hunting website where she was advertising a single-bedroom flat in Mayfair for £500 per month, all bills included. She may as well have been offering me a villa on the Queen’s lawn with a stables in which to house my unicorns. Mayfair still won’t be that cheap when the Thames overflows and it’s six feet under water. In fact, the landlord will probably charge you extra for your scuba gear.

It was clearly a scam, but I was interested in how it panned out. After all, I understood how the Nigerian princes and beautiful women with kind hearts looking for life partners made money. How the hell does a flat scam run? A little something like this:

Thanks for your response and Enquiry, the flat is still available to rent.
My name is Emilly and i am a private landlord.although i own the flat,i do not live in it because i actually had to move with my job in Ireland. However,i will be willing to meet you,get to know you and show you round the flat so that you can see what you are renting. Will you be able to take good care of my Flat like your own? Do you have the money to pay me if you like the Flat after viewing? I am waiting your email asap.

Emilly

Pay the money immediately after viewing? No problems Emilly, I love wandering into strange places with pockets bulging with cash. In fact it’s such a thrill my underwear’s made of £100 notes. I emailed back expressing my concerns that this sounded a bit ropey, but Emilly was quick to point out the flaw in my plan. Of course striding into her flat with £1,000 was idiotic, especially when there was a far more sensible alternative.

You should go to any money gram outlet close to you, to send one month rent of 500 +refundable deposit in your name … Scan and send the transfer receipt via email to me for confirmation on the moneygram customer care line if the money is available for any of you to pick up. when i come around to sort things with you,we will both go and pick up the money together then you pay me up… If you can get the moneygram done today then we can meet for viewing today in the evening from 6pm and the keys to the flat will be given to you… the money will start counting from the day you intend to move in

I offered alternative proof of my credentials. A redacted bank statement, the website with my news stories on it, references from old landlords. Unfortunately, poor Emilly had been burned before by unscrupulous tenants and their time wasting ways.

I would have love to receive bank statement,reference and bank slip as proof,but sorry i have been sent fraudulent one in the past by time wasters .I wasted fund coming from manchester just because of this flat but people don’t have the money to pay for it they just want to see how beautiful it looks so i asked my colleague here in manchester, .she said for both of us to be on a safer side, that we can both do it this way that for you to show that you have the cash to pay for my rent and deposit and you will not disappoint me when i come down from manchester to sort the viewing, the best you can give me as a proof is to show that you have the cash in hand to pay.

Obviously, I was feeling a little better about this now. I mean what could possibly go wrong? Time to get to the other juicy questions. How long could she hold the flat for? Was there a contract? Could I paint the windows black and play my death metal at two o’clock in the morning? Her response was to send exactly the same email again, outlining the money gram transfer.

By this time I was bored of Emilly, and decided to head out into the wilderness to see what other scams were running, but it turns out these flat scammers aren’t particularly fond of change. Wherever I went, I found reports of exactly the same scripts being used over and over again, some dating back two or three years – though always under different names.

Occasionally it was a Money Gram, sometimes Western Union, but the patter was the same. And what was worse was that people were falling for it. Forums were filled with reports of flat seekers being stung for £50 or £100 security deposits, after falling for the garbled nonsense of the emails. It’s a shame, because there probably are genuine landlords floating about these sites just looking to shift their property without paying agency fees. On the bright side, I have a piece of advice. If it looks too good to be true, at least make them suffer for it.