Hello everyone,

I wanted to share this to get your thoughts about the possibility of scam. I moved to Berlin last month and am looking for an apartment. I saw a very nice place on Immoscout24, furnished and 700€ per month. I was gonna apply directly but saw this warning on one of the pictures: ‘Do not apply via Immoscout, only emails’ and I sent an email to the given address.

The answer from landlord (in short):

>My name is Lukas and I am a 50 year old doctor from London / UK. If you can speak English, I would appreciate it. The apartment I inherited from my grandfather who died 2 years ago. I live in London / UK with my family and we do not use the apartment. Any other details about yourself would be appreciated.

Then I provided some details about me, job & salary & photo etc. His response after that:

>The delivery for the keys and the rental contract (signed by me), will be made by AirBnb ( [www.airbnb.com](http://www.airbnb.com/) ), they will also help us to make a third party transaction so you can therefore feel safe about this deal.

After I received all the details, I can go to AirBnb office and start the transaction. When they will have the keys and the real estate company on them custody, they will send you a delivery notification, in which they tell you that they have the keys and that they checked it. Then you will have to go your bank office and make a bank transfer on the AirBnb in United Kingdom, assigned with this transaction for the amount we agreed ( 2.000 Euro ). I must to tell you that the payment must to be made in 24 hours or early after the transaction was started.
>
>AirBnb will send to you an agent at your house door, and that person will come with you to visit the apartment to see that all is right. If you are not pleased with the apartment for any reason, the agent will give your money back immediately.

After this email I’ve sent some personal details: address, phone number and full name. Would it be a problem? Because I searched for scams after I sent my contact info, and then saw similar questions about landlords in UK. This may be a scam.

5 comments

  2. > The answer from landlord (in short):

    And that’s where you stop. It’s a well-known scam and you don’t need to interact further.

  3. If something looks too good to be true it’s not true. At least when looking for apartments. To not get into a scam again there are a few points to look at. You should be able to ALWAYS see the apartment before you rent it. The description should not contradict itself (for example if there are pictures of 3 rooms when it says it just has 2). Just one fixed price where everything is included is pretty weird. Most of the time they can tell you the warm and cold price.

    Take care of your data.

  4. It is definitely a scam. Never agree to pay upfront. Also have in mind that now the scammers have copies of your data/passport/etc. I don’t know if you want to take any precautionary measures, but at least be aware of that.

    As a general rule, first indication that something is off is that the scammer always wants to move the conversation out of the platform. This applies to other platforms/services as well. Secondly, the whole story of the landlord that is out of the country and will require some special steps from you is very common.

  5. Of course it’s a scam. Since when does Airbnb provide any of the services he’s describing?

    Although you could have stopped at “very nice furnished apartment for 700€”

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